Money is always the issue.

Money won't be the issue when we're all drowning because of our collective stupidity...or desiccating on some new global-warmed-up desert, as the case may be. Money and cities will be seen as they are--man-made illusions and not important in the least. Maybe we'll manage to nuke ourselves up first, thanks to Bush and the other cranially-challenged, military-industrial-complexioned. I'm sure our Harper and his suppporters still believe in a Flat Earth. It doesn't matter. The rich and the stupid will die just like the rest of us mortals. Mother Earth will still be here long after we're gone...at least until the Big Meteor hits. That is reality. We can only delay disaster. But, as most still vote for thought-dinosaurs, corporate-rule and short-term profit, we won't even get that relief time. The question remains: Should we lock up all our tunnel-visioned folk to prevent them from destroying us all so much sooner? Do we have the will and guts to do so?

Act first - react later.

Wealth can not be created, only taken and costs can not be cut only transferred.

Global warming, climate change, destruction of the environment, growing hunger, destitution, permanent wars are nothing more, or less, than transferred costs on other sectors, the environment and the future.

The first step toward the solution must be the stopping of the enforced teaching of neoclassical economics in our universities. It has now become the biggest crime wave in human history.

The next step should be the drastic curbing of the power of the stockmarkets and the elimination of the money markets.
They are the biggest causes of all destruction, albeit very profitable for the multinational corporate mafia.

Ed Deak.

Thank you Aron and Ryan (and the Tyee) for keeping us informed. It continues to ASTOUND me how government refuses to address this issue. And how capitalists took a scientific fact and turned it into an idealogical fight is truly a low water mark for human intellegence. And as a result, all of us will pay the price, over and over again. One day, soon, people will be pointing out that "had we started building this ______ (dyke, facility, relocating sewer or water system, etc etc) in 2006 the job would have been half the cost". Will Mr. Campbell, Mr. Harper and CanWest Global take responsibility then? Unlikely.

This is the price we pay for allowing ourselves to be ruled over by "free lunch" advocating ignoramuses and sociopaths for whom the profit motive and their perverted will to power is everything. If you are I steal as little as a candy bar we are held accountable, but the lunatics in charge can ruin the lives of millions and nothing happens. It is time that we held these people - and their corporate state system accountable.

I think the reference to erosion countermeasures around "Point Grey and North Vancouver" is a slip of the keyboard; UBC will not be saved by anything we do here in North Van. Perhaps "North Vancouver" should be "north arm of the Fraser"?

basing any conclusions on the IPCC reports is akin to using the Framer's Almanac to predict new week's weather or believing Scientology is a real religion. The series of reports is riddled with errors, assumptions and hidden agendas.

Public relations, no matter how successful, is not science. The loudest screamers for the sky is falling global calamity woe is us mantra are usually the ones who have the most to gain. Green Peace et al have never, ever had such a successful fund raising scheme.

please, open your minds, check out the real science, not the headline science.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/05/nosplit/nwarm05.xml

Besides, after the magnificent summer we just had, don't you all think that there might be a little something good about global warming ?

Bring it on Mother Nature, I just love what you are doing to your climate.

Logjam, you can believe maverick scientists if you want; they're like King Canute trying to hold back the sea by raising their hand. Sure, it's nitty-gritty sorting out of this or that set of numbers and confusing climatological "proofs". But remember this: there are three kinds of lies:

Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

(Was that Mark Twain or T. Roosevelt?)

Thanks Logjam, I am much relieved to hear that there is no problem and that everything is the fault of those pesky, money hungry environmentalists, just like the War in Iraq is the fault of the anti-war movement and wife-beating the fault of women. Life is so simple...

Just for jolllies I looked up one of the research papers, to make sure that Monckton wasn't making people up (as climate deniers from the Edmonton papers and the Tories have been knokwn to do), and yup, there's a John Lyman at NOAA who has a paper out there on oceanic temperature: its subject/title is misleading - "cooling of the upper ocean".

In other words, not cooling of the whole ocean, as implied in Monckton's writing, but with one aspect of it. I'm not into oceanography or understand thermondynamics of fluid systems, but I do know that the temperature of the surface of something, or of one part of it, is only a component. One part of a process is not the whole process.

I'm still trying to figure out, if Monckton's right in interpreting Lyman's paper, if the cooling oceans somehow have something to do with the Arctic being increasingly ice-free, or those big chunks of ice shelf breaking off Antarctica and Greenland. And the current El Nino of course is only a "small effect" El Nino, implicitly a cooler one, right? And El Ninos - major warmings of equatorial water in the Pacific - are obviously signs of the planet staying just the same, right? Those Peruvian fishermen who coined the term in recent generations must be liars, huh? Trying to cover up that there's always been El Ninos, that they didn't just start up in the last century. Right....

And of course Hurricane Katrina and its sister storms last year were the direct result of cooling in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico?

Hah. I'm pretty sure that if I got my hands on Lyman's paper (and not trusted Monckton's interpretations or claims concerning it) the context and its conclusions would be a lot different than what Monckton is wanting it to be. Matter of fact, Lyman's in the 206 area code so I'm tempted to call him and ask...but he's probably got his hands full because of people looking for reasons to say "sure honey, let's go buy that SUV and I still think that condo in the Florida Keys is a good idea".

Monckton clearly should have approached Exxon for payment for this article, as he whines he didn't, instead of the Daily Telegraph. What are the Telegraph's political inclinations anyway? Do they by any chance resemble those of the Edmonton Sun?

Peer review is what science is all about; is there a peer review of Monckton's article? If it's so compelling, and factual, it obviously should make the pages of Science or Nature and silence the hysterics of the climate-change loonies once and for all.

There were people running around in the 1930s saying Hitler was a great peacemaker, too....

http://www.aboutmyplanet.com/enviro...-global-warming

Floating cities....but of course; the Japanese started it with all those insta-islands-cum-cities they like to build, but actually not bothering with ground contact saves a lot of engineering in the long run (especially if water levels aren't constant). One of those micronation plans is similar in concept - if you don't have land, just build it (in the Gulf of Honduras is the one I'm thinking of).

The Dutch are the most likely people to be prepared for what's coming; and yeah, between conversions to floating cities and immense sea dykes, and managing the Mouths of the Rhine, I expect the Dutch to have a stranglehold on whatever the oceans-rising specialty field of civil engineering is going to be called, and it's going to be valuable technology/expertise for export.

BTW to give an idea of terrain-flooding realities around here: the height of ground in Coquitlam between Burnaby Mountain and the mountains north is only 24m. On the rise between the Nooksack and Sumas basins, in the area of Everson WA, it's 35m. So it'll be a long time before Coquitlam or Chilliwack are under water, depending on glacial melt...we're only hearing 20m right now, but I'd bet most estimates will wind up turning out to have been conservative...

At the Mission rail bridge's flood-watch measure, the flood marker starts at 30' (9 meters, sort of); much above that and the rail bridges are wiped out, and most of the dykes. But well below that and you can kiss off Richmond and Ladner and Cloverdale, as well as most of 499 and the Richmond Connector....

Yet another opportunity to contact polititians instead of just posting a comment to the converted.

According to a recent poll, the environment is the top issue for Canadians. Time to put pressure on the politians.

For starters, write provincial and federal politians and demand they spend more on public transit and less on highways so people have the option of driving less and thus reducing their GHG emmisions.

Thanks for committing to make a difference!!

Rt. Hon. Stephan Harper
Prime Minister of Canada

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cc:

Hon. Lawrence Cannon, Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities
Hon. Bill Graham, Liberal Party and Opposition Leader
Hon. Rona Ambrose, Minister of the Environment
Hon. David Emerson, for the Pacific Gateway and the Vancouver-Whistler Olympics
Hon. Jack Layton, Leader, New Democratic Party
Hon. John Godfrey, Liberal Critic, Environment
Hon. David McGinty, Liberal Critic, Transport
Hon. Andrew Scott, Liberal Critic, Infrastructure and Communities
Hon. Stephane Dion, MP, Liberal Party leadership candidate
Hon. Michael Ignatieff, MP, Liberal Party leadership candidate
Hon. Peter Julian, NDP Critic, Transport
Hon. Nathan Cullen, NDP Critic, Environment
James Moore, M.P., Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam
Bob Rae, Liberal Party leadership candidate

Premier Campbell

http://www.leg.bc.ca/mla/38thParl/campbell.htm

BC MLA's can be found here:
http://www.leg.bc.ca/mla/3-1-1.htm

The great majority of economists would disagree with you, Ed.

Anyway, same rhetoric, same shelf.

I am doing a job at UBC right now. The ground is rather high there. I don't see sea level rising 15 feet by the end of the century. Most engineering plans are for the area of 90cm.

That's enough to severely increase erosion on the Point Grey cliffs, which is what the issue is. "The ground is rather high there" definitely applies to campus; but campus is, if you haven't noticed, on the edge of a very high and steep sand cliff that has a habit of collapsing. Add more wave action to its bottom and certain natural processes are unavoidable (just as the British).

I think a great many scientists would understand exactly what Ed is saying. Mostly because it makes sense and reflects the world as it exists, not as a mathematical model full of variables just waiting to be tweaked to achieve the desired outcome.

Further, there was a time when Ed might be diagnosed as having an imbalance in his humours to come out with such crazy talk (100% kidding Mr Deak!), and his barber might have to consult with the local alchemist for a proper cure.

If something stands the knowledge you learned long ago on its head, stands up to the laws of the physical world, and makes you uncomfortable with its radical departure from the 'conventional wisdom' then it needs a closer look not an out-of-hand dismissal.

That's what I did. I think Fiat Lux is on to something. Of course, you might tell me I'm just another left-wing radical marching in lockstep with the rest of a dogmatic crowd.

How you'd get that from someone subscribing to a minority viewpoint is the mental leap I always find to be illogical, but whatever.

Funny how it's the same old, same old, when one disagrees... but an eternal truth when it jibes with what we think already.

WM....The vast majority of economists are most welcome to disagree with me and then climb a tree, because they're miseducated frauds. The few sane ones agree with me, but are scared to speak up.

We can neither create, or destroy anything, only convert reaources into other forms. Haven't you learned this in highschool?

In any case, my laws have been used and passed in scientific PhD dissertations, featured on many worldwide economic forums and remain unbroken, are scientifically correct and as far economists and corporate moguls and their fully owned politicians are concerned, they can go to hell, where they belong.

Ed Deak.

I'm not normally a fan of Wikipedia; however, loggie's little hero from the Telegraph didn't exactly ring a bell as being a big light in the scientific community.

I haven't read the pdf referred to in the aritcle yet, but I will post a little bit of information (from Wikipedia) about the author's background - funny how those lords get around:
Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (born 14 February 1952) is a former British journalist.

The eldest son of the 2nd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, Monckton was educated at Harrow School, Churchill College, Cambridge and University College, Cardiff. He joined the Yorkshire Post in 1974 and then worked as a press officer at the Conservative Central Office from 1977–79. In 1979, he became the editor of the Catholic newspaper, The Universe and then as the managing editor of The Sunday Telegraph's Magazine in 1981.

In 1983 he returned to the Conservative offices again, this time as Margaret Thatcher's policy adviser. Three years later, he became assistant editor of the newly-formed newspaper, Today. His final job in journalism was as a consulting editor of the Evening Standard from 1987–92.

Monckton was a director of his own, namesake consultancy company, Christopher Monckton Ltd., between 1987 and 2006, when he retired through ill health. He is also a member of the Worshipful Company of Broderers, an Officer of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem and a Knight of Honour and Devotion of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Upon the death of his father in 2006, Monckton inherited his title.

On 19 May 1990 he married Juliet Mary Anne Malherbe Jensen.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Eternity Puzzle
* 2 Illness
* 3 Recent works
* 4 Sources

[edit] Eternity Puzzle

In 1999, he created the eternity puzzle, a large dodecagon-shaped boardgame with 209 smaller irregularly shaped polygons. Offering a £1m prize and expecting the puzzle to be solved a few years later (when, hopefully, enough revenue from sales would have been raised), it was solved within 18 months. Although pleased the puzzle had been solved, Monckton was said to have been compelled to sell his £1.5m home, Crimonmogate, in Aberdeenshire, in June 2001, to cover the payout. However, the prize was in fact met by a combination of royalties and prize-indemnity insurance. The 36 room mansion was in the end sold and Monckton and his wife moved to a small estate on the banks of Loch Rannoch which they have painstakingly restored. A second puzzle, ETERNITY II, will be launched in 2007 with a $2 million prize for the first solver.

[edit] Illness

Monckton has suffered for many years from a serious disorder of the endocrine system, which in 2005 forced him to retire from his business.

[edit] Recent works

In November 2006 two articles written by him criticising the traditional view of global warming were published in the Sunday Telegraph. [1]
Draw your own conclusions. I'd say Loggie has definitely caught a lunker.

Also, is the Telegraph traditionally a Tory paper?

Yep, it's Tubby Black's flagship er...former flagship.

Okay before everyone gets into a panic check out this website friendsofscience.org Get away from the Greenpeace and Suzuki headlines. Check out the references. How come when someone says wait a minute lets have another look at this they are called rogues and mavericks, thats intelligent. The Artic is not as warm as it was in the 40's, Greenland and the Antartic are not melting they are growing and getting cooler. Read the site, check the references, read it before commenting. Give it a try.

Willy,

Is that the same Friends of Science that are funded by the oil industry?

No there are funded by 'intelligent design' !

I hope I am alive when I can say I told you so you fossil fools!

Probably allied to Share BC, too....

Well no one reads that is what I expected. Funded by oil industry that is old. Check out the site, what is so hard about that. Hey this is not against pollution control, it is about the huge amounts of money being spent on bad science. Chasing CO2 may turn out to be money poorly spent. The money should be spent on overall pollution control. Come on people read then comment.

If the Friends of Science are for real amd it doesn't matter if they're funded by oil companies then they should have published, peer-reviewed articles to read. Are there any?

That's everybody but you, Ed. When are you going to collect your Nobel Prize?

Nobel Prize, for what ?

There's no Nobel Prize for economics. Don't you know nuthin' ?

Cheers, Ed.

WP, Ed isn't the only person who thinks that way. Furthermore, I suggest that you look at the actual results of the promotion of orthodox economists recipes. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Human disasters like the gangsterization of the Russian economy, the Argentine meltdown, the destruction of the Mexican peasantry and their resulting illegal immigration to the US, the IMF and its promotion of destrctive megaprojects and debt peonage. See John Perkins, "Confessions of an Economic Hit man" for more info.

Willy, here's a website for you:

http://www.desmogblog.com/dr-doug-leahy-do-any-of-the-friends-of-science-not-lead-back-to-oil-and-gas

Anyway, the Friends of Science are so last spring. The hot new climate change denial group is the National Resource Stewardship Project (NRSP, or as the folks on the above blog call them, "Not Really Science People".

It is not just the greenhouse gas emissions, and the clear-cutting that is causing global warming. Plowing, planting and cultivation methods used by most industrialized agriculture strips the land bare, with wetlands drained. This barren land is generally much less reflective than land that is covered by vegetation and swamps. Therefore, it absorbs more heat (as do asphalt covered cities). Further, the topsoil that muddies the rivers and Deltas. This water is far less reflective, heat is absorbed.

What I am very curious about and have not ever researched nor ever heard anything about (as it is all from my own head): Is there a critical tipping point when the heat of the external earth (crust) makes it more likely that the heat from the internal earth (magma) will be inclined to escape with higher frequency? Many of us have seen animations of the effects of super volcanoes (like those from the Colorado-Wyoming area) that blow up every so many million years. Could we be causing this sort of thing to happen with greater frequency? I'm not being an alarmist, but I am really curious as to the effects of heat on the guts of Gaea. Will warmer, deeper oceans result in increased geothermal activity on the surface? the pressure of 1-10 meters of water added to the weight of the existing oceans has to do something to the Earth's plates, especially if that ocean water is warmer (which causes things to expand - and thus exert more pressure).

Really, Ed? Here is a list from the Nobel website listing 58 such winners. Curiously, few agree with you.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/

Oh, the misguided!

We ought to feel our leaders are our servants and our brothers or sisters; at the very least, I thought that about Jean Chretien. He had a delightful unpretentiousness that I would welcome in a new prospective Prime Minister. At least he, it seemed, was OF THE PEOPLE.

So Timmy Ball has moved on. That will be an interesting law suit - if it ever gets to court. Is he still tied to that Michael Walker group too? The Fraser Institute.

I thought we already dealt with these oil company consultants a week or two ago.

- head on over to the Guardian's website and search out some of George Monbiot's stuff.
Better use of your time than wasting it on cranks like willy and loggie's heroes.

Where did that first para come from? Oh well!! Not that it has anything to do with this subject - at least Jean Chretien signed the KYOTO agreement. Rona Ambrose can't seem to even find it.

Perhaps I need some peer reviewing too.

There is no nobel prize in economics per se; but there is The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel:

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/

The Prize amount for 2006 is set at Swedish kronor (SEK) 10 million per full Prize. That's $1.57 million Cdn!

So you see, Ed, they have elevated their thievery to a pseudoscience - one in which if we all close our eyes and call upon our faith to believe in the same thing, it will be so. In this way these thieves are able to talk about real values using imaginary (non-existent) dollars. In this way people can divide up the 80th root of negative numbers and pretend like they have created wealth.

WM
THis is not a 'traditional' Nobel Prize. You should have looked a little further:

G West, Chretien definately liked to play up the small town boy but he was also a very highly quailifed lawyer.

He also know how to get and hold onto power better than most politicans in Canada because he correctly realised that no matter how good your ideas are, they are not much use if you are in oppostion.

I am familiar with the semantics G West but the economics prize is awarded at the same ceremony by the same people of the Nobel Foundation. The winner is also chosen by them.

GW, It seemw we are on the same page, yet again.

And I agree. All that book learn' is bunk. If I ever get sick and some book learnin' surgeon tells me I need an operation, I gonna look up an old man in a cabin and get the right opinion.

Book learnin' never got nobody nowhere. I gradamacated frum sixth grade and lookie how much good it did me! And Ed!

Yes, WM, but they know better than to besmirch Alfred's name by ascribing something to him that I believe he would never agree to being a prize. They may be religious zealots, but they can't blaspheme Alfred's name.

Now listen WM, I would like to know what you do to earn your self appointed title?

I can design and build a house from the foundation up, finish it, wire it and install all the plumbing, make all the furniture in any style from Chinese modern to the heavily carved various Louises, or Chippendale, I'm qualified to teach apprentices and have done for many years, paint all the pictures for the walls in world class standards, carve the wood sculptures, build machinery, weld and fabricate with metal, grow all kinds of garden foods and animals and run circles around neoclassical economics professors and ideologically warped fools, just for entertainment, as I'm doing it here and now, spending a few minutes on this machine, between my real jobs.

Now let's hear what you can do ?

As others have pointed it out, the Nobel name has been used by the Bank of Sweden illegally and that's why they have now changed it. The committee is a bunch of neoclassical economists, sitting around in a circle, like drug addicts giving each other shots.

Ed Deak.

working man
BS. You thought you'd put one over on Ed because that's the kind of character you are. I've been watching you. You haven't got a leg to stand on in this debate over the utter casuistry of modern neoconservative economics and so you'll make your facile points some other way.

The Chretien remark was the tag end of a conversation I had with incredulous on the Ignatieff thread. It stands too, but not in this context. Sorry to confuse you.

I heard Barry Penner blaming the flooding on the NDP on the 5:30 news - go figure. How long do these guys have to be in power before they start to take credit for their own mistakes? Last time I checked neither party had a direct line to the weatherman.

Berry Penner will blame anyone except the liberals. to blame the NDP displays a grand ignorance and a childish intellect.

Floods will happen, but the dikes are a different problem. Campbell should order that all dikes be raised by 2 metres in the next ten years! It will be chaeper than paying damage incase of a grand flood!

Can he set up a P3 to do it?

All projects over 20mil now have to be P3s

I wonder when they'll put parliamentary seats up for "competitive bids", in the name of democracy, of course, to make sure the right people get the jobs ?

In a way this is going on now.

Ed Deak.

SharingIsGood

Gaea will survive as she has done in the past but she may just look a bit different.

GW wrote "I heard Barry Penner blaming the flooding on the NDP on the 5:30 news"

Oh, but that can't be, you know very well, that environmental disasters are the fault of the environmentalists, especially that global warming causing Greenpeace! Speak Oh Clueless One and vouch for the correctness of this statement...

" I'm not being an alarmist, but I am really curious as to the effects of heat on the guts of Gaea."

It'll give the old gal gas...

I think Ron is speechless Anarcho. He's overfull of Republican Crow tonight.

Well written and researched article!

I would like to see follow up articles on the following
related topics:
- human nature to deny known risks: "New Orleans is
sinking and I don't want to swim." I know I should have
emergency supplies for an earthquake or other disaster and
it's on my to do list but it never gets onto my done list.

- what policy options there are and their projected
costs/benefits. In particular one policy option is for
the CMHC (Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation) to not
offer any mortgage insurance for houses that are at risk.
That could be done in a graduated manner depending on
elevation and degree of risk increasing the amount of
down payment from just 5%.

- dwell on the meaning of "moral hazard" and "risk
transfer", if you can't get private insurance why does
the government need to be the insurer of last resort?
An example is hurricane insurance in Florida to
repair/rebuild homes that are at high risk of getting
damaged again, and people have to go to the Florida
state insurance scheme as private insurers are no longer
interested in playing that game any more.

I was sent this in an email. Its called the evolution of Fox News.

v1.0 was: "There is no such thing as Global Warming! It doesn't exist! It's a Liberal delusion, and look how ugly Hillary is!"

v2.0 was: "Of course Global Warming exists, but not because of anything WE are doing. It's natural. (Unless maybe it's India and China's fault.) And isn't Al Gore ridiculous?"

v3.0 will be: "Global Warming is a dangerous problem that Clinton ignored for years! Why do the Liberals hate America so much? Thank God Conservatives are finally taking the lead on this and saving the world!"

In May, 2006, the Sierra Club BC published a map showing what parts of the Lower Mainland will be flooded by a projected 6 m. sea level rise. Lower Mainland residents can view the map at sierraclub.ca/bc
Click on the link below the map to use Google Earth to see if your home and community will be flooded. If you are concerned about global warming and rising sea levels please contact Premier Gordon Campbell and Energy Minister Richard Neufeld (contact information on website) and ask the B.C. government to mandate greenhouse gas emission reduction targets that are better than or equal to California's targets. Scientists say we have only 20 years to reduce global carbon emissions before global warming becomes irreversible!

remember y2k? his is just another sky-is-falling story as far as i'm concerned. Didn't the Dutch already prove that we can reclaim the sea floor? i'm sure that the enviro-evangelists have evaporation rates for ocean water or continental lifts all factored into thier predictions. So who can say? is the world changng? yes. is it the first time? no. And for fiat, i say that the world is actually screwed up by the biggest farce ever...religion. it is only through the auspices of the economist that keeps us from murdering each other in our attempts to keep our imaginations of gods happy ones.

Mr. Haskel, funny you should choose a name that has little credibility, itself. Anyway, the difference between global warming and y2k is that credible scientists said that if we do what we need to do and prepare for the event, it will become a non-event except for a few inconveniences. That was exactly what happened. I did the required work on the computers I run - 2 at home and a network of 7 at work. Everyone else who had any computers that were of any importance did the same thing with theirs. We therefore had a non-event. What we now have is the experts telling us we must do the work or we will have huge problems and we have people hoping the event will be a non-event without doing the needed work.

Y2K was a short-range goal that was easy to fix with the infusion of a little cash and a few teckies. Global warming is going to be expensive in terms of money to fix. It will be even more expensive in terms of human life and the environment if nothing is done. Katrina was just a wake-up call. Warmer waters means more tropical storms. More tropical storms with higher oceans means disaster for the world's coastal regions. The Dutch don't have tropical storms (yet) and they but a short coastline.

The problem is that science has been hijacked by left wing politics..
Try an experiment. Put some water in a glass. Then put in an ice cube. Mark [ measure ] the height [ level ] of the water line. Wait for the ice cube to melt. Measure the level, look at the mark. It's the same as it was before the ice cube dissolved [ melted ] into the water.
If there was any difference, it was do to water evaporating, which causes 99% of greenhouse gas.
Science has been corrupted by politics.

Ron, since you like to experiment at home, I have a better one for you being as the ice is falling into the ocean.

Fill a measuring cup with 2 cups of water. Now add 5 ice cubes. Do you now have more that 2 cups of water in the measuring cup? Will you have more than 2 cups after they melt?

Also, ice reflects sunlight much much better than dark oceans. With that in mind, will the world get hotter or colder as less sunlight is reflected back out into space?

None of my degrees is in meteorology or climatology. I would never presume to be an expert in those fields. I wonder, IAMC, are you a PhD climatologist? What gives you the credentials to dispute the findings of some of the world's most brilliant and learned people. Much of the world's ice is not floating in the oceans. It is on top of land in Antarctica, greenland and on mountain peaks above 10,000 ft. (3000m). If the ice is mealting in the water, it is melting on the land. If you haven't already, I suggest you study-up on chaos theory, it could give you some new insights into how to apply it to business while your are learning to understand the world in a new way.

Often the extreme right wing is willing to use science when it suits ther needs, building fighter-jet factories and chemical plants. Some even even try to convince us that their economists are scientists, and that we must use their theories to have a better life, create a better world. But, as soon as one says woah boy, we need to use some of this science for a fifty-year plan, they get antsy. The bulk of hard-core capitalists don't use longer than a 5- year business plan. The bulk of them are ready to cut and run after they've milked and leveraged every last dime out of an organization and the pension funds of their employees. Except for a couple of Enron guys having to do a bit of time, I don't see any of these wealthy neocons downsizing to a 1400 sq. ft. cottage and a used mini-van after they dismantle and rob the their employee's lives' work.

The climatologists have nothing to gain by observing what is happening and reporting why it is happening. Climatologists are scientists who work for NASA and for any number of fairly right-wing organizations. They didn't get into climatology be cause it was a left-wing thing to do. I would suspect most get into it because they are keen to learn more about the world. I don't presume to know for sure, as I could never know all of them. I would never suspect they are part of a left-wing conspiracy. Just a hunch, but I think the election has thrown you off a bit, making you a bit whacko just thinking that the US wants to move slightly to the left (politically).

Oops.

Ron, you need to adjust your analogy. Because most of the world's ice is in Antarctica, you would need to place your experimental ice cube on a shelf above the water line in the glass. So does the water level increase when the ice melts, or does it stay the same?

do I hear an echo?

A little less than a thousand years ago Scandinavians, Norway went to Greenland. It was called Greenland for a reason. It was green and arable land was abound. Over the years, due to a mini ice age, the land froze up, and the country was abandoned..
You might remember that this region was explored later to find a northern passage. The yearn to find a northern passage was historical. It was done before. So was the Bearing Straight breached.
I get Davey-boy's point about perspective.
All I am trying to say is, let's not panic. Don't waste trillions of dollars on an ill conceived notion that mankind can spend himself out of any problem.
Slow down and take a second look at this.

I usually refrain from commenting on IAMC's post, but oh well...

I've been through Farley Mowat's West-Viking, which explores various elements of the saga material in something that might be called documentary archaeology; working out of clues into the text as to where the locations were. And there's more text concerning lands west over the sea than you'd think just by reading Vinlandasaga only; there's snippets here and there in other sagas he dissects as well, also drawing on his (alleged) marine knowledge and ship lore.

What he tries to establish is that the Norse were much farther north in Baffin Bay than usually assumed, and settlement of some kind was going on in Baffin Island. I think it's in that book, maybe another, where he also explores clues suggesting they penetrated the Northwest Passage to the Beaufort Sea, speculating as in the quote above that they breached the Bering Strait. Sam Bawlf or Frank Ney, can't remember which one, went off on this thesis on their own; either them or someone in the same vein tried to prove that the Comox Valley had been Vinland. Yeah, uh-huh, OK.

I can buy the ice-free Northwest Passage a hundred years ago, and Mowat's interpretations of saga material are interesting, though I'm not sure of the opinion of the Norse scholarly community on him; probably, as always with popular historians, he's seen as an interloper; but his knowledge of the North American and Newfoundland coast, to me, is where he has expertise that an Icelandic or British academic would not have (those are the two countries where Old Norse studies are traditionally most concentrated, the next being I think the US - !! - very fashionable in the Scandinavian Midwest, y'see, and also because of Tolkienalia). Anyway, worth a read, and full of interesting cultural detail on custom, superstition and other lore that you might not learn anywhere else.

He also shows that there were several expeditions, perhaps several colonies, or at least settled migrants. One was a famous skald (courtly poet) who had moved in amongst a local people and become their chief; and there were other examples, but none so famous. Vinlandasaga is compelling because it tells us about people who were driven out, bringing their story - their saga (lit. "what is said about..:" or "the saying of"); those who settled in the New World would have had no reason to write back; if they did, for their own sake in whatever new colony or family they had established or settled among, there were no copyists to trancribe them to vellum a few centuries later as in Iceland.

Friend just arrived, gotta go; whatever I was on about I'll come back to later.

I believe that everything is in cycles. For example; the ocean over millions of years rolls around planet earth. What is land now will be underwater in the future and what is water now will be land in the future.
* How can you stop mother nature with the cycles?
** Does mother nature clean the earth I think yes, what do you think?

Well, pure, if she cleans the earth, I'd say she's probably in a hurry to get rid of her infestation of humans.

Why do you hate economic growth IAMC?

It is interesting that around 10 years ago, when the GVRD was preparing the livable region plan, they very deliberately excluded Richmond from the urban growth zone, because of the risk of flooding. That also meant that Richmond would not be served by rapid transit, and that growth would be focused towards the northeast (Coquitlam and Port Moody).

I don't know whatever happened with all of that, but there seems to be a lot of growth currently going on in Richmond. Funny how that happens.

Perhaps Richmond will be the next New Orleans.

Adam Fitch

They were listening to the feng shui masters, not the environmental and geotechnical consultants, that's why; and that's no joke. Richmond's feng shui is execellent, other than its homonymy with "rich man"; flat, covered by a regular grid, between two arms of a river facing west, open to the south, not many trees. The marketing "sell" for that from the perspective of feng shui-conscious buyers cannot be underestimated. Port Moody faces north, Coquitlam's not laid out well etc; even the Koreans out that way tend to be near crossroads, or in areas open both east and west (not in downtown Port Moody, for instance).

You get what you pay for. What I'm thinking with the Chilliwack River folks as well as the urban-choice residents of Richmond, wherever they're from, is that when a quake hits or the Big Flood comes, you chose between different reasons for buying your property; security from a flood or other megadisaster wasn't apparently on the list, so don't come looking for help now.

But when the time comes, the public coffers will be poured into the place; costs that should have been reckoned into the development plan/costs and thereby into the price. The idea, as with other failings of infrastructure vs development, is to offload silly things like future disaster costs onto future taxpayers, and the homeowners who wind up with the properties. Ditto with people up Lions Bay or the Berkley Escarpment in North Van and elsewhere who live in "geoetechnically active" areas; you made the choice, so either you or the developer/owner you bought it off of should be liable, not the public.

That's only on principle, of course. If it were my place that were flooded out, of course I'd be looking for some help like everyone else.

or, perhaps, directly or also on the politicians and bureaucrats who approved it; that would certainly make them more careful in planning decisions, wouldn't it?

Edmonton aproved developement of a flood plain in one of their rivers some years ago. the Proviso was that each building needed to be provided with a "sump Pump". You guessed it!
The river flooded and the authorities cut elecrical power immediately

All projects over 20mil now have to be P3s

Seem to me that Gordo forgot that certain projects need to be done, even if ther is no profit to be made from them?
It will be hard to demand tolls for constructing a dyke?
P3 is about making profits, right?

I have nothing against building dykes where necessary. Richmond and other areas in BC, were built on quick sands and peat moss of the delta of Fraser River, depositing silt since last Ice Age about 10,000 years ago.
We make the same mistake Chinese did, building on a flat land and starting to farm in the mountains. Sort of stupid, isn't it?
Global warming may well be a hoax, according to Canadian bestseller FIGHT KYOTO by Ezra Levant. Good read. Biggest polluters like China, India, Japan and Middle East countries do not subscribe to Kyoto at all. Money transfered from Canada to corrupted Oligarchs of Russia will not serve Canadian taxpayers at all. Poisonous Suphur Oxides and radioactive Radon from 3 billion hot meals cooked every day on open fire burning very poor quality coal in China, are reaching North America already. Our AirCare is just a drop in a bucket in helping to reduce sulphur contamination. In fact Canadian pigs and cattle produce from their rear end flatulences about 27.4 megatonnes of "Kyoto gases" every year, which is about half as much as all the cars in Canada do!
Quote from Ezra Levant:

There is a substantial number of scientists (not bribed by UN parasites) who expect another Ice Age anytime soon. Thermal energy of underwater volcanos warms up the oceans and amount of moisture in an atmosphere is reaching critical point. At that time of even minor cooling down, all that moisture may become a snow and fall on unsuspecting population at the rate of about a kilometer a month. It did happen before. Right here in Canada. We also had a tropical forest which left us with oil and dinosaurs skeletons in Alberta. The more things change, the more they remain the same.
Waiting for a global warming will become wishful thinking as we will drive (or crawl) to Arizona and Mexico.
My suggestion is to lock up all the hucksters of global warming, (the best scientists money can buy), in the same room with predictors of another Ice Age and not to feed them until they reach the compromise

FL:

The WM's of the world desperately want to believe in alchemy..........