Why are you willing to discount the core samples? They are a legitimate way of finding out how much CO2 gas was in the atmosphere in the past.

Seriously the ice back then trapped the air and the amount of CO2 in that air can be measured today.

You seem pretty intelligent as you used terms like Significant. I assume you are aware of Confidence levels at the 95% area of the bell curve and also may understand how to test difference in populations. You also may be aware of Chi Square Testing procedures.

Infrared Light can be used to measure how much CO is in the air. I use that methodology to test the air for Carbon Monoxide in the Evansville, IN area.

Likewise there are methodologies that are capable of measuring how much CO 2 is in an air sample.

I don't know if you have taken any Geology or not, but geologists use core sample of the earth to determine how old the various layers of the rocks are. Likewise they can take core samples of the old ice and determine the age of the various layers of ice. And they can also measure how much CO2 is found in each different layers. This means that they can go back in time and figure out how much CO2 is in the various ice layers. That in terms relates to how much CO2 was in the earths atmosphere at those times.

Do you dispute these facts about measuring the ice layers and the amount of CO2 in them and therefore the past amount of CO2 in the Earths atmosphere?

I am just curious as to what you don't believe?

Are you familiar with the Bureau of National Standards or ASTM methods? I have had to calibrate Class A thermometers and certify them as traceable to a NBS certified thermometer. That's pretty easy to do. I even purchased thermometer that came with this certification to the NBS. I think they changed the name to some thing else about 15 years ago. And I can't recall the new name but the agency still performs the same functions.

American Standards Testing Materials ASTM have published many books that describe how these tests are performed. They are used all over the USA to conduct business. So anyone that can read the ASTM books can figure out how to calibrate a thermometer. And most people can read a thermometer easily. I could probably train a kid to take temperature readings and to write them down in a bound log book with numbered pages.

So please don't tell me that we can't record the air or water temperature back 100 years ago. Some of the best minds that have ever been born were around long before 100 years ago. Copernicus, Newton just to name two.

Geologists have been around for hundreds of years and many scientific disciplines have been taking temperature readings for many years now.

But for the sake of argument lets just limit the discussion to the last 30 years. In fact 30 years ago I was taking water samples and measuring the Ph of the rain water. And I was using a Ph Meter that was purchased from Fisher Scientific. It had a automatic temperature compensating probe built into the pH probe and meter.

Are you aware of how a thermocouple works? Do you really thing that taking a air temperature reading is that hard. In fact taking temperature reading is probably the most basic scientific test that can be done.

So please don't tell me that people can't measure the air temperature in the USA, or in Alaska or in South Africa. Thermometer were designed long before you and I were even born and they have not really changed that much. They were using liquids that expand and contract volume with changing temperature ever since they were invented.

While they may have been a few errors in reading these over the years they were very few and far between. These temperatures can be combined and easily averaged. And it's easy to take temperature readings throughout the various parts of the globe and analysis and interrupt them.

Taking air temperatures is pretty **** hard to screw up!

And last question. How do you explain the vanished Glaciers?

Ice won't melt unless it gets above 32 deg F or Zero deg C. or 273 deg Kelvin longer than it stays below that temperature. So if the average air temperature are over 32 deg F the ice melts. If the average temperatures are below 32 deg the F freezes and builds back up. Over the last 30 years all the ice has been doing more melting than freezing. That's perfectly clear.


In fact the way that scientist can test a thermometer and determine if it's working property is to put it in ice water and see if it reads 32 deg F and then put it in boiling water and see if it reads 212 deg F. For you metric guys that zero deg C and 100 deg C respectively.

Now I think that mankind has had a significant impact on the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere.

This morning I read on MSNBC web site that the oceans are turning more Acidic. This is directly due to the increase in CO2 in the air. You are most likely aware of the laws of Partial Pressure? You know the physic laws that states that the higher the partial pressure of a gas the more the gas will go into solution in a liquid.

Well it just so happened that we can measure the pH of the sea water and the scientist are discovering that the ocean coastal waters off the USA West Coast are getting more acidic. And acidic water dissolved calcium carbonate into solution. Take some acid and pour it over some limestone and watch the reaction. This is going on right now. Sea critters who's shells are made out of calcium are having their shells dissolved due to the lower pH of the ocean waters. That's something new that I just read this morning.

I have performed tests on water samples that were highly basic. Take a test sample of effluent that has a pH of 10.0 and add some CO2 into the solution quickly and then watch the pH of that solution drop like a rock below 7.0. In fact you can take a straw and blow though the straw and put your breath into the solution and make it's pH drop down to 5.0 in less than 5 seconds.

That's because humans exhale CO2 into the air. Might add that the 7 billion humans breathing ever few seconds also contributes to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. We and all the other animals were in balance with the plants for hundreds of years. Now we are out of balance with the plants as the amount of CO2 in the air is increasing.

You surely won't debate the fact that man is digging up and burning much more fossil fuels that we ever did 100 year ago. Surley you will admit to that!

Would you also deni that buring these fossil fuels is putting more CO2 into the atmosphere? Surely you will admit that is a fact!


Quote Originally Posted by know1 View Post
What the heck, I'll throw in my .02...

I'm not sure if global warming is real or not, but I'm pretty sure the climate has made some pretty big changes in the past so it's conceivable. The part that cannot be proven to me is that man is having a significant impact on it or that man can do anything to change it significantly.

Now that does not mean I'm in favor of polluting the environment or abusing it negligently, but it also means that I'm pretty sure if man were around to tax the most advanced countries at the time of the ice age to try and prevent that from happening, it would have still occurred.

Also, I do not believe that scientists have relevant statistical samples gathered from the last 100 years or so (the time when we could do any appreciable measuring of climate and weather) to make very solid hypotheses about what is occurring or what will occur. Please don't bring up core sample of ice and tell me that those can be compared with readings we do now.