Asian Brown Cloud

[True_Avery]

Okay, this is a "Global" "Warming" thread but I'm going to try a different approach instead of the burnt path:

 

Let me start off with a few important points:

Al Gore

 

He frankly doesn't really know what he's talking about.

 

For starters, "Global Warming" is in a very loose sense the correct word to use, but it has also caused a lot of misunderstanding of what the hell the phenomenon actually is.

 

A more correct term would be "Climate Displacement" or "Global Climate Dispersion" or, simply, "Climate Change" because the act of the Globe, or areas of the Globe "warming" is both correct and incorrect.

 

An Inconvenient Truth is honestly one of the worst documentaries ever made for the express purpose of education. It was arrogant, bloated, and seemed to want to focus on that idiot's life more than it wanted to educate people. Fact is, the movie hurt the education of Climate Change more than anyone could have hoped. It also doesn't help that it failed to explain instances of actual human-made climate change happening right now, but I'll get to that later.

 

The man who supposedly created the Internet is nearly the sole reason his own movement is falling out under his feet. Now, let me try to bring a little bit of light to the issue in the very room he broke all the lights in.

 

Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, etc

 

Yes, the media but I'll focus on 1 reason. A reason that Democrats and Republicans and every other skeptic seem to love to throw around:

 

"Snow is evidence for the non-existence of Climate Change."

 

I see this with News Commentators all the time. "Its snowing in Washington. Al Gore must be crying!" Its a particularly favorite idea thrown around in a bogglingly uneducated Fox News rooms.

 

Inconvenient Truth got a lot of things skewed, but it explained enough that if you read up on the actual issue for even a few minutes you'd know the idea that Snow as evidence against is invalid. Even if you don't believe in Global Warming, using this excuse is facepalm worthy. If you're going to argue against something it is important to be educated to a certain extent in the topic you are... well, trying to disprove.

 

Why? Look up mini-ice ages created by Volcanoes. Global "Warming" does not mean that snow stops appearing; if anything, it means that Snow starts popping up more often in places it really isn't supposed to... like Jamul in Southern California 2 years ago. Keep reading down and I'll try to explain.

 

Al Gore's Apocalypse Prediction

 

An Inconvient Truth basically starts off with this man telling me this is the worst Climate Change in history. While that is correct in only 1 context, it is not correct in any of the contexts he was trying to explain. Like, his Co2 theory. Or that stupid little chart he made in which he lifted himself high in the sky to make a point.

 

I'll let this Gif do the rest of the talking

 

That is a graph of data taken from Ice Core samples dating back over 100,000 years ago, more than 50,000 years before the first of human civilization. You can see the previous Ice Age, along with the boosts and drops of temperature. Seeing as Humans can't of done much before about 200 years ago, its pretty clear the Earth has its own way of doing things.

 

The Climate naturally changes over time. Its had everything from natural ice ages to global ice ages caused by rocks the size of several footballs fields hitting the earth. Our "we're ruining the earth" isn't as valid as a better slogan "we're destroying our lungs".

 

Because, what we've been doing is not so much harming the planet as it is harming ourselves, namely our largest and least "green" cities.

 

What is "Global Warming"

(This BBCode requires its accompanying plugin to work properly.)

 

Essentially, "Global Warming" as Gore explains it is when Carbon Dioxide is created by emissions from cars, factories, fires, etc. Essentially a mix of human and earth made. Earth being volcanoes and such.

 

These greenhouse gases collect in the atmosphere, collecting solar rays and overall heating the Earth because some of the heat is trapped in the greenhouses gases and cannot escape off into space. It is a whole lot more complicated than that, but the point of the thread isn't really to discuss this rendition of the theory.

 

Why is this a problem? Because, well, that changes the temp at the Caps. Why at the Caps? Because the Caps are made of ice. Why does this matter? Because a sheet of ice is essentially a giant mirror. Sunlight hits the ice mirror and the heat and light are reflected back into space which is why the caps stay consistently cool for the most part and aren't just melted by the sun (this also has to do with the earths axis and rotations, etc, but details unneeded right now).

 

If you have greenhouse gases, however, above this mirror it only helps to heat the atmosphere and... melt the caps.

 

Again, why is this a problem.

 

Because, the caps are made of fresh water. Cold fresh water. Which is bad. Why is this bad? Because, this cold fresh water entered the natural movement of the ocean and starts to affect currents. Why does this affect currents?

 

Currents are able to move in much the same way smoke moves through a house in a fire. Heat rises, and cool air falls. This is the same with the ocean. The warmer top water is moved by the moving cooler water underneath and vice versa. A temperature pump. This movement of cool and warm air powers the currents, which help power the wind around the earth, the movement of sea life, and ocean driven storms like... well, most of them.

 

What happens when colder water, especially fresh water, gets into the current is it starts to drastically change the ocean temperature and thus... you guessed it, the currents. If too much of the caps melt, the oceans get cooler and, well, they start doing weird things.

 

Because, once the cap are melted down there is less mirror reflection of the sun... which means there is more heat going directly into the oceans. The changing currents means changing wind patterns, and a dispersion of colder and warmer water which does things like forming a Cyclone in the South Atlantic Tropics.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Catarina

 

Here is a video explaining against this:

(This BBCode requires its accompanying plugin to work properly.)

 

He makes some valid points, but misses something that Gore didn't explain well either: Wind patterns are indeed affected by changing ocean temperatures because, well, much of the wind on earth is created by ocean temperatures. Arguably, this is a freak storm but while both sides have valid points on the subject there is currently no consensus between scientists on why the hell this would ever happen.

 

This man also brings up the point that "Global Warming" would not do this, but, as I stated above... "Global Warming", or "Climate Change" is not disproved by lower temperatures. In fact, it actually helps further a better theory which I'll explain below.

 

Everything I have put above in this section is pretty much based upon Gore's Carbon Dioxide theory, which, in his mind, effects the entire planet.

 

One of the more valid points he makes is that the caps are indeed melting. Sure, Washington is under snow and so on but what is happening in the United States is not the same as something happening elsewhere. Climate dispersion and change is the name of the game, not warming, which is why the entirety of Fox News are a bunch of insufferable morons.

 

Here are some recent pictures:

Show spoiler

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However, the ice has also been recovering lately and the melting has slowed

http://wordsforgood.org/mirrors/educate-yourself.org/glw/meltingicecaps03jul08.shtml

 

Now, I'm not just gonna leave you all at that.

 

Throw Al Gore and the Global Warming business out the Window. Lets look at selective Climate Change, and how exactly humans are not so much messing with the world as much as we're really screwing ourselves over.

 

The Asian Brown Cloud

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present the Asian Brown Cloud: One of the strongest evidence of Human Climate Change. Know what that is? That is a storm of 75%+ human pollution over India and much of South Asia. The cloud is associated with the winter monsoon (November/December to April) during which there is no rain to wash pollutants from the air.

 

Yes, you heard right. That is a storm of pollution.

 

"Its just brown air, right"

 

The cloud appears as a giant brown stain hanging in the air over much of South Asia and the Indian Ocean every year between January and March, possibly also during earlier and later months.

 

So, why is it brown?

* black carbon and ash

* sulfates

* nitrates

* mineral dust

* 75%+ of the cloud is man-made

 

What does this cloud do? Why, it kills people and changes the weather.

http://www.unep.org/pdf/ABCSummaryFinal.pdf

http://www.rrcap.unep.org/issues/air/impactstudy/Part%20II.pdf

http://www.rrcap.unep.org/issues/air/impactstudy/index.cfm

 

It is also currently messing with the weather in the Himalayas and melting its glaciers:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7153/full/nature06019.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17671499

 

The melting ice in the Himalayas also means less fresh water, which will leave millions with either no water or massive flooding.

 

Does this effect people at all?

 

* significant reduction of solar radiation to the surface by as much as 15%

This is caused by the effects of Solar Dimming

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming

Which in turn...

 

* altered regional monsoon patterns (less sea evaporation from sunlight means less rain)

* less rain in northwest India, Pakistan, Afganistan, and western PRC by as much as 40%

* more rain and flooding in other areas

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2006JD007712.shtml

Increase in rainfall over the Top End and Kimberley. A CSIRO study has found that by displacing the thermal equator southwards via cooling of the air over East Asia, the monsoon which brings most of the rain to these regions has been intensified and displaced southward... to Australia.

 

Oh, and that monsoon is supposed to go through South Asia and give water to 2 billion people in one way or another.

 

* reduction of photosythesis (drop in agricultural productivity)

* acid deposition and plant damage, killing more than 20% of crops.

 

* respiratory ailments

"HONG KONG, China -- A dense blanket of pollution, dubbed the "Asian Brown Cloud," is hovering over South Asia, with scientists warning it could kill millions of people in the region, and pose a global threat. In the biggest-ever study of the phenomenon, 200 scientists warned that the cloud, estimated to be two miles (three kilometers) thick, is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths a year from respiratory disease. By slashing the sunlight that reaches the ground by 10 to 15 percent, the choking smog has also altered the region's climate, cooling the ground while heating the atmosphere, scientists said on Monday."

http://www.earthday.net/ednnoidle/Asian_brown_cloud_Lesson_Plan.pdf

 

Oh, but they're just silly Asians. How can they hurt me?

 

Ummm.... yeah, turns out the wind from our oceans (you know, the ones that the Caps are messing with) is taking parts of this cloud from China and helping it drift into the United States every year. Almost a third of the air over Los Angeles and San Francisco can be traced directly to Asia. With it comes up to three-quarters of the black carbon particulate pollution that reaches the West Coast.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118470650996069354-buQPf_FL_nKirvopk__GzCmNOq8_20070818.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top

 

Oh, and funny story... West Bengal has stopped experiencing Winter because of this Cloud.

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/feature/asian-brown-cloud-has-robbed-west-bengal-of-winter_100155258.html

 

And this, all around the world, has in turn increased the effects of Ocean Acidification:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification

 

Which is killing Coral, Algaes, Plankton, etc... and Guess what ladies and gentlemen:

 

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/06/0607_040607_phytoplankton.html

Over HALF of the world's Oxygen is created by Plankton, who's numbers are currently falling because of Ocean Acidification... due to pollution clouds and Carbon Dioxide Emissions such as the one over South Asia. Clouds like this also block sunlight, which is essential for a great deal of ocean life... like Plankton.

 

And all those forests they are burning for their fuel that is currently being burned into the Cloud? Yeah, turns out you need rainforests and forests in general to control inland winds and oxygen/Carbon dioxide levels. People love to say "yeah, but its plant food!" but it can't be food to anything if the forest has been burned down, and thus you, yet again, get changing climate inland.

 

Aaaannddd... big surprise, similar effects are seen in Texas and other highly industrial areas of the United States.

http://www.txpeer.org/toxictour/big_bend.html

http://www.scorecard.org/env-releases/hap/state.tcl?fips_state_code=48

http://www.tceq.state.tx.us/assistance/P2Recycle/P2Week/airpollution.html

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/business/6865931.html

 

What does any of this mean?

 

What this essentially means is that Humans can and do have effects on the weather. Is it the world sinking Apocalypse that Al Gore set out to preach?

 

Well... not really. I doubt Florida is going to be swallowed by the ocean like he predicts within a few decades.

 

Al Gore's "Global Warming" can be more easily attributed to the Natural Cycle of the earth, but the ideas behind it can and do show on smaller than "Global" scale. The Asian Brown Cloud kills people, and messes with their weather pattern and it has gotten big enough to mess with the West Coast of North America.

 

Regardless, this cloud kills people. A lot of people, and threatens millions of people both inside and outside Southern Asia. Remember the pollution in China for the Olympics? It was deemed unsafe for athletes and they were given a period of time to clean up their city beforehand.

 

 

An Inconvenient Truth may have been an ego trip by him, but Al Gore's ego doesn't build that cloud, give Texans asthma, and leave parts of South Asia without clean water and air that kills hundreds of thousands of people every year. Al Gore's ego doesn't reroute a monsoon that has been on time every year since, and is currently off course because a pollution cloud has altered the direction of the Temperature Equator on the earth.

 

Human Pollution does affect Climate Change in select areas and does affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people. And, if you're still convinced that Pollution clouds and Carbon Dioxide can't make somewhere "colder", then I can only point you to the mini-ice ages that appear whenever a large Volcano goes off. I don't need humans to prove my point; Nature can do anything we do better.

 

And that is all I can fit into this post for now. If you've gotten this far, then even if you don't agree I respect you for at least reading what I have to say. Done my best to educate on the subject, but I'm open for corrections from other people.

 

Thanks for reading.

[Jae Onasi]

And here I was expecting some meteorological phenomenon involving millions of Lynk Formers floating in the air....

 

Seriously, the global warming argument is irrelevent to me. It's as simple as this--if you foul the place you live in with pollution, bad things are going to happen to you. For all the problems the EPA can cause with a few regulations I consider draconic, they are the only reason that we in the US aren't suffering the same horrendous pollution issues that Asians have to endure.

[TSR]

I came onto this thread expecting something much more entertaining and possibly naughty.

 

None of this will matter when the reapers come anyway.

[Det. Bart Lasiter]

clicked with the expectation of thai ladyboys

[Sabretooth]

Came here expecting a racist diatribe to be promptly submitted to the local media for instant publicity and cash.

[Litofsky]

Came here expecting a racist diatribe to be promptly submitted to the local media for instant publicity and cash.

 

"...in other news, gorram Asia has created a massive brown cloud over its land, in what can only be called the greatest political-correctness faux pas of the century.

 

 

"Now, back to Tom with the weather."

 

[machievelli]

And here I was expecting some meteorological phenomenon involving millions of Lynk Formers floating in the air....

 

Seriously, the global warming argument is irrelevent to me. It's as simple as this--if you foul the place you live in with pollution, bad things are going to happen to you. For all the problems the EPA can cause with a few regulations I consider draconic, they are the only reason that we in the US aren't suffering the same horrendous pollution issues that Asians have to endure.

 

My favorite comment on the entire environmentalist scare tactics is from Michael Chrichton in Jurrasic Park, when someone uses the environmentalist's catch phrase of saving the planet' the character replies, 'The planet can take anything we can throw at it. It isn't the planet we need to save, it's ourselves, because we can't surive it'