Does the internet cause global warming?

[confucius]

The measured increase in rate of global warming seems to me to be related to the expansion of the internet and specificly the explosion in the World Wide Web.

 

Okay, but there does appear to me to be a case of many decapitated poultry in rapid motion (and I aint talking H5N1).

 

Copernicus showed us that we are not the centre of the Universe. Why have we retreated back to placing ourselves there again.

 

When I were a lad every schoolboy worth his salt knew about the 'greenhouse effect'. That was back - well almost to Copernicus actually. Yes our planetary twin Venus with its atmosphere of carbon dioxide (mainly). Now we measure increases in our tiny, tiny amount of carbon dioxide (plus anything else we can think of that could conceivebly be a greenhouse gas) and hey presto - we're all going to fry (well apart from Western Europe apparently - sorry). So where was that science that says an increase of X in our tropospheric greenhouse gases leads to a change of mean global temperature of Y?? And even if the measured increase in carbon dioxide is due to combustion of fossil fuels, we know little enough of the carbon cycle and the oceanic heat sink to be doing a chicken licken routine.

 

If there is sound science out there in respect of climate change / global warming, it must be thin on the ground.. Cos I aint seen much of it yet!

[Phi for All]

Raising awareness regarding a possible global catastrophe doesn't seem overboard to me in the least, especially when the worst case scenario is that we spend too much money and time cleaning up the air we breath and saving a few forest ecosystems.

 

To me it's a lot like spotting a huge meteor that will impact the earth in ten years. Better to give it a nudge now than have to give a titanic heave nine years from now.

[MattC]

"If there is sound science out there in respect of climate change / global warming, it must be thin on the ground.. Cos I aint seen much of it yet!"

 

I guess you've been (like most people) doing everything but /studying/ the topic at an academic level. As a student, I've been forced to, and at the same time I see the information that trickles down through the public media. Don't be fooled into thinking you're getting science, when you're getting news that is usually half opinion. That's why there's so much alarmisn on the one side and so much complacency and denial on the other side.

 

You're right about one thing - in your sentiment you express doubt, and doubt is the key to understanding what scientists are predicting. Rather, probability is - to use Phi's example (and the alter it a little to my liking; I don't think he'll disagree though), it's li ke seeing a huge asteroid heading our way - yes, we see it coming, no, we do not know for certain if it will hit us, but it's heading right at us, and while we can go around blithly assuming something we haven't accounted for will come along and make things right, or we can start now - and here's what we gain from starting now:

A smoother transition to alternative sources of energy (this is inevitable - humans use more and more every year, and even reserves of fossil fuels which can conceivably last a long, long time, aren't going to last forever, and they are already rising in prices)

Cleaner air, which translates to cleaner rain. This happens in *part* independent to significant reductions in C02, as we can clean exhaust somewhat while still burning fossil fuels.

Continued economic dominance, if that matters to you. Power runs our economy, and power prices *will* go up - even the oil industry and coal industry knows this, that's why they are already researching alternatives - they want to be on top when the global power economy does a flip

Economic *independence* from certain other countries.

 

I'm a student of Environmental Sciences at the University of CA, Riverside, about to graduate on to graduate school (I plan on studying environmental engineering). I have never had a professor tell me that he is certain of what will happen - I only get that from alarmists in the news who insist that doomsday is not only coming, it's right around the corner. Yet, even out of my field, I have never had a science teacher (or other type, for that matter) express anything but concern over the fact that many of the variables that we can measure suggest very strongly that we are making our own environment, on both global and local scales, less hospitable.

 

It's 8:30 in the morning, and I've got to go to work, but I'd love to give you all of my evidence. I'm sure others will post a little and hopefully they will cite some sources, but if you really want the truth, don't take my word for it, and certainly don't take the word of the media. Don't trust your intuition, either - just because you knew about greenhouse gasses when you were growing up doesn't mean you know anything that is hard science about this world, let alone what is happening right now. Do your own research. Scienceforums.net is an ok place to start, but ultimately you need to go to google and a library. If you research only cutting edge sources, and get a variety of them, you will find that:

Despite many predictions to the contrary, and despite various debates about this, the scientific community right now is pretty much settled on the fact that the Earth is warming, and that it is already warmer than it has been for a long, long time. We are also certain that humans are emitting C02, not in the tons, or hundreds or tons, or thousands of tons, or even millions of tons - in the hundreds of millions of tons. And while there are numerous "sinks" for this gas and others, no one really knows anything about the capacity of these sinks. We do know that atmospheric C02 levels are on the rise, and in terms of Earth scales, they are rising at phenomenal rates. To us it seems steady and slow - to the Earth the time scale is little different from that of a massive volcanic eruption, which might over the course of a few days spew very large (even relative to man-made sources) amounts of C02.

We are not certain that the observed warming trends are human-caused, or even that the warming trends are actually significant, abnormal warming trends. We don't have enough information. Why then do we care? If you were slowly pressing a knife into your skin, and if the situation was as complex as the condition with global warming, you might not be certain that your skin is bleeding due to you pushing the knife in. You'd still stop, though, if it were that clear (and it is, really, to people who study the science - what we are doing to our world, we expect to have the consequences that we are observing - it makes sense, it follows logically. Should we assume no connection, despite logic?).

The long laundry list of potential hazards associated with warming the Earth even a few small degrees (like ... 2 or 3 degrees, on average) daunts me even after spending well over four years studying them. From changing ocean currents (which along could cause massive, widespread famine, disease, and ultimately death) to melting glaciers and icesheets (all of which so far are hardly the worst hazards - these are happening, in the case of ocean currents in very small degrees, but models that chart possible courses of dramatic change suggest that such small changes in ocean currents would be expected until a certain point was reacher, a "tipping point" if you will)), to truly frightening, if less likely possibilities, like gravity pulling a weakened icesheet off of the western face of Antarctica and literally killing the words coastal cities.

Man made disasters are not the worst the Earth has seen or will see, and even worst case realistic scenaries don't compare to a massive asteroid, and yet they nevertheless warrent consideration. And they are getting it - ultimately there will be three groups of people: Those who deny it and do not adapt (these people will miss out on massive economic benefits by not being a part of an emerging, powerful industry), those who deny it but are adapting to prepare (for instance, the oil industry - trust me when I say they are not ignorant, they don't believe oil will run forever; afterall, it's their money that funds the scientific expeditions that have determined for us exactly how much fossil fuel we can expect to economically extract, and those who openly advocate preparation for the inevitable - a switch to a cleaner type of energy.

 

As for your original, tongue-in-cheek analogy, I understand where you are coming from. A non-scientist could easily think that the science community is divided into the we're-so-afraid-we-wear-breathing-masks-and-don't-go-out doom camp and the more cool-headed everything-is-fine scientists, because this is the image that sells in the "news." If you consult the scientists themselves, though, you find that they're mostly moderate - they don't believe the world is ending tomorrow, but they know that change is coming - must come - and they know that if it doesn't, if humans don't adapt (which they will; in my opinion there is no doubt, as it will be not only environmentally desirable, but also economically desirable, at some point), we would be in potentially very dire straites, with the world literally changing around our feet.

[bascule]

The measured increase in rate of global warming seems to me to be related to the expansion of the internet and specificly the explosion in the World Wide Web.

 

So are you saying that global warming is mostly an alarmist meme? Then yes, you are correct...

 

When I were a lad every schoolboy worth his salt knew about the 'greenhouse effect'.

 

Somehow the greenhouse effect is being blamed for all sorts of regional warming effects.

 

So where was that science that says an increase of X in our tropospheric greenhouse gases leads to a change of mean global temperature of Y?? And even if the measured increase in carbon dioxide is due to combustion of fossil fuels, we know little enough of the carbon cycle and the oceanic heat sink to be doing a chicken licken routine.

 

If there is sound science out there in respect of climate change / global warming, it must be thin on the ground.. Cos I aint seen much of it yet!

 

http://realclimate.org/

http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/

 

When it really comes down to it, forcings which alter global climate are very hard to change. Kyoto has demonstrated this quite well; its projected benefits over the course of 50 years are a savings of 0.07C for the global mean surface temperature. That's lower than the precision with which we can actually measure the global mean surface temperature.

 

Regional warming effects are much easier to tackle. For one, they don't require global treaties. They operate on a much smaller scale, so the potential to make a real impact is substantially greater.

[rakuenso]

the relationship between internet and global warming is as clear as the relationship between # of pirates and global warming.

[MattC]

Well, I've been studying in this field for a while now, and while there appears to be a wealth of information linking pirate activity to climate change, there is next to nothing suggesting a link between the rise of the internet and global warming (aside from the connection to power generation - more electronics means more electricity and thus more coal being fed to powerplants.

[bharatiyedu]

i dont think it will cause much damage as we humans do

[confucius]

No your not convincing me guys (nice planetary neb Phi).

 

Didnt quite get the pirate thing.

 

We mere mortals will not be informed whether there is or is not enough oil to keep our four wheel drives going for the next 10, 50 or 250 years because it involves making lots and lots of money.

 

One of the cleanest and cheapest forms of green electricity is hydro-power but even that can cause enviromental problems. Some of the newer technologies like hydrogen fuel cells just seem plain daft to me. I mean what cost to the enviroment in obtaining both the energy and materials for manufacture of the cell and then energy for hydrogen? Or hybrid vehicles carrying lead acid batteries around that need electricity to charge up - how efficient is that? Its all just window dressing to me.

 

Yes my original question was set tongue in cheek but as an example I see computers now requiring 400 plus watt power supplies and processors that you can boil a kettle on, and all that wasted power used (mainly) for browsing the web.

 

The greenhouse gas thing may or may not be a reality in terms of global warming (if its a real phenomenom). As we in the West have become more affluent we have tolerated greater wastage of energy. For goodness sake can't we start doing constructive audits of energy and resource use to allow us to make realistic cuts of our dependency on fossil fuels.