It is true that there have been many ice ages here, and the last one that covered about all of Canada was between 25,000 and 12,000 years ago. It was one of those brief periods of cold which gave way 12,000 years ago to the interglacial period of warmth in which we live, which is getting really hot, really fast.
Carbon, methane, water vapour and some other chemical compounds hold the solar heat in the atmosphere. Scientists have been measuring the carbon content for decades and get their earlier data from gas frozen in glaciers, etc. The levels of carbon dioxide have risen quickly since the 1800 when the industrial age began and we started seriously using the carbon stored underground (coal, oil, gas)to fuel our industries and homes. In fact the temperature has risen so quickly that nature's organisms have not been able to adapt quickly enough. I have the recent publication of "Climate Change Impacts on the United States" from Cambridge and it says the average annual temperature in the US has risen by almost 1 degree F (or 0.6 degree C). Precipitation has increased nationally by 5 to 10%, mostly due to increases in heavy downpours (read floods!).
According to the scientists who spend their lives studying global warming, the temperature in the States will rise by about 5-9 degrees F (3-5 degrees C) on average in the next 100 years. The temperature in the last ice age was only 5 degrees C lower that today, so you can see how hot "warming" will get. I wish I could show you the graphs in this book. It is amazing to see how fast the levels of carbon dioxide and the temperature are rising in tandem. The scenario I mentioned is what will happen if nothing is done to slow our consumption of carbon fuels like coal, oil and gas which once lay beneath the earth holding carbon out of the atmosphere. We've opened this "Pandora's Box" of carbon-laidened fossil fuel for two hundred years and brought trillions of tons of carbon up into the atmosphere where it now acts as a powerful Greenhouse Gas. It would have been better to let things lie unerground.
The US did sign the original Kyoto treaty years ago and Bush (the oilman, as are most of his people) reneged. California is doing its own thing and promoting hybrid and solar cars like crazy. The rest of the world is busy finding ways to reduce our addiction to fossil fuel, too. There are dinosaurs and they live in Washington and Alberta (land of fossils and fossil fuel). I forget the other questions you had but I hope this answers most of them.
Carbon, methane, water vapour and some other chemical compounds hold the solar heat in the atmosphere. Scientists have been measuring the carbon content for decades and get their earlier data from gas frozen in glaciers, etc. The levels of carbon dioxide have risen quickly since the 1800 when the industrial age began and we started seriously using the carbon stored underground (coal, oil, gas)to fuel our industries and homes. In fact the temperature has risen so quickly that nature's organisms have not been able to adapt quickly enough. I have the recent publication of "Climate Change Impacts on the United States" from Cambridge and it says the average annual temperature in the US has risen by almost 1 degree F (or 0.6 degree C). Precipitation has increased nationally by 5 to 10%, mostly due to increases in heavy downpours (read floods!).
According to the scientists who spend their lives studying global warming, the temperature in the States will rise by about 5-9 degrees F (3-5 degrees C) on average in the next 100 years. The temperature in the last ice age was only 5 degrees C lower that today, so you can see how hot "warming" will get. I wish I could show you the graphs in this book. It is amazing to see how fast the levels of carbon dioxide and the temperature are rising in tandem. The scenario I mentioned is what will happen if nothing is done to slow our consumption of carbon fuels like coal, oil and gas which once lay beneath the earth holding carbon out of the atmosphere. We've opened this "Pandora's Box" of carbon-laidened fossil fuel for two hundred years and brought trillions of tons of carbon up into the atmosphere where it now acts as a powerful Greenhouse Gas. It would have been better to let things lie unerground.
The US did sign the original Kyoto treaty years ago and Bush (the oilman, as are most of his people) reneged. California is doing its own thing and promoting hybrid and solar cars like crazy. The rest of the world is busy finding ways to reduce our addiction to fossil fuel, too. There are dinosaurs and they live in Washington and Alberta (land of fossils and fossil fuel). I forget the other questions you had but I hope this answers most of them.
Comment