Star One Smart Blog's

Here we go again...another Disaster Looming news story. Again, we have a lot of people on this planet, and their use of chemical reactions to have better lives is beginning to affect an effect on the weather on this here mudball!

From the article looming at Drudge today:

..."the evidence for man-made influence on the climate system is now stronger than ever....And carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution spewed out this century will stoke global warming and sea-level rise "for more than a millennium," given the time it takes for fossil-fuel pollution to degrade...

So, give or take a few PPM, it's happening because...we are alive. Not only us here in the blamed-for-everything US, but billions and billions of others everywhere else on the planet. We've managed to, over a couple centuries, rise above what conditions we now call third-world and are somewhat civilized (you know, air conditioning, electricity, daily baths (except the French), cars, boats, trains, planes, everything else you touch and see and do today can much be blamed on....progress...

Before the Industrial Revolution, levels of CO2, the principal greenhouse gas, stood at around 280 parts per million (ppm).

Today, CO2 concentrations are around 380 ppm and are rising between two and three ppm per year as big energy-gobbling countries, such as China and India, pursue their economic rise.

According to the draft, a copy of which was obtained by AFP Tuesday, the temperature has already risen by 0.74 C (1.33 F) over the last century.

It considers it "very likely" -- a probability of more than 90 percent -- that the rise since the mid-1900s was caused by man-made greenhouse gases. In its last report, in 2001, the IPCC said this probability was "likely," or 66 percent or less.

Now, LISTEN TO THIS: it's given that thermodynamic laws require our planet to cool over time (we are, planetarily speaking, a partially-closed system in a very cold orbit environment...outside our atmosphere, it gets cold QUICKLY). Eventually, all of the heat generated on this planet (geothermal, chemical (that's us), sunlight absorption, whatever) is gonna go away. The Sun is the most constant (so far) form of energy supplied to us (it's not really constant in that fluctuations occur all the time in it's output)...but here are geothermal sources (volcanoes, etc), that release energy into our little system. We, human beings, are basically chemical systems. We create a lot of heat by our work and use of the planet. SO??? Our work and existance has changed the system....temporarily!

IS this a BAD THING?
Personally, living inland, I will have to say that rising sea levels won't be as bad for me as would dodging the occasional glacier. I'll admit, the winters are a little milder (this morning's 13° or so is not so bad...for awhile...kills the bugs) and the summers are warmer and longer. The atmosphere's stirred up (tornados, hurricaines, etc) but these things go on no matter how hot it gets. People are going to have to evolve (adapt? that's the short-term word) to the changing climate.

The current level of panic generated by people when some of them contemplate global warming is just crazy. People live, what, 40-80 years, then wink out. Geologically, that is just a flash not even long enough to record. Time is a long, long thing, and people...humans...are just blips on something's radar. We will eventually go away, either by our own doings, or...

I'll bet in a few dozen generations, (or a hundred), that people will have accepted whatever they find going on in the atmosphere. And in a few million years, when the ice again reclaims the upper parts of this globe, people (or whatever is ascendant) are going to miss the millennia of global warming.

It's a temporary thing...geologically speaking. Enjoy your brief lifespan, try to make some progress forward technologically and philosophically for the next generations, our successors, and hope that we leave them enough resources to stay warm....