[LINK] the weather makers

[Kim Holburn]

On 2007/Apr/08, at 7:37 AM, Kim Holburn wrote:
> On 2007/Apr/08, at 4:30 AM, Stewart Fist wrote:
>> 4. The other problem is that we are really in an Ice-Age.  For the  
>> last
>> million years the earth has been extremely cold by comparison to  
>> what went
>> before.
>
> Flannery says that we are currently in a period that he calls the  
> long summer - 8000 years of mild and very stable climate.  It is  
> similar to other warm cycles in Milankovich's cycles but they  
> usually cool down towards the end.  They have even named the latter  
> part of this period "the Anthropocene".

I don't want to rewrite his book here but he says this 8000 years of  
mild stable climate is what allowed humans to farm crops and form  
cities and civilisations and it happened simultaneously (geologically  
speaking) in many places all over the world.

>> Our present millennium just happens to be in the middle of an  
>> interglacial
>> period, and we know that it will turn back into a much colder  
>> period at some
>> time in the next 1000 or 10,000 years.  We don't know when,  
>> because we don't
>> know how or why this all happens.
>>
>> So, logically, the best reason not to use up all our easy-to-get- 
>> at coal
>> deposits is that this source of extra carbon molecules might be  
>> needed by
>> future generations to keep the planet warm by exploiting the  
>> greenhouse
>> effect.
>
> Yes

  and also the fact that if we burnt all the coal deposits in the  
world there wouldn't be any oxygen left in the atmosphere.


--
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
Ph: +39 06 855 4294  M: +39 3494957443
mailto:kim at holburn.net  aim://kimholburn
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Democracy imposed from without is the severest form of tyranny.
                           -- Lloyd Biggle, Jr. Analog, Apr 1961