Now that we’re seeing the second cold and snowy winter in a row, it’s tempting to think that global warming is over. Sadly, the contrary is the case; we’d better brace ourselves for an acceleration in the years to come.
This is the opinion of Professor Lucas Reijnders of the University of Amsterdam, the man who in the 1970s was amongst the first to warn of the dangers of polluting the atmosphere and the environment as a whole. Since then he has been known in the Netherlands as ‘The Environment Professor’.
Warming seas
Even the extreme snowfall we’re witnessing in Europe and the US are, according to Reijnders, the result of the greenhouse effect, rather than proof that it isn’t so bad after all. The reasoning goes: the seas are warming, therefore there is more evaporation and all that extra vapour comes down as precipitation. In this case, snow and lots of it.
Also, the relatively limited warming of the last couple of years is due to the current reduced activity of the sun. But that’s a short term cycle, and our star is expected to begin burning brighter again at any moment.
Time for a walk in the snow…
Lucas Reijnders also spoke to Earth Beat's Marnie Chesterton. Listen to the interview here
Photo: A bulldozer clears snow on a road near Prague Castle, Czech Republic, January 2010 as further overnight snowfall hit the Czech capital again. Europe continues to experience extreme winter weather conditions with almost daily occurances of snowfalls, many considerable - EPA/FILIP SINGER.
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Due to increased human activities like emission of carbons and other harmful gases, there is rise in global warming. It is unbelievable but true that extreme winter and heavy snaw fall is due to green house effect. Some thing must be done to urgently arrest this trend and save the live on the globe. Thanks for the post.best business cards
Well, Thijs Westerbeek van Eerten, tried hard to put words in the mouth of Professor Lucas Reijnders, but Professor Lucas Reijnders, did not admit that it is global warming.
Vaughan said "why were the "scientists" of the 70's & 80's so wrong about "global cooling" and the impending "ice age" they said we had to prepair for?" (sic). Well the American Meteorological Society reviewed all climate science literature between 1965 and 1979 and found that there was NO scientific consensus for global cooling. In fact, the consensus was for a future trend of global warming linked to greenhouse gases. So again, where are you sourcing your facts?
You are a bit loose with your words too, like grouping all climate scientists together under the term "scientists" of the 70s & 80s. There clearly was not a majority consensus for global cooling so it makes me think you are deliberately misleading people.
Maybe the Prof. should change his name to Prof. Whoops!
You gave the answer in your dialogue, "the sun"!
What foolishness that "scientists" could convince (decieve) everyone into believing that the single digit CO2 contribution to the atmosphere would have the major causatum upon tempretures over that of the vastly more powerful sun. Over 30,000 scientist have not been fooled (have accuratly decifered the science), but Keoto and Copenhagen summits and major media would have nothing of them, or sound science, so you have the masses mislead, like one of the respondants (name unknown from Australia) who mix and match accurate data with incorrect and try and make their case.
CO2 levels go up and down according to the effect of the ocean to a far greater degree than any human causation. The temp for the last ten years has been slightly down or flat, except for last yr. with an insugnificant rise. If these rises in temp. are connected to CO2 levels that are humanly caused then why were the "scientists" of the 70's & 80's so wrong about "global cooling" and the impending "ice age" they said we had to prepair for? Is it poss. that the "scientists" are wrong again and this time it seems to be agenda generated.
Want a good reference point check our icecap.com
Vaughan, my name is clearly stated at the top of my message.
Where did you get the '30,000 scientists' figure from?
Major media organisations do not report the claims (your words) of these '30,000 scientists' because they have been repeatedly proven false through the scientific peer-review process of scientific journals and other spaces for debate and discussion. So why would the media report these false claims? Also, you imply that we have been mislead. So are you saying that all the major meteorological organisations like the Hadley Centre or NASA are wrong and are somehow misleading you and I? I guess NASA faked the moon landing too, then?
CO2 does rise and fall due to a number of variables that would take too much space to explain here (you can read about the variables through reputable scientific organisations).
But let's go back to the facts. According to NASA, the combined mean record of global surface air and sea-surface water temperatures for the 2000s were warmer than all the years of the 1990s except 1998. You state that the temperature for the last ten years has been slightly down or flat except for last year which recorded a rise. You are right in that mean temperatures have been relatively flat but the 2000s was still the warmest decade since records began and the long term trend is for global mean temperatures to rise.
Global mean temperatures move in a pattern similar to a share market. There will be small rises and falls but the long term trend is for a warmer climate.
The debate about global warming centres around risk management. If you were sick and went to see 10 doctors and 9 doctors told you that you are at risk from heart disease and the remaining doctor said you are fine, I think I would be heeding the advice of the 9 doctors, wouldn't you? Nevertheless, the benefits of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels is to use more renewable energy, increase energy efficiency and better manage our environment.
Saskia, we can scientifically prove that carbon dioxide (CO2) traps heat. We can measure the amount of CO2 that is present in our atmosphere through ice-core samples taken from Antarctica and Greenland. The ice-core samples contain bubbles of air that have been trapped within the ice. Scientists use a special machine to drill and extract a very long piece of ice. The length of the ice is a record of our atmospheric history, so the deeper you drill the further back in time we can observe. From these samples we know that the CO2 composition of our atmosphere over the last one million years has been relatively stable except since the beginning of Industrialisation (1850s). Since then, the ice-core samples indicate that the amount of CO2 has increased significantly since the 1950s, in line with the post-war economic boom. This has the potential to alter our climate because we know CO2 traps heat.
Global temperature records began around the 1880s. Global temperature have remained relatively stable until the late 1970s. Since then, global temperatures have risen dramatically in a very short space of time culminating with the 1990s and 2000s as being the two warmest decades on record. CO2 and global temperatures are more or less rising in correlation with each other.
I think you lost your argument when you started to make references to God and evolution. Those concepts have nothing to do with the simple fact of CO2 trapping heat in the atmosphere.
Hmmm... helemal gek ,hoor....Does this kind of reasoning explain the very cold winters of the past centuries ?....think on Frans Hals & his paintings of skaters on the ice during a time when there was no carbon foot-print to speak of ,& no auto emissions . Of course this is all ridiculous....and you can hear that Prof. Reijnders is only guessing & cannot commit to it, because he does not know anything for sure .
Weather has always been cyclical, & for the most part ,in the hands of God...such arrogance has modern man today to even think he can control the weather . Sure... some glaciers are melting ...but others are forming ....and who are we to think that everything as we know it now , should remain as we know it forever . That has never been the case....not anywhere in the world.
One thing is certain ,& that is that all things change ..... so get used to it, and if you are an "evolutionist " as most of you are across the Atlantic......well , then I recommend you all learn to ," Adapt ".
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