Topic
North of Greenland, climate apocalypse glimpsed.
Alexandra Fjord.
What rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
The Second Coming
-- W.B. Yeats
Alexandra Fjord, Ellesmere Island: There are places one can stand and see, with the guidance of a thoughtful observer, the shape of the future.
To my left on this warm July day stands 51-year-old Greg Henry, tundra ecologist, associate professor of geography at the University of British Columbia, and one of Canada's leading experts on the effects of global warming in the High Arctic. To his right as he looks out from this low bluff on Ellesmere Island's Alexandra Fjord pack ice chokes the mouth of the ocean inlet and stretches seemingly unbroken all the way to the mountains of northern Greenland, 60 kilometres distant. Scores of icebergs, some the size of stadiums, some a thousand times bigger, stud the panorama.
At his back as Henry talks, Twin Glacier issues a river of meltwater that crosses the tidal flats below the bluff in an unravelling skein of silver.
For the past 27 years, Henry has come to this long-abandoned RCMP post to utilize the six wood-framed houses here as the site for an ongoing study on climate change. He and his team of grad students are part of the 11-nation International Tundra Experiment that links every arctic country in a series of identical studies, and aims at putting precise figures on what's happening climate-wise around the Arctic Ocean.
The news is not just bad. It indicates a worldwide catastrophe is at hand.
'We're quite a species'
Standing in a T-shirt 1200 kilometres south of the North Pole, Henry tells me that every year is warmer than the last. He didn't use to wear a T-shirt here ever. And it's the same elsewhere: Siberia, Norway, Alaska. The temperatures are climbing, he tells me, faster than has ever occurred in known geologic history. His data shows an average 6 C increase in winter temperatures at Alexandra Fjord since 1970, and a 1 degree per decade summertime increase.
The ocean is warming, too. The winter ice is melting earlier each year. More ominously, these rates are accelerating. And turning around, looking south past his splay of outdoor scientific apparatus that monitor the changes in the air and muskeg-covered delta below Twin Glacier, Henry tells me the glacier has retreated 300 metres since first photographed in 1959. It's now moving backward six metres every year.
"So," I say, "the Arctic's a sort of 'mine canary' of global warming?"
Henry laughs ironically. "Mine canary! It was the mine canary. What we thought was happening 25 years ago is happening. The mine canary's dead. We're into full-fledged climate change. We're quite a species. We've altered the planet's climate in two or three generations. It's not going to stop. It's going to get worse and worse."
I walk with my companions then toward Twin Glacier, to glimpse what global warming looks like first hand. Every hummock in the muskeg is a moss-covered rock or frost boil; every hollow a pit of indeterminate depth. Like a man traversing thin ice, I await the moment I fall.
Set amid this vast, runoff-saturated erosional delta below the glacier are Henry's scientific experiments. Some measure changes in soil and air temperature; some are electronically-monitored, open-topped, mini greenhouses, meant to accelerate temperatures beyond even current rates.
Their purpose is to answer the twin questions. What's happening now? And what -- speaking allegorically -- is slouching toward Bethlehem?
Rapid retreat
Not surprisingly, as the air temperature climbs each year at Alexandra Fjord, Henry knows the soil is warming. The permafrost, located just 30 centimetres below the ground's surface, is rapidly melting, too. The hardy polar plants now grow bigger, flower earlier, and produce more seeds. The grassy plants get woodier. New species move in. More bees come. There's more forage for the island's musk ox, too.
But Henry is also aware this polar warming is, to most arctic animals, a mixed blessing.
A few kilometres to the northwest in Sverdrup Pass, these same musk ox are dying each autumn in unprecedented ice storms -- when, in previous years, there would be normal November blizzards. These same ice storms, Henry also knows, are killing off the island's Peary caribou and lemmings as well. The estimates vary, but with the current climb in temperatures worldwide, it's generally accepted today that in the coming century at least 10 per cent of the Earth's animal species will go extinct. For animals adapted to cold climates, things are more dire: in a warming world, there's no place to flee.
I sit for an hour amid the outwash rubble of the western lobe of Twin Glacier, reading from the land the evidence of global warming left in the glacier's retreat.
Under the mid-summer sun, creeks flow across the glacier's celadon-coloured surface, then cascade off its tongue in a Niagara of waterfalls.
A distinct, lifeless scour-zone high on the adjacent mountain slope marks the level the glacier's surface has dropped vertically in the past few decades. It's probably 100 metres above where I sit.
And before me lies a couple of hundred metres of glacial debris and mud, cut by a dozen milky streams.
From the old 1959 photo in Henry's oceanside laboratory, I gauge my current 2006 vantage point was under 50 metres of ice a half-century ago. All that ice... gone. All that water, and all the water from the myriad other melting glaciers that surround me -- both nearby along Alexandra Fjord, and further distant along the coasts of Ellesmere Island and northern Greenland -- all flowing into the sea.
Climate over a half century
In preparation for my travels into the High Arctic to trace the consequences of global warming, I interviewed Martin Sharp, chairman of the University of Alberta's Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department. He has spent 16 years on Ellesmere, Devon, and Axel Heiberg islands investigating the movements of Canada's polar glaciers. He and his predecessors now have a continuous 47-year record of what's been happening in the far north. Since the first aerial photographs in 1959, the total amount of ice lost from the land in northernmost Canada (not the floating Arctic Ocean sea ice) is a staggering 3000 square kilometres.
Three-fourths of all the major outlet glaciers -- the big ones that reach the ocean -- are, Sharp tells me, in retreat. Some are moving backward at a rate of one kilometre a year. Many smaller arctic glaciers are gone entirely. In Greenland, the news is far, far worse. There, many glaciers are retreating at a rate of 10 to 15 kilometres a year. Others are calving icebergs -- some the size of Vancouver -- into Kane Basin, where they gradually drift southward into Davis Strait and the North Atlantic.
Sharp admits that accurately factoring in all the elements that affect global warming is tricky. Modelling the future based on the Earth's natural variables, on meteorological data, on projected carbon dioxide emissions, on the effect of solar radiation on sea ice, cloud cover, and glaciers demands, he's the first to admit, a certain level of caution. But based on past research and current trends, Sharp believes that a 1 C temperature increase each decade -- precisely what Henry is now finding at Alexandra Fjord -- is quite possible. That would make the High Arctic 10 C warmer by 2100.
Were this to happen, says Sharp, "All the ice caps will melt."
Sharp hears, I can tell, what he's saying, and tries to put a scientific asterisk to his views. "Look. As a scientist, it's unwise to predict what will happen. But it's also unwise to predict it couldn't happen." When pushed, however, he allows that a lot of the world's ice caps will probably soon melt, and that a century from now the oceans will have risen one-half to one metre. This rise, I know, would be a catastrophe for hundreds of millions of coastal people worldwide. It is also the most conservative prediction I hear.
'Like lemmings'
John England, also a professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta, fell in love with the "brutal beauty" of Canada's polar islands decades ago, and now, after 42 years studying the Arctic, is one of the country's leading authorities on deglaciation, post-glacial land rebound, and polar sea level change. He tells me in an interview prior to my heading to Ellesmere that during his northern expeditions, he sees increasing evidence of impending calamity.
England believes that most scientists have, out of a natural caution, underestimated the global dangers ahead. "The sea ice will be GONE," he says, speaking of the Arctic Ocean, "by the end of this century. That's radical. That's HUGE! Once you remove the ice, you remove the solar reflectivity. The darker ocean water absorbs the sun's heat. As the ice goes, the Arctic warms up even faster. And that's not all: the permafrost is melting. It's melting fast! That's releasing a lot of methane into the atmosphere. You have all this carbon dioxide gas and moisture in the air from evaporation... it means more clouds. That warms things even more."
On the phone, I can hear England take a deep breath of frustration. "This is an anthropogenic event," he continues. "We humans have done it. We're like lemmings. We don't want to admit we're responsible. We're throwing ourselves off a cliff! But the fact is... lemmings don't throw themselves off cliffs. They're not that stupid!"
The anecdotal evidence -- and ultimate consequence -- of Arctic warming varies from the calamitous to the genuinely apocalyptic. Here are some facts:
No more glaciers
Greg Henry stands not far from the Canadian flag that marks the country's claim to Ellesmere, and which serves as a wind cone for the Twin Otter that's due to arrive and carry him and his field crew south to Resolute. Nearby on the fjord's tidal flats, stranded icebergs regularly collapse beneath the circling, mid-summer sun. Offshore, the big ones, launched from the glaciers of nearby Greenland, drift south toward Atlantic annihilation.
"All the world's glaciers are melting. The Alps. The Rockies. Here," Henry tells me, with a gesture toward Greenland. "Each year's warmer than the last. My data shows it'll be 10 C warmer here by the next century. And that's being conservative. It could be 10… 12… 15 degrees warmer by then. It's now more a study of the rapidity of change than change. Ocean levels will rise, I believe, about three metres by then."
Henry shakes his head and stares out. We are, I realize, looking at the evidence of what's coming -- the rough beast of the future -- right in the face. "We can't do anything," he says in resignation. "It would involve sacrifices. It would cause a lot of people a lot of pain. We're drunk on oil. We're addicted to oil. The world's economy is based on cheap fuel. We can't get off the fix."
I listen. This is, after all, one of Canada's leading authorities on global warming.
"Two hundred years from now we'll see significant changes in the world's coastlines. Whole cities, whole regions of the world will go underwater," he says prophetically. And he begins listing place names. Sections of Boston. Of New York City. Of Miami. He mentally turns the corner into the Caribbean and smiles. All of New Orleans. Then he begins jumping continents. Shanghai. London. Sydney. Mumbai. The list is long. He goes on and on. Then he starts on the countries that will go underwater. Holland. The Maldive Islands. Large areas of Bangladesh. The Mekong delta. Coastal China.
I begin laughing at this macabre litany. It is too outrageous, too terrible. And given humankind's well-observed proclivity to ignore signs of impending trouble, too true. "It'll be New Orleans times a thousand," he says. "One and a half billion people will need to move." He looks at me. He understands the laughter. It's what you do when words fail and you find yourself facing the abyss.
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Stump
6 years ago
Sage words from the recently departed
Kurt Vonnegut (R.I.P.)
Cynic
6 years ago
Climate change is happening.
Climate change is happening. Now can we stop being hysterical about it?
realisticman
6 years ago
Better Start Chopping. Might Help
Snowy forest in Germany
The report suggests deforestation is not always harmful
Planting trees in snowy areas may worsen global warming as their canopies absorb sunlight which would otherwise be reflected by the snow, a study says.
The report in US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says the pine forests of Europe, Siberia and Canada may contribute to warming.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6540119.stm
maestro
6 years ago
Science .... the new age religion ..never fails us...
Never seen such a wet cold spring before...damn it was cold outside yesterday evening...
Record snowpacks...flood risk ?
Somebody turn up the heat !!!...or dig up the Global COOLing theories of 20 + years ago. In the Library ?, somewhere between the Bonfire of the Insanities and Bonfires of the Inanities ?
Retro is "COOL".... ain't it?
Truman Green
6 years ago
Truman Green
CO2 and the other so-called 'greenhouse gases' can only absorb infrared radiation according to their absorptive frequences, their content percentage of the atmosphere and the combined atomic or molecular weight (or mass) of their atoms.
So don't worry, Stump, this entire article is full of disinformation and catastropheism. I gotta go to work building fences, but I'll explain the whole sorry CO2 hoax later today.
Meanwhile, remember a few things. Like, for instance, pollution in the atmosphere has an overall cooling effect. Duh! It blocks incoming solar radiation. (think sulphur dioxide and acid rain, eh)
Ditto for cloud cover. Clouds are a manifestation of water vapour accumulation which has a warming effect, but they also block solar radiation, which has a cooling effect.
Evaporation has a cooling effect, too. That's important, Stump. Think Homeostasis!
Icebergs melting will lower the seal level not increase it as the ice that now exists below the surface has a greater displacement volume than it would have if it melts. Ice takes up more room than water, eh.
Water vapour is the number one greenhouse gas responsible for 90% of the warming of the atmosphere. (But of course, besides one goofy scientist's plan to harvest water from San Francisco Bay and shoot it into the atmosphere, there's no serious expectation that humans can seriously effect the percentage of water vapour in the atmosphere for cloud formation). So they pick on CO2 which is innocent as charged). C02 is neglible as a warming device. (basically because there ain't much of it) Methane's good, but it is 200 times less common than CO2, in spite of having 23 times the absorptive capability.
Back later. Above all, don't believe the one percent per 10 year nonsense. It's more like one quarter to one percent per one hundred years. (I'll supply documentation later today.)
Even if it these nonsensical warming rates were accurate, CO2 could not responsible for more than two or three percent of the total increase, because water vapour is the big (really big) warming culprit.
Besides solar activity, of course.
Not to worry, Stump. Twenty years ago it was global cooling, now it's global warming.
All from the same 'slouching towards Bethlehem' gang. Here's the technique:
Create a phony catastrophe. Get people to send in all kinds of tax money; do cap and trades and shovel tons of money for 'warming science' grants and enact new laws all over the place.
It's a hoax, folks. In ten or twenty years the warming that is truly happening will back off and we'll get a global cooling effect again. It's about solar radiation.
Stump
6 years ago
Who to believe?
Most of the world's leading scientists, or anonymous Internet poster? Hmmm, tough call, but I gotta go with the people with credentials.
Tell me why I should believe you T.G. Becasue methinks the laddie doth protest too much.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Truman Green
And class, your assignment for today is thinking about the requirement that plants have for carbon dioxide, and whether CO2 emissions contribute to the growth of vegetation, (which give off oxygen, remember--which is fairly important). In fact, think about whether it is true that all of the oxygen around exists as a waste material from the growth of vegetation) which in turn acts as carbon sinks.
Think forests and jungles.
Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, eh.
Homeostasis. Gotta love it!
Truman Green
6 years ago
Truman Green
You're making me late for work, Stump, but you don't have to believe anybody. Go do your own research, by which I mean reading everybody then using your intelligence to do some comparative analysis. For instance, can you point out anything in my above comments that you know is not true?
Start by googling a hundred sites or so which claim to tell you how much the temperature is increasing per century.
Can you locate any science that says the writer, Daniel Woods, has got it right--that the average temperature is increasing one percent every decade?
Truman Green
6 years ago
Truman Green
Stump, what the hell do you mean--'anonymous internet poster'. My real name's Truman Green. What's anonymous about that? Look it up in the phone book and give me a call, if you like.
If you're asking if we should believe 'anonymous' posters, may I remind you that it's highly doubtful that your real name is 'Stump,' which encourages us (by way of your suggestion) to doubt the veracity of anonymous posters.
Not only that, but I know your real name. Remember when we were friends before I challenged the cowardly use of anonymous internet posting and you took exteme offense?
Know what I mean?
moltenman
6 years ago
Truman Green might want to check out...
http://www.realclimate.org
this will help clear up some points that you appear to be a little confused about. There is a section for common misconceptions on the right hand bar. Realclimate is a website that is run by 'climate scientists' which would be the people with credentials that Stump was alluding to.
If you have are not an expert, then don't pass yourself off as one. You do everyone a discredit when you get simple facts dead wrong.
jwstewart
6 years ago
Gee, I can't wait.
Truman is going to take a couple minutes later today to explain how climate change isn't a big issue.
In doing so, I hope you will explain how earth can homeostatically adapt to a perpetually inceasing amount of un-natural CO2 ?
Does our planet have a built-in compenstation system that can regulate the amount of CO2 un-naturally produced by humans by the following activities:
-burning forests to clear land for agri
-Burning fossil fuels
It seams to me that these are historically new phenomena, and earth will adapt in an un-expected way.
By all means, prove it ain't so.
maestro
6 years ago
Truman:
Hurry up and build that fence !
This is a debating and discussion forum. Any of us can agree on some issues and disagree on others. You and I have been there many times. Any relevant info and insight by either side adds to the overall debate and potential course of action .
Unlike certain issues, this " Global _ _ _ _ ing " issue has all the possibility of being steered in the wrong direction.
Our Leadership folds like a cheap tent by fear - mongers and is getting its ear bent into so-called " Pro-active" policy initiatives. However, this is often simply vote- buying based on polls as per usual.
Any refund if the so-called/self -deemed experts are wrong? No, the cap comes out for more funding to study this f-u-r-t-h-e-r...Again remember the Global Cooling? In the real world these guys would be sued for incompetence and misrepresentation etc. correct?
Otherwise, everyone " chill " , ok ?
clo3
6 years ago
I hope you're right Truman
All I can say is that I hope you’re right about this Truman because your prediction for what the world will be like in 20 years sounds a lot better than what proponents of climate change are predicting.
But regardless of whether you are right or wrong, our pollution is still causing respiratory problems, cancers, irritation and death. Even if global warming is a hoax, we still need to take drastic steps to reduce our gas emissions for the sake our own health and wellness. Seems a bit dumb to continue pumping massive amounts of pollutants (even if they useful to plants) into the very air we need to breathe. It’s a bit like peeing in your own drinking water don’t you think?
climber
6 years ago
Stump, others
About 13000 years ago the whole of what is now Vancouver and suburbs was covered in ice 1500 meters thick that extended south of Seattle. This ice melted, how, natives driving S.U.V.s? I believe we are in a natural warming cycle, of course we are helping it happen, but I ain't gonna panice, stop driving my V-8 and ride a bike cause that asshole Al Gore wants me to. Calm down people, look on the bright side, if Canada gets some balls and is clever we can charge ships to use our waters up there.
Stump
6 years ago
Real names
I'm not asking anyone to believe me, merely stating what I believe. You're asking us to believe you, but I'd need to know how you come by your expertise before I'll come around to your p.o.v. (which is flying in the face of evidence and scientific consensus).
I don't know what's cowardly about choosing privacy. I think that for the most part if I put forward facts or evidence of a position I also cite my sources, so whether I post under my real name or not is irrelevant. If you were to do the same (cite sources) it might lend credence to your opinions.
Stump
6 years ago
Another difference with our post-Ice Age Planet
There's also six billion more people on the earth, most of them burning some fossil fuels in one way or another.
Your logic is pretty faulty on this one Climber. You appear to believe that because X caused Y millenia ago, Z can't cause Y today.
realisticman
6 years ago
Nice Weather We're Having
Oh no! The sun's out and it's a nice day. It's getting warmer now, it's only 9:30am and it's already 10C. I can't stand it. I think I'll slit my wrists.
climber
6 years ago
Stump
Answer the question, how did it melt? Fact is, ice ages have come and gone for millions of years, no we are not helping, I get it, but the new religion of global warming/climate change is as crazy as the old religions. Pope Al Gore and all.
Stump
6 years ago
How did the Ice Age end?
How the f*ck would I know?
Climate change predictions are based on science not mumbo-jumbo. It's not a religion.
mopled
6 years ago
Climate change vs GW
One of the things going on is the confusion between Cimate Change and GLOBAL WARMING and what each means.
The climate is always changing and the Earth has warmed .6-.8%C in 100 years. That is an average because as it's warming in the Arctic regions (although not uniformly) it is getting colder in Antarctica....again, not evenly.
Here is a site with real science which has been slammed because of oil money. Nobody looks at the funding of the GW pushers. Happens it is mostly foundation money too, but you can't get at where their money comes from.
http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?ide=4
climber
6 years ago
Religion
Its not huh? Al Gore ain't no scientist, he is a politician, Dave Suzuki is a geneticist, he is speaking outside his field of knowledge. So, like religous leaders who have no idea how the world came to be, but say "God" created it, they are bulshitters. Leading people nonetheless. Faith without proof is a hallmark of religion, is it not? I have no idea how the previuos ice ages have come and gone either, what I am pointing out is that glaciers have melted with no help from man, many times.
Booker
6 years ago
Denialism
Some folks just love to deny reality as much as they love to believe far-out conspiracy theories. It's often the same individuals who believe the following nonsense:
Global Warming is a hoax
HIV doesn't cause AIDS
9/11 was an inside job
The Holocaust was exaggerated
Evolution is a lie
and on and on...
For a nice commentary on this psychological type, check out this new site:
www.denialism.com
It's a pity that so much time has to be wasted in countering the silliness. And it's unfortunate that these people can actually cause some harm, as in delaying action on C02 emissions.
Stump
6 years ago
Gore and Suzuki and Science
They're not the ones doing the research, simply communicating the findings. I don't need to be a lawyer to tell you what a judge has decided.
But anyway, if one must have personal experience with the subject matter to have a valid opinion on the subject... how do you know sex between men is repulsive? ;-)
mopled
6 years ago
Denialism? WOW!
Denialism (n): the practice of creating the illusion of debate when there is none.
The IPCC science will not be available for public scrutiny until sometime in June, long after the hoopla has died down. Up to now we have been subjected to a barrage of media, not much in the way of science...pure agit-prop!
Interesting thing about the IPCC...it is not a UN org. It is a creature of Ted Turner's UN Foundation. One billion buys a lot of phony science of the type called MAI ...Made According to Instructions.
Gore's famous Hockey Stick was a product of flattening out the Medieval Warm Period so that it looked as though the changes are unprecedented. In fact, not only has it been warmer, CO2 levels fluctuate and not only have they been higher (determined from chemical analysis of air from around 1820-1960's in labs throughout Europe), but warming preceeds higher levels of CO2.
When the jury is still out, pretending that human activity has more than a very minor role to play in CC/GW and the matter is settled is fraudulent. Defending truth
is not denialism. Branding people denialists is a nasty PR trick.
Stump
6 years ago
Retreating glaciers
But have they done so with same rapidity we are seeing now? My understanding is that the answer to that question is a resounding "No!" Again, what's the difference this time around? Perhaps the Church Lady might blame Satan, but I think the answer is a little closer to home.
G West
6 years ago
Don't bother phoning Truman, Stump
He doesn't seem to take calls, even friendly ones.
Booker
6 years ago
Getting lonely
When the jury is still out, pretending that human activity has more than a very minor role to play in CC/GW and the matter is settled is fraudulent
The jury's verdict came in a long time ago. Most global-warming denialists have abandoned ship, but you're welcome to go down with it.
southdeltawalker
6 years ago
Local action for the environment
"Movie" of Gateway Rally on Mar. 31 to stop Gateway Project.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BYjATuNa_E
mopled
6 years ago
Some Glaciers Expanding
http://www.iceagenow.com/List_of_Expanding_Glaciers.htm
Since we were being told to expect a new Ice Age just a few years ago and I was worried that my house would be buried under meters of ice, imagine my chagrin to find out that it would be submerged under sea water in no time and palm trees would cover Grouse.
About 55% of glaciers world wide are expanding. Sometimes an expanding glacier isn't that far away from a shrinking one. http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2003/bigchilltrans.shtml
The truth is the science of climate change is in its infancy. Since the models are not accurate enough to reproduce the recent past...or 3 weeks from now, why would we stampeded into believing the hype?
realisticman
6 years ago
That chiquita's coming back
First we have a lousy cold winter and now it looks like a lousy cold summer! When is this warming going to kick in?
The upper-ocean heat content (average temperature departures in the upper 300 m of the ocean) remains below-average across the central and east-central equatorial Pacific, with temperatures at thermocline depth generally 3°-5°C below average. Consistent with the surface and sub-surface temperature patterns, stronger than-average low-level easterly winds persisted throughout the month of March over the central equatorial Pacific, and convection was enhanced over the western equatorial Pacific and Indonesia and suppressed near the date line. Collectively, these atmospheric and oceanic conditions are consistent with a trend towards a Pacific cold (La Niña) episode.
Most of the statistical and coupled model forecasts, including those from the NCEP Climate Forecast System (CFS) (Fig. 5), indicate additional anomalous surface cooling during the next several months. Some forecast models, especially the CFS, indicate a transition to La Niña during May-July 2007. This forecast is consistent with the observed trends in atmospheric and oceanic conditions. However, the spread of the most recent statistical and coupled model forecasts (ENSO-neutral to La Niña) indicates considerable uncertainty as to when La Niña might develop and how strong it might be.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.html
realisticman
6 years ago
Let's Build an Humongous Parasol
Surely the Sun can't have anything to with Global Warming. Isn't it caused by Globalization?
Booker
6 years ago
the weather today
realistic man wrote:
Hmm, it's colder today than it was yesterday, so I guess it's all a false alarm just so some evil scientists can get more funding!
Someone tell the Mountain Pine Beetle that the winters are not actually as warm as they seem and they shouldn't be spreading northward. The bugs didn't get the news from Tim Ball and the "Friends of Science" (who really aren't shills for the oil industry, honest) that it's all a hoax.
mopled
6 years ago
Pine beetle
Remember when Forestry were complaining that the pine beetle population was expanding and something had to be done about it before it got out of hand? What was Campbell's response...he cut funding instead.
Everything is being blamed on an .6-.8 degree C AVERAGE temperature change over 100 years.
Wake up and smell the SCAM!
I'm sorry that Suzuki is involved in this, because there are people we come to believe are impeccable sources of information....but not this time around.
Dr. Timothy Ball later wrote, in commenting on the problems that arise for scientists who speak out, that, “Sadly, my experience is that universities are the most dogmatic and oppressive places in our society. This becomes progressively worse as they receive more and more funding from governments that demand a particular viewpoint.” He also mentions how he “was accused by Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki of being paid by oil companies.”
Truman Green
6 years ago
Truman Green
Don't be silly. 250 to 350 ppm (parts per million) is not a sufficient increase in the total percentage of CO2 to cause any global increase--except the profits made by the cap and trade brokers and the benefit it gives to the auto industries by getting the public to pay for their research for more efficient vehicles. 350 parts per million means this, for the mathematically challenged:
To get the percentage of total CO2 in the atmosphere up to one tenth of one percent you have to add another 650 parts per million.
Believe it!
There is no other closed system in the entire field of thermodynamics in which 350 parts per million will have a global effect on anything, except in the lurid imaginations of the global SWARMERS.
No, not even cyanide in the human body. (Well, maybe cyanide, eh)
And please cut the 'fossil fuels' crap. There are no 'fossil fuels'. Theses fuel hydrocarbons are not derived from kerogen or fossils of dead plants or animals.
There's oily lakes all over Saturn's planet, Titan.
And there are no animals or plants on Titan.
Polution and so-called 'anthropogenic warming' are two different issues for the most part.
Yes, we're poisoning ourselves by burning fuel hydrocarbons and killing thousands of people who have respiration problems.
No, we're not warming up the planet by allowing carbon dioxide to absorb infrared radiation. Smog and fog, not to mention clouds generally reflect solar radiation, even while non-dense water vapour accumulation absorbs some trace gases.
No, the atmospheric temperature is not increasing at anything like one percent per decade as Daniel Wood claims.
This is just hype--the new catastrophism. (Did I just invent a new word?)
And Polar Bears will do just fine on land, thank you very much. (They are, afterall, members of the same species as brown bears and grizzlies).
Lunch is over. Gotta go.
Tomorrow's assignment: How much land will be able to produce food when the average temperature climbs a bit and how will this offset the seal hunt becoming a little more difficult for the seal hunters?
For the intellectually competent only: think about whether Europeans managed to live quite well when they went from Europe to Africa and stole everything they could get their hands on (including the people) in the eighteenth and nineteenth century.
Guess how much climate change they managed to adapt to. Hint: A lot more than one percent rise in temperature, eh.
Let's not be stupid, people.
ov
6 years ago
Create debate to postpone action
Same tactic going on here as in main stream media as described in a recent Georgia Straight feature article, Trust Us We're The Media.
Funny how when a reasonable argument motivates the public to action it is considered to be hysteria. If you want to see hysteria in the media it has to be at least as bad as the 9/11 plane crashing into the WTC over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. Then the next day same thing, over and over and over again. Going on for years, over and over and over again. Now that's hysteria.
There is no debate here, those that can't see it refuse to change, and this is all the time I'm giving to this topic.
ov
6 years ago
one last comment
The article itself is well worth reading. Thanks for that Daniel.
Stump
6 years ago
Global cooling
No we weren't. I was a paperboy 30 years ago and there was little in the news about global cooling. Certainly nothing like our current focus on global warming.
As to the adaptability of polar bears and humans... One is a species that is the very epitome of versatile when it comes to surviving in varied climes, the other is a specialized creature adapted for a well-defined niche in the ecosystem, who's fur goes green and moldy in more temperate climes. Can you guess which is which?
Stump
6 years ago
What about the rice?
For bonus points describe what happens to the agricultural capacity of the equatorial regions of the world under the same circumstances and how best to quell food riots when the world's poor no longer has access to one of the staple foods of our planet.
G West
6 years ago
Absolutely Stump
Ball's former colleagues are deserting him as the crank he really is. I think I read something in the New York times just the other day about this.
I'll hunt it up when I get home. The only people who aren't convinced are a fringe group of neocons and fundamentalist Christianists who think the end of the world and the second coming of Jesus is a good idea.
Considering the evidence that's mounting to indicate there was never a 'first' coming...I think we can safely ignore them, these are people who’ve accepted myth as reality – no wonder they don’t want to confront what’s going on around them.
Even Howard, the Neanderthal Prime Minister of Australia is convinced that it's long past time we started to actually make some real changes in the way we live and how we address these issues.
mopled
6 years ago
Creating debate
is absolutely what is neccesary! There is no scientific basis for the runaway global warming scenario, but you would never know that from the media blitz we are being subjected to. Look at the documentary which showed on CBC just 3 years ago...before they got with the program. I start with the one on sea level changes because the scientist so far has not been smeared with oil.
It's called Global Warming..Doomsday Called Off
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIbTJ6mhCqk&mode=related&search=
realisticman
6 years ago
Catastrophism
I like it.
G West
6 years ago
Three years old and subsequently discredited
I guess you're sanguine about this too.
911 conspiracy theorists and global warming deniers together on the same team - what a partnership!
flattax
6 years ago
Global Warming Garbage
The religious belief that global warming is caused by humans is an ignorant myth.
10,000 years ago Vancouver was under 2 km of ice. We are still recovering from this last ice age. Wake up!
People like to think there is a crisis. People who will get to spend the money to avert a "crisis" beat the drums even more. It feeds upon itself till it is a frenzy of self blame. I liken this to a nasdaq style bubble, when things are really different this time. Until reality sets in and the bubble pops!
It is true in the 70's it was all about a new ice age! Wacko alarmists, make up your minds!
What is next after the bottom falls out of global warming movement when a few more years of research prove is a false god... maybe an impending comet strike or alien attack! HAHAHA.
NOTE: Since I disagee with the premise behind global warming my message should be ignored since it must have been brought to you by a big evil corporate oil company.
clo3
6 years ago
What?
Can you substantiate this claim G West or are you just making sweeping generalizations?
Booker
6 years ago
They'll thank us
I'm sure the population of the Sahel will understand that the expanding deserts are really nothing to worry about. The BC coast will be getting more rain as the planet heats up, so that balances off the Africans, right?
Check out the Crackpot Index and see how many points the denialists in the Tyee comments get:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html
mopled
6 years ago
Seeing through media hype
If you think that my ability to see through the official story on 9/11 puts me in some kind of lunatic fringe, just remember most Americans, over 80% aren't buying it either.
Nothing said in Doomsday Called off has been discredited. Some of the contributers have been smeared as having accepted money from oil companies and Patrick Moore is not one of my fav's given his support of fish farming. On the other hand, the famous Hockey Stick has been shown to be the result of very weird programing which can not be reproduced and Michael Mann will not release some of his data. That's not science!
How about Allegre?
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=2f4cc62e-5b0d-4b59-8705-fc28f14da388
Stump
6 years ago
Yes, let's NOT be stupid
Guess how much climate change they managed to adapt to. Hint: A lot more than one percent rise in temperature, eh.
Let's not be stupid, people
What a foolish example. Those Europeans were well-equipped, well-provisioned, and had porters and slaves to do much of their physical labour for them. One might as well say that because some humans have survived on the Moon or beneath the ocean with specialized equipment to let them do so, we can all do it.
That's a useless analogy... and that's saying something given some of the lame arguments I've heard from the Global-Warming Denial Brigade.
snert
6 years ago
Adapt or die.
stump
I guess they will have to do what they have been doing for the last 5000 years or so, adapt. Those regions have been undergoing creeping desertification for at least that long. In North Africa there is ample evidence of these changes in rock paintings depicting fauna that no longer lives in the area. There is even one lone tree that is over 4000(?) years old that attests to better times.
Contrary to popular belief the end of the world is not nigh but the environment is changing as it always has. That's about the only fact you can really count on.
realisticman
6 years ago
Global warming or global cooling?
Things were different in 1940-70, when there was global cooling. Every cold winter then was hailed as proof of a coming new Ice Age. But the moment cooling was replaced by warming, a new disaster in the opposite direction was proclaimed.
A recent Washington Post article gave this scientist's quote from 1972. "We simply cannot afford to gamble. We cannot risk inaction. The scientists who disagree are acting irresponsibly. The indications that our climate can soon change for the worse are too strong to be reasonably ignored." The warning was not about global warming (which was not happening): it was about global cooling!
Stump
6 years ago
Towers of Mammon
Occam's razor pretty much slices and dices the un-official versions Clo3. Where do you get the eighty percent figure, or is it a made-up number aka a gross generalization?
People 'believe' a lot of things. You for instance, appear to believe a man was conceived without intercourse, raised from the dead, capable of levitation, and imbued with a magical alchemical skill (wine/water). The basis for these beliefs? Third and fourth hand testimony that has gone through several translations and adaptations.
I believe you might be well-served by applying your skepticism to all aspects of your belief system.
Peace to you.
Stump
6 years ago
Adapting
The pace of the change is one of the biggest problems we face in this regard. No doubt we can adapt. But, I'll repeat my question re: the coming and goings of ice ages. It also applies to what will happen in equatorial regions.
"But have they done so with same rapidity we are seeing now? My understanding is that the answer to that question is a resounding "No!" "
For us in the developed nations, climate change may be something we can cope with, because we have the ability to turn on the A/C, fiddle the family budget to cope with price fluctuations with food and energy, and use tools and technology to adapt. For a large part of the Earth's population, these options aren't available to them.
Am I not my brother's keeper?
mopled
6 years ago
I think T.G. was being sarcatic
The president of the Czech Republic was pretty scathing in his sumation of the IPCC:
http://newsbusters.org/node/10773
Presenting the IPCC as a UN body is part of the deliberate obfuscation that gos on around this topic. The IPCC is bankrolled by Ted Turner's UN Foundation.
Maurice Strong is another illusive billionaire heavily involved with the creation of a non-problem.
http://schema-root.org/people/career/business/maurice_strong/
clo3
6 years ago
Wrong guy Stump...
Yes, I do believe in that man, but the quote you are addressing wasn't mine (my name is not mopled).
I actually don't buy the conspiracy theories about 9/11 either. The official story seems the most plausible to me by a long shot.
I also really don't have an opinion on Global Warming/Climate Change. As I said before, who cares what our reasoning is for cutting down on our pollution, it is more than obvious we need to do it. That’s why I take transit everywhere within the city, reduce the amount of garbage I produce, and use as little electricity as possible.
But feel free to continue making assumptions about me if you like.
Umslopogaas
6 years ago
6 degrees
I am having a problem with the 6 degree average increase per winter since 1970.
If I take that comment as it is written, 6 degrees per year times 37 years since 1970 is a 222 degree increase in temperature.
If you are going to write an article that claims to be scientific then you had better phrase it properly.
Apart from that some good points followed by the usual gormless assumptions that we can fix everything and manage nature.
TYEE EDITOR RESPONDS: ACTUALLY, THE AUTHOR IS SAYING THE RISE OF 6 DEGREEES IS OVER 37 YEARS. THE WORD 'PER' DOES NOT APPEAR.
Stump
6 years ago
My sincere apologies Clo3
You're absolutely right. I apologize for getting the various posts and posters mixed up.
FWIW, I'm a big fan of Christ's teachings. I just don't think I need a wrathful Lord to threaten me with hell-fire as an impetus to honour the world and its people with love and respect.
southdeltawalker
6 years ago
who is Dr. Ball?
looks like he is discredited...not even sure about his credentials.
see:
http://www.desmogblog.com/dr-tim-ball-the-lie-that-just-wont-die
Booker
6 years ago
Conspiracy
Shoot, mopled, you and Vaclav Klaus have figured it out. All those un-serious scientists and all their un-data are unbelievable. Global-warming is a liberal conspiracy, and 9/11 was an inside job. Mercury causes autism, and the "moon-landing" was really a Hollywood movie set. HIV isn't the cause of AIDS, and Homeopathy works. I won't try to fool you anymore.
snert
6 years ago
Attainable goals
stump
Other options are.Population control is a real good one. You want to look after your brother make sure he gets a vasectomy, the sooner the better.
clo3
6 years ago
Thanks Stump
Thanks for the apology Stump and yes, this would be a very sad world indeed if the only motivation people had to show love and respect to each other was fear of punishment. Personally, I’m glad that most of Christ’s teachings were of love, mercy and forgiveness instead of wrath and hell-fire!
Peace to you.
Stump
6 years ago
Shantytown vasectomy clinics
are probably few and far between Snert. Maybe it's time for those with the most to make a few concessions and sacrifices. None of choose where we are born.
G West
6 years ago
clo3
Here's a start:
http://thetyee.ca/Mediacheck/2006/05/02/PaidtoDenyGlobalWarming/
I'll dig up something on christianists and global warming denial later.
You do remember what the definition of 'Christianist' is don't you?
G West
6 years ago
mopled
Patrick Moore hasn't been discredited!
You must be joking.
mopled
6 years ago
Yup, not quite right
but I do have grave doubts about the official line on all the things you mentioned. It is off topic to delve into all of that now.
The biggest fly in the oinment of GW is the Medieval Warming Period...when Greenland was green and there were vinyards in Britain (which have again become possible in Britain.) The IPCC tried to somehow expunge it from history, but the fact remains, it was warmer then than it is now. Warming wasn't run-a-way then, instead it was followed by a "Little Ice Age".
So then the disasterists tried to pretend it was just a local phenomenon. There is a paper from the 30s showing heavier pollen counts in China for that period...a sign of warming.
As to GW being a liberal plot, it lines up that way, but essentially the right/left thing is just there to keep us fighting among ourselves. It's a fake! Team A or Team B..we still get the same drive to an excuse for world (and therefore unaccountable) government.
Welcome to the herd fellow sheep.
G West
6 years ago
Something from the more conservative side of the issue
The Big Chill
by Jonathan Chait
Originally published in the LA Times
Last year, the National Journal asked a group of Republican senators and House members: "Do you think it's been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made problems?" Of the respondents, 23 percent said yes, 77 percent said no. In the year since that poll, of course, global warming has seized a massive amount of public attention. The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a study, with input from 2,000 scientists worldwide, finding that the certainty on man-made global warming had risen to 90 percent.
So, the magazine asked the question again last month. The results? Only 13 percent of Republicans agreed that global warming has been proved. As the evidence for global warming gets stronger, Republicans are actually getting more skeptical. Al Gore's recent congressional testimony on the subject, and the chilly reception he received from GOP members, suggest the discouraging conclusion that skepticism on global warming is hardening into party dogma. Like the notion that tax cuts are always good or that President Bush is a brave war leader, it's something you almost have to believe if you're an elected Republican.
How did it get this way? The easy answer is that Republicans are just tools of the energy industry. It's certainly true that many of them are. Leading global warming skeptic Representative Joe L. Barton (R-Texas), for instance, was the subject of a fascinating story in the Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago. The bottom line is that his relationship to the energy industry is as puppet relates to hand.
But the financial relationship doesn't quite explain the entirety of GOP skepticism on global warming. For one thing, the energy industry has dramatically softened its opposition to global warming over the last year, even as Republicans have stiffened theirs.
The truth is more complicated--and more depressing: A small number of hard-core ideologues (some, but not all, industry shills) have led the thinking for the whole conservative movement.
(continued in next post)
G West
6 years ago
Here's the rest
Your typical conservative has little interest in the issue. Of course, neither does the average nonconservative. But we nonconservatives tend to defer to mainstream scientific wisdom. Conservatives defer to a tiny handful of renegade scientists who reject the overwhelming professional consensus.
National Review magazine, with its popular website, is a perfect example. It has a blog dedicated to casting doubt on global warming, or solutions to global warming, or anybody who advocates a solution. Its title is "Planet Gore." The psychology at work here is pretty clear: Your average conservative may not know anything about climate science, but conservatives do know they hate Al Gore. So, hold up Gore as a hate figure and conservatives will let that dictate their thinking on the issue.
Meanwhile, Republicans who do believe in global warming get shunted aside. Nicole Gaudiano of Gannett News Service recently reported that Representative Wayne Gilchrest asked to be on the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio refused to allow it unless Gilchrest would say that humans have not contributed to global warming. The Maryland Republican refused and was denied a seat.
Representatives Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) and Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.), both research scientists, also were denied seats on the committee. Normally, relevant expertise would be considered an advantage. In this case, it was a disqualification; if the GOP allowed Republican researchers who accept the scientific consensus to sit on a global warming panel, it would kill the party's strategy of making global warming seem to be the pet obsession of Democrats and Hollywood lefties.
The phenomenon here is that a tiny number of influential conservative figures set the party line; dissenters are marginalized, and the rank and file go along with it. No doubt something like this happens on the Democratic side pretty often too. It's just rare to find the phenomenon occurring in such a blatant way.
You can tell that some conservatives who want to fight global warming understand how the psychology works and are trying to turn it in their favor. Their response is to emphasize nuclear power as an integral element of the solution. Senator John McCain, who supports action on global warming, did this in a recent National Review interview. The technique seems to be surprisingly effective. When framed as a case for more nuclear plants, conservatives seem to let down their guard.
In reality, nuclear plants may be a small part of the answer, but you couldn't build enough to make a major dent. But the psychology is perfect. Conservatives know that lefties hate nuclear power. So, yeah, Rush Limbaugh listeners, let's fight global warming and stick it to those hippies!
G West
6 years ago
And that poll figure, the 80% one
Is about the same percentage of the U.S. population who believe that Christ died on the cross and rose from the dead three days later even though there's not a shred of real evidence extant to confirm he did and lots of literary evidence that even the folks who wrote the gospels didn’t believe that.
I don't think the fact that 80% of Americans also think the White House blew up the twin towers means a heck of a lot either.
I'll stick with the scientific consensus about what's happening to the environment and leave the rest of you to your conspiracy theories.
Sorry.
G West
6 years ago
Umslopogaas
I read that differently. I think he's saying the average increase since 1970 taken at several locations at Alexandra Fjord is 6 degrees.
Possible?
Booker
6 years ago
Not even in the ballpark
In fact mopled's info is as unbelievable as it sounds. About 1/3 of Americans suspect government involvement in the 9/11 attacks, not 80%.
http://www.scrippsnews.com/911poll
Not that polls are a way to decide the validity of evidence anyway.
mopled
6 years ago
Not being a Republican
I can't answer for how they think, or what they are reading. As to the 2000 scientists,, not quite:
"The Tenth Session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group I (WGI) took place at UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, from 29 January to 1 February 2007. The meeting was attended by 311 participants, including scientists and representatives from governments, UN agencies, and non-governmental organizations."
http://www.iisd.ca/vol12/enb12319e.html
There is the added rub that many scientists report disagreeing with the Policy Statement and complain about having been included in the list of scientists. The "over 2000" figure seems to apply to everyone involved, not just scientists, but bureaucrats.
Which brings up the whole inversion of normal scientific practice by the IPCC.
First we get the policy recommendations and it isn't until way after 3 more occasions for hoopla that we get to examine the data?
Doesn't that set off alarm bells people?
mopled
6 years ago
9/11 poll
Scientific Poll: 84% Reject Official 9/11 Story
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=WAT20061020&articleId=3553
A monumental new scientific opinion poll has emerged which declares that only 16% of people in America now believe the official government explanation of the September 11th 2001 terror attacks.
According to the new New York Times/CBS News poll, only 16% of Americans think the government is telling the truth about 9/11 and the intelligence prior to the attacks:
"Do you think members of the Bush Administration are telling the truth, are mostly telling the truth but hiding something, or are they mostly lying?
Telling the truth 16%
Hiding something 53%
Mostly lying 28%
Not sure 3%"
The 84% figure mirrors other recent polls on the same issue. A Canadian Poll put the figure at 85%. A CNN poll had the figure at 89%. Over 80% supported the stance of Charlie Sheen when he went public with his opinions on 9/11 as an inside job.
snert
6 years ago
You're right.
stump
We have no control over where we are born but we do have the option to control our reproduction rate.
The global population is near crises levels now even without any potential global warming. Population control is just as much a solution to any global warming as taking an SUV off the road.
I'm not suggesting that people should not be allowed to have children but limiting the number in a family would go a long way to alleviating future stresses created by any adverse climate change.
Don't send food send surgeons.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Truman Green
While polls do not represent the veracity of any theory or opinion, the lack of representation of such doubters in the Mainstream and phony progressive online media, suggests strongly that the Mainstream Press along with the fake alternative progressive, 'feisty' onlines are controlled either through foundations, family olicharchies like the Aspers who own CanWest or other paragons of global finance.
When did you read any opinion by a 911 doubter in the Mainstream Media or so-called feisty or fake online progressive media, like Mother Jones, The Progressive or the American Free Press, controlled Mark Lane?
The suspicion that 911 was an inside job is so ubiquitious in America, Canada and Europe, it is not unreasonable to expect that these media moguls would at least give some representation to dissident opinions on the subject. Instead we get Matthew Rothschild with his "No More Crazy 911 Talk," in the Tyee and the Progressive, and Andrew Struthers' stupid film in the Tyee and Youtube.
A real free and democratic media would air both sides of the debate, instead of merely ignoring or ridiculing the doubters and dissidents.
clo3
6 years ago
G West
"The term 'people of faith' has been co-opted almost entirely in our (political) discourse by those who see Christianity as compatible with only one political party, the Republicans, and believe that their religious doctrines should determine public policy for everyone. So let me suggest that we take back the word Christian while giving the religious right a new adjective: Christianist." The word Christianism evolved in western media outlets, particularly liberal-oriented blogs, as a counterpoint to the term "Islamist." As Andrew Sullivan said, "Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque."
Yup, still remember. I couldn't find what you were refering to in the Gutstein article, but the other one is pretty interesting.
Stump
6 years ago
Let's get snippy
Great idea. Where do you plan to find these doctors however, given that rural areas even here in the First World have a shortage of MDs?
Further, since it's a small minority consuming a large majority of the world's resources, perhaps the onus is on them (us) to take some action re: our own behaviours first?
mopled
6 years ago
What is always forgotten
in discussions of overpolulation is that given a certain amount of affluence, the reproductive rate goes down. Look at the wringing of hands about that by governments in developed countries which often offer baby bonuses. Part of the population solution would therefore seem to be to stop ripping off the Third World.
Then again the impact the average developed world person has was thought to be about 6x that of the 3rd. worlder.
snert
6 years ago
It's not an insurmountable problem.
stump
Just requires a commitment.
mopled
It's more like 5:1 so I guess we should ignore that option completely. Why don't we just keep sending food and the third world can just keep expanding, poverty and all.
G West
6 years ago
clo3
Hadn't addressed that one yet, sorry.
Here's one from the Times:
“We have observed,” the letter says, “that Cizik and others are using the global warming controversy to shift the emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time.”
Those issues, the signers say, are a need to campaign against abortion and same-sex marriage and to promote “the teaching of sexual abstinence and morality to our children.”
While the letter focused on the moral issue, several of the leaders were pretty candid about political motivations in later interviews: "...some signers of this latest letter said they were wary of the global warming issue because they associated it with leftists, limits on free enterprise and population control, which they oppose." We're not exactly sure about the Biblical basis for these concerns... perhaps they'll be addressed in another letter? New York Times
mopled
6 years ago
Sending food was what started
the downward spiral. After WW2 the US dumped its surplus grain and drove peasant farmers out of business.
Back to the topic."Water vapor accounts for 93 percent of the greenhouse effect, and carbon dioxide is only one of several other gases that account for the remaining 7 percent. To investigate how variations in the levels of atmospheric gasses affect climate change, it would seem reasonable to begin with the most important gas-water vapor. Instead, environmentalists have locked onto carbon dioxide. True, in the past century, the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere rose from about .03 percent to about 0.045 percent-a 0.015 percent increase. However, at the absolute most, only half that 0.015 percent (0.0075 percent) increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide can be traced to human sources, the rest being part of the natural variation in atmospheric carbon dioxide of which we have little or no understanding. Thus, environmentalists ignore the gas that accounts for 93 percent of the greenhouse effect to focus on the gas that accounts for seven and one half thousandths of one percent."
New discoveries show that causes of global warming are not well-understood and current hypothesis and models are seriously flawed. Professor Meinrat Andreae of the renowned Max Planck Institute in Germany, told the World Clean Air and Environmental Protection Congress that aerosols helped to cool the planet. The overall cooling effect was, in his view, "Currently dominant and offsetting the warming brought about by greenhouse gases."
The Earth is getting hotter because the sun is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years, according Dr. Solanki, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research. He further stated, "The Sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures."
Average global temperatures have increased by about 0.2 degrees Celsius over the past 20 years. Change is constant. Accompanying all change are good and bad results."
http://media.www.dailyutahchronicle.com/media/storage/paper244/news/2004/09/10/Opinion/Point.Counter.Point.Is.Global.Warming.Hot.Air.stevenson-715561.shtml
G West
6 years ago
Although, in fairness, it's not monlithic
Some Evangelical groups have expressed support and concern for and about climate change and protecting the environment;
also from the NYTimes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/08/national/08warm.html?ex=1176523200&en=06f05d161ab16d4b&ei=5070
Feb. 8 2006.
G West
6 years ago
errata
That's meant to read 'monolithic', sorry
Booker
6 years ago
Media
The global-warming denialists have had prominent exposure in the mainstream media, particularly in the right-wing outlets like Canwest, the Daily Telegraph in the UK, and of course, Fox News and many newspapers in the U.S. They even got Rex Murphy on their side a couple of years ago. I'm not arguing the the media is free and democratic, but don't tell me that the denialists don't have a voice! Spare me the "oppressed dissident" argument. The 9/11 conspiracy lunacy is all over the place.
G West
6 years ago
here's an interesting marketing idea - from Japan
The Japanese are away out in front of us in encouraging people to stop using plastic bags when shopping:
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/triumph-japan/japanese-bra-also-carries-your-melons-213608.php
Booker
6 years ago
Polls
Mopled, Americans agreeing that the Bush Administration is hiding something, such as them having intelligence about the attack that they ignored, is quite different from agreeing with your position, that they executed the attack. One-third of Americans would agree with your position.
doggone
6 years ago
9/11 lunacy
hey Booker:
How crazy do you expect it to get?
From what I read 9/11 is a lot whackier than you or I can imagine.
Today it produced 3 deaths in the "Green Zone" and a couple more canadian troops. So far so good.
Jonagold
6 years ago
The 9/11 nuts and the
The 9/11 nuts and the head-in-the-sand climate change deniers have one thing in common: they believe stuff they read. And they tend to read lots of stuff on the Internet.
In re: climate change, the stupidity is astounding. Someone in this thread said we need to have a debate to determine if climate change is real. Sure. But let's all collectively shut the hell up and let the people WHO KNOW WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT have the debate. Good grief. Anyone here a climatologist? A geologist? I have a better-than-average IQ, but I'm no physical scientist. Even if I read all the science (and there has been tons of science done on this issue), I am not going to try to make an argument out of what I read. Why? Because I don't have the years of experience and expertise on the matter.
The smart thing to do is to let the people who have the expertise, who have the training, who have the experience on the issue, give their opinions. The rest is just mindless blather.
And here's the funny thing: that IPCC study that came out last week was written by scientists who are smart, who have expertise, who have training, and who have experience. They say that climate change is real. It's caused by humans. It will have drastic and severe consequences for humanity and for the natural world.
Now you deniers may want to take issue with that, and put up statisticians like Bjorn Lombert et al to refute it, but I'll put my faith in the people who are actually speaking from their learned expertise over your brilliance anyday.
Booker
6 years ago
jonagold wrote: Quote:The
jonagold wrote:
And they are very selective about what they read, with a taste for the wacky. Mix that with a strong detestation of scientists and materialists/rationalists and, presto, you get "nutty". Carl Sagan described it very well (and more politely) in his last book, The Demon-Haunted World.
Truman Green
6 years ago
You gotta be kidding booker
"The 911 lunacy is all over the place," eh.
Show me a single article in any CanWest paper outlining the views of those who understand that 911 was not done by Osama bin Laden, and that the American Airforce obviously stood down while it was occurring? You might be the last person on earth still pretending that the wtc buildings weren't blown up with some kind of explosive energy concurrently with the airplanes crashing into them.
You did notice those tons of pulverized concrete, didn't you?
And Janagold, you are very gullible. CO2 could never be responsible for more than a smidgen of the warming that is occurring, mainly because its absorption frequency is fine-tuned to absorb rebounding infrared only in the longwave frequency.
You understand that the debate is about whether the tiny warming is caused predominantly by human acticity (anthropogenic) or natural causes such as temporary solar radiation changes.
Not to mention that there's just not enough of it (CO2) in the atmosphere to have more than a tiny contribution to the cycle of warming that has been occurring since the little ice age.
Remember, the average temperature in the Middle Ages was warmer than it is now.
Your faith in the professionals is quite scary. You live in a world you don't understand and you're willing to leave it to the scientists, who you think are acting in your best interest, when what has really happened is a kind of hyped-up bandwagoning.
Objects with mass absorb infrared radiation according to their mass, longwave infrared frequency capability and their prevalence in the environment. C02 could contribute at best a tiny warming effect.
Several planets in our solar system are 'experiencing global warming,' and unless I've missed it, there's no people--even aliens--living on any of them.
Google it yourself!
It really is just that simple. The scientists are exaggerating the role of C02 and other greenhouse gases in the tiny warming that is going on. They're also exaggerating the amount of average increase per century that has occurred and which, by their models, will occur in the future.
The good news is that some of us are young enough to be still be around when the warming settles down and again it'll be 'global cooling' that we're supposed to be afraid of--as it was from l940 to l975. Although I suspect that the embarrassment factor might preclude that.
You don't have to be a scientist to understand these issues. Anyone with an IQ over l40 or so is smart enough to understand this pathetic catastrophism that is occurring.
The heading under the article refers to a 'climate apocalypse.'
It's not happening! It's a fake apocalypse.
mopled
6 years ago
it's amazing how folks prefer
to be scammed rather than admit they have been taken in. Houdini found that out when he and Conan Doyle investigated spirit manifestation. Even after exposing every one of those they investigated together as fraudulent, Doyle was still a true believer.
It was funny because Houdini really wanted it to be true. He wanted to get in touch
with his late mother, but he was also too good at seeing the fakery.
I think there is something of a parallel here.
It is hard to recognize that we have been played for fools by people we trust.
Daniel Wood is a terrific writer and obviously he has been taken in by the hype too.
G West
6 years ago
Oh I don't know, remember this:
(snip)
And there’s another thing most reporting fails to convey: the sheer extremism of these people.
You see, Regent (University) isn’t a religious university the way Loyola or Yeshiva are religious universities. It’s run by someone whose first reaction to 9/11 was to brand it God’s punishment for America’s sins.
Two days after the terrorist attacks, Mr. Robertson held a conversation with Jerry Falwell on Mr. Robertson’s TV show “The 700 Club.” Mr. Falwell laid blame for the attack at the feet of “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians,” not to mention the A.C.L.U. and People for the American Way. “Well, I totally concur,” said Mr. Robertson.
(snip)
New York Times.
Lots of crazy extremism around - if you look for it.
gkam
6 years ago
Who is Truman Green, and why
Who is Truman Green, and why is he doing that silly Glenn Beck imitation?
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and Mr. Green seems to have as little as anybody.
Without going into the pages of corrections necessary to refute his nonsense, I wish to say that the real problem with global warming is global cooling.
That's right. It looks as if we have aleady slowed down the ocean currents that are responsible for our weather. When that Ocean Conveyor stops, we will have another Ice Age. And it's slowing as we speak.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Truman Green
Daniel Wood writes: "His data shows an average 6C increase in winter temperatures at Alexandra Fjord since l970, and a 1 degree per decade summertime increase.
Mr. Daniel, I would very much like to have a look at this data. "Average 6C increase in winter temperatures at Alexandra Fjord," eh.
I don't believe it. For one thing, I'm not exactly sure of your meaning. The sentence appears to claim that the recorded yearly winter temperature has been increasing by an average of 6 degrees C.
I've done my best to manipulate the semantics of this sentence, but whatever weird and wonderful machinations I come up with I'm still left with the temperature increasing around 6 times 37 equals 222 degrees since l970, which is pretty hot, eh, even for a global swarmer.
(Forget G.West-Alcibiades' caveat. It's meaningless)
Or are you trying to say that the temperature has increased a TOTAL of 6 degrees since l970? It's either increased by six degrees on average every year, or by a more believable increment which would total 6 degrees over the entire 37 year period, such as the real average which would be plus or minus .162 degrees C per winter. (Even that sounds silly because the average 100 year increase would be about 15 degrees C if such an increase were truly representational of things to come. Not a single scientist on the globe is making such a claim).
(.l62 times 37 equals about 6, eh.)
Actually, though, of course none of these statistics means anything, except that there appears to be some kind of warming going on. What's been causing it? CO2?
Not a chance!
Truman Green
6 years ago
Truman Green
Okay, gkam, I'm ready for your pages of corrections of refutations. Let's have it.
So "...the real problem with global warming is global cooling."
And you think "the ocean currents are responsible for our weather".
Not really! Our weather (not climate) depends mostly upon the incidence, duration and force of warm masses of air colliding with cold masses of air.
Usually the warm air is rising, as it is wont to do. But then you'd have probably have said that while going into the "pages of refutations."
That is, of course, if you didn't think that our weather is caused by the ocean currents and you actually knew anything about weather or climate, cooling or warming.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Here's the question, gkam...
Can a minute (means small, gkam like 350 parts per million) amount of trace gases like CO2, (apparently the main culprit) have an immense anthropogenic effect on the global climate of this planet? And cause catastrophies.
It's gotta be a magic molecule indeed if it's really guilty as charged.
gkam
6 years ago
The melting of the Greenland
The melting of the Greenland icecaps is dumping cubic miles of cold, fresh water into the North Atlantic, changing the salinity, (hence the specific gravity of the water), and slowing down the ocean current responsible for providing nutrients for most sealife and the climate (hence the weather) of most of Europe.
A dramatic 30% reduction in the upwelling of nutrients from the seafloor in the North Pacific this year has reduced phytoplankton and zooplankton and krill by corresponding amounts. Most of the oceanic foodchain depends upon this base. The phytoplankton also provide a substantial percentage of our oxygen.
Those with some knowledge or expertise in some fields often let their emotions or political prejudice determine their positions on technical issues in other fields.
Why else would someone outside the field argue with most climate professionals?
mopled
6 years ago
Karl Wunch, MIT ocean expert
and he thinks the CO2 thesis is possible
http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/papersonline/responseto_channel4.htm
"I am on record in a number of places as complaining about the over-dramatization and unwarranted extrapolation of scientific facts. Thus the notion that the Gulf Stream would or could "shut off" or that with global warming Britain would go into a "new ice age" are either scientifically impossible or so unlikely as to threaten our credibility as a scientific discipline if we proclaim their reality. They also are huge distractions from more immediate and realistic threats. I've focused more on the extreme claims in the literature warning of coming catastrophe, both because I regard the scientists there as more serious, and because I am very sympathetic to the goals of those who sometimes seem, however, to be confusing their specific scientific knowledge with their worries about the future."
gkam
6 years ago
Can a minute (means small,
Can a minute (means small, gkam like 350 parts per million) amount of trace gases like CO2, (apparently the main culprit) have an immense anthropogenic effect on the global climate of this planet? And cause catastrophies.
Perhaps - in fact, it seems to be so, and has been shown to have happened in the past.
The environment, both physical and biological, is comprised of a subtle balance of interacting complex systems. Each of these, and the interacting collection as well, exist in stable states - a kind of equilibrium - as long as conditions remain within certain bounds.
Out of these bounds, the system (or interacting collection of systems), will seek a different stable state. The number of stable states is dependent on the number of important variables affecting the stability of the system.
mopled
6 years ago
You know, the only thing we
really know is how much we don't know about what drives climate change!
Remember what we are talking about is 6 tenths of one degree C warming average in 100 years. CO2 is present at 380 parts per million representing a rise of a whole 80 parts per million over perhaps 150 years.
To try to turn those facts into a catastrophe
has taken 19 years and a billion dollars.
gkam
6 years ago
Yeah, . . you're right.
Yeah, . . you're right.
We ecofreaks are only trying to tear down America or Canada, or something. It must be our hateful core principles.
I'm going to bed.
dobermanmacleod
6 years ago
The only solution is to remove the CO2 from the air
As this article says: tremendous amounts of greenhouse gas will be emitted from melting permafrost soon. Generally, as the earth warms, carbon sinks will become carbon emitters. It is estimated that mankind will double their emissions, not cut them so severely and quickly that runaway global warming will be avoided.
Therefore the only solution is to remove the CO2 from the air after it has been emitted. Nature already removes about half of mankind's CO2 emissions each year, but that is expected to be reduced 30% by 2030. I suggest improving nature's ability to remove CO2 from the air using genetic engineering-perhaps seeding a GMO into the ocean.
mopled
6 years ago
Sorry guy
You are allowing yourselves to be manipulated because of those very fine principles by totaly unscrupulous people.
Did you know that Gore and Strong went into business together and the company they formed to recycle metals from landfill sites got $33 Million from the US DOE and never produced a thing?
Try googleing AL Gore+Maurice Strong
and see what you come up with. They are both individually involved in carbon trading activities. What a money maker that will be.
You might also look at this:
http://www.counterpunch.org/donnelly03222007.html
G West
6 years ago
Truman - what caveat are you talking about?
6 degree (average) winter temperature increase since 1970 at Alexandra Fjord and a 1 degree C increase in summer temperatures over the same period - (also averaged likely).
The only thing to be defined is what the 'average' refers to. If you don't think it refers to sampling locations it may well be an overall average calculated on the basis of degree days recorded over a common time perior each year and averaged.
Unfortunately I can't find Henry's data at the link included with the article which makes further debate kind of pointless.
I agree that it would be nice if the author would clarify the material.
Booker
6 years ago
Quote:Can a minute (means
It's gotta be a magic molecule indeed if it's really guilty as charged.
Denialists don't want to talk about percentages. Carbon Dioxide levels have risen 32% in the blink of an eye (the last 150 years), and levels are rising at increasing rate. Funny how that coincides with the industrial revolution and our adding billions of tons of greenhouse gases to the atmousphere every year.
This info is easily available, so this is a case of #5 on the Crackpot Index (repeated many times). http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html
and this gem:
gets you numbers 2-5 on the index and really racks up some points. Go, team, go.
anarcho
6 years ago
Global warming and prudence
We obviously do not have all the info on global warming and how much of it is created by human activity. But prudence would tell us that we ought to trteat the situation seriously and find ways of creating less pollution. Of course, prudence is a CONSERVATIVE concept. How strange that our self-described conservatives are unwilling to be prudent.
Yeoman
6 years ago
It's rather interesting how
It's rather interesting how the anti-GW arguments inevitably take one of the following directions:
1. Its a global conspiracy by the socialists, enviros, aethiests etc.
2. The proponents of the hypothesis (Gore, Suzuki, Greenpeace) are using it to personally benefit.
3. There's a glacier, forest, snowpack in some remote location that is growing, cooling etc.
4.Discredited hypotheses of the past mean that current thinking must be flawed.
All of which generally culminate in:
5. "There's no way I'm going to give up my SUV, lifestyle, etc"
Archimedes
6 years ago
Truman Green Says
"Icebergs melting will lower the seal level not increase it as the ice that now exists below the surface has a greater displacement volume than it would have if it melts. Ice takes up more room than water, eh."
This has got to be the funniest thing I've read in a long while. This is basic high school stuff. A melting iceberg makes no difference in the level of the water as it displaces an amount of water equal to its own mass, e.g., one ton of ice displaces one ton of water. When it melts, it becomes one ton of water, therefore, no change in water level. Yes, ice takes up more room than water. That would be why part of the iceberg is above the water line. Icebergs cause the ocean to rise, not by melting, but just by being there. Every time a chunk of ice falls from a land-based glacier or ice shelf, it raises the level of the water.
Truman Green
6 years ago
So what, Booker.
So CO2 levels have increased. Of course they have. There's no way to burn all of these fuel hydrocarbons without increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. But keep your eye on the ball. The total C02 component of our atmosphere is less than 35% of one tenth of one percent.
The atmosphere is in a warming phase. The really strange thing is that the scientists admit that C02 can only be responsible for a very small percentage of the rise in global temperatures. Water vapour is responsible for 90% of the warming as it always is.
For every volume of C02 infrared absorption there is a counter cooling effect, which the global swarmers conveniently forget to mention. Evaporation increases, for example, as the temperature increases and evaporation has a cooling effect of the surfaces from which water, including sea water, evaporates.
Smog from pollutants such as sulphur dioxide has a cooling effect because it reflects the solar radiation and stops it from reaching the earth where it can be returned in a longwave frequency as infrared radiation, so that smog and much pollution actually has a net cooling effect on the surface of the earth and the lower atmosphere.
This is not controversial, just google smog-cooling effect or similar words. The global swarmers just don't like to mention the counter effects of C02 absorption of infrared radiation or heat, as it is more commonly known.
Vegetation requires the intake of Carbon Dioxide. Without it there would be no life on earth. The oxygen that we breath is actually a waste product of the growth of vegetation.
C02 is not a pollutant as the global swarmers would allow you to believe. It is necessary for the growth of phytoplankton, from which we derive at least 50% of the oxygen in the atmosphere.
The technique which is confusing so many people is the epiphenomenal hoax, the same logical fallacy that is used to convince people tha Hiv, a harmless, genetically engineered composite of a simian and human virus is the cause of the global suppression of the human immune system.
Another genetically engineered pathogen known as mycoplasm is the real culprit, and was vectored in vaccines, probably hepatitis B or polio, or in the illegal drugs the use of which is the number one associated factor with Aids. Similarly, increasing levels of CO2 accompany global warming therefore the claim is that this accompaniment equals causation.
The truth is that the scientific community is divided over whether the temperature precedes the increase in C02 or follows it.
Study the arctic and antartic core samples for a few days. It is well known that there is a time lag between the increases of snow accumulation, CO2 increases and temperature increases--as much as 800 years.
Truman Green
6 years ago
You should know achimedes..
Have you ever noticed that the greatest percentage of icebergs lies beneath the surface of the water? Does the phrase 'the tip of the iceberg' ring a bell?
That portion of the iceberg which lies below the surface, if melted, would take up 9% less space in the ocean as it does as ice, because ice is less dense than water.
It's elementary, alright, but you don't get it. You should try to think 'volume' or cubic dimension emcompassed by a massive body.
Look it up.
Stump
6 years ago
Icebergs
Unfortunately, the whole iceberg tends to melt, not just the part underwater. A cursory google search reveals that roughly 12% of the iceberg is above water. Hmmm, me not no math wizard but....
Archimedes
6 years ago
Elementary
Yes, the portion below the surface, if melted, would take up less space than it does as ice. I do get it, but guess what? Usually, when the portion below the surface melts, the part above the surface melts too, and when it does, it becomes part of the ocean, it doesn't remain magically suspended in the air. And guess what else? By sheer coincidence, the part above the surface, when it melts, exactly makes up for the difference in volume. That's why about 9 or 10% of an iceberg is above the surface. I don't have to look it up, it's so easily demonstrated at home with a glass of water and some ice cubes. And taught in grade 9.
G West
6 years ago
It's not the icebergs that are the problem folks
It's the enourmous quality of water held in solid form resting on land masses like Greenland that pose the potential difficulty with respect to sea level.
The rapid (in geologic time) melting of those GLACIERS contributes to the predicted rise in sea levels.
You can read more about it here:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=15611
Archimedes
6 years ago
I agree, icebergs are not
I agree, icebergs are not the problem, except that they are result of large portions of land-based ice falling into the ocean, which does raise the level of the ocean somewhat. The ocean is raised much more by melting glaciers. I just couldn't get over such a glaring lack of scientific knowledge in someone who is supposedly basing his denial of global warming on science.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Yeah, but...
Yeah, but the point I was making, as if you don't know, is that the melting of icebergs will not cause a rise in sea level.
Your understanding of mass, weight and volume needs a bit of brushing up.
Try dropping a two hundred pound lead weight into your swimming pool and measure the amount of water if displaces. Then drop a two hundred pound block of styrofoam into the pool. Measure the amount of water it displaces. The point is that a hundred block of styrofoam will take up much more space than a hundred pound block of lead.
Displacement's tricky, school teacher.
You don't seem to understand the difference between volume displacement and weight displacement. It's the volume displacement that is the crucial point when we're thinking about the melting of icebergs.
Of course, as G.West-Alcibiades says, when water from melting glaciers enter the oceans it increases the level of the oceans because it represents a new addition of water to the oceans--from the land--so the displacement capability of volume versus weight is not a factor. Theoretically, as water in the oceans heats up it expands thereby increasing the volume and contributing to a rise in sea levels. So we're always talking about volume measured by cubic dimension here.
Understand Archimedes?
Truman Green
6 years ago
Remember 'peak oil'?
Hey, did any of you(s) guys hear anything about the 'peak oil' hoax lately? Well I bet the peak oilists have gone into hibernation with the emergence of the global swarmers because the obvious implication of 'peak oil' is that if we have really reached the apex of oil production as the goofy peak oilists claim, then we certainly have little to worry about regarding C02 infrared radiation.
The peak oilists probably don't want to confront the suggestion that running out of oil will take a major catastropheic dimension from the platforms, (oil or otherwise) of the global swarmers.
No more fuel hydrocarbons; no worry about C02 absorption. Right?
And the ridiculous 'fossil fuel' theory is taking bit hit these days, too.
Google it, in fact: "Fossil Fuel theory takes hit."
There are no 'fossil fuels.'
Imagine a world without all of these lies and hoaxes.
Percy
6 years ago
So why do scientists disagree with him?
Here's a study which reports exactly the opposite of the above.
It purports to be the the most comprehensive study of the issue, and finds that the shrinkage is long-standing and unrelated to global warming.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=060821191826.o0mynclv&show_article=1
"Greenland's glaciers have been shrinking for the past century, according to a Danish study, suggesting that the ice melt is not a recent phenomenon caused by global warming.
Danish researchers from Aarhus University studied glaciers on Disko island, in western Greenland in the Atlantic, from the end of the 19th century until the present day.
"This study, which covers 247 of 350 glaciers on Disko, is the most comprehensive ever conducted on the movements of Greenland's glaciers," glaciologist Jacob Clement Yde, who carried out the study with Niels Tvis Knudsen, told AFP."
See the link. Can the hysteria, please.
mopled
6 years ago
That is hystericaly funny
Here's Trumans reference to extraterrestrial
hydrocarbons:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47675
and here are a few on extraterrestrial warming:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/pluto_warming_021009.html
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/19980526052143data_trunc_sys.shtml
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060504_red_jr.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
So tell me again how our production of CO2 is to blame for what is certainly a force beyond our control
Frank
6 years ago
Percy
Unfortunately the industrial revolution is older than the Danish study. We've been burning coal and other fuels in large quantities for longer than 100 years.
realisticman
6 years ago
Icee
More Science vs. Gore on Rapid Polar Ice Wastage
Volume 10, Number 15: 11 April 2007
In his 21 March 2007 testimony before the United States Senate's Environment & Public Works Committee, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore talked passionately about what he referred to time and again as a "climate crisis," which he characterized as "a planetary emergency - a crisis that threatens the survival of our civilization and the habitability of the Earth." One of the scare stories he frequently uses to promote this concept is that of half of Greenland and half of Antarctica breaking up, sliding into the sea, and raising sea levels worldwide by between 18 and 20 feet. And to attach an even greater sense of urgency to this scenario, he states in his book (An Inconvenient Truth, p. 186) that "many residents of low-lying Pacific Island nations have already had to evacuate their homes because of rising seas."
In our editorial of [need to add link] 4 Apr 2007, we described what the most up-to-date real-world science has to say about the subject, noting that "the current 'best estimate' of the contribution of polar ice wastage to global sea level change is a rise of 0.35 millimeters per year, which over a century amounts to only 35 millimeters or - to better compare it to the 20-foot sea-level rise described by Gore - a little less than an inch and a half." In this editorial we describe what the most up-to-date real-world science has to say about what some have claimed to be a much more rapid mode of ice sheet wastage: a rise in sea level or change in ice sheet thickness that leads to rapid grounding-line retreat and a huge increase in the overall rate of sea level rise, which is one of the infamous "tipping points" that climate alarmists use to (1) instill fear of imminent catastrophe in the public at large and (2) justify Mr. Gore's repetitive use of the word "crisis" in his sermonizing on the topic, as in his testimony to the U.S. Senate, where the scary word appears an amazing 10 times in his testimony's 14 brief paragraphs.
Frank
6 years ago
Hysteria
Also, there is absolutely no reason not to reduce our pollution regardless. As I think clo3 said above, even if we ignore climate change, the other problems we're experiencing from pollution are real and the cause is obvious.
So let's go with the idea, just for argument's sake, that the planet is warming whether we reduce our pollution levels or not. We will still have the cancers and the asthma and the reduced number of species, the reduction in fresh water levels and so on to deal with. Is the answer to increase our output of pollutants?
realisticman
6 years ago
Thick & Thin
So how much sea-level rise would be required to float the Whillans Ice Stream off its grounding-line wedge and wrest it from the continent? In a companion paper that looks at the mechanics of the phenomenon in considerable detail, Alley et al. (2007) conclude that "sea-level changes of a few meters are unlikely to substantially affect ice-sheet behavior," and that a rise on the order of 100 meters might be needed to "overwhelm the stabilizing feedback from sedimentation." In fact, in a perspective article on the new findings, Anderson (2007) states that "at the current rate of sea-level rise, it would take several thousand years [our italics] to float the ice sheet off [its] bed." What is more, Alley et al. say that the ice sheet's extra thickness up-glacier from the grounding-line wedge will tend to stabilize it against "any other environmental perturbation."
With respect to the range of applicability of the findings of Anandakrishnan et al. and Alley et al., Anderson further notes that "grounding-zone wedges are common features on the continental shelf, including the Ross Sea Shelf," and that "all ice streams of the Siple Coast have an anomalous elevation and stop at the grounding line," leading him to conclude that "this mechanism for stabilization of the grounding-line is likely to be widespread." Consequently, Anderson concludes that "sea-level rise may not destabilize ice sheets as much as previously feared," which in turn suggests that sea level itself may not rise as fast or as high as previously feared. In addition, sea-level rise due to polar ice wastage is currently progressing at what could only be called a snail's pace, all of which facts lead us to wonder ... Just what make-believe world is Al Gore living in?
Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso
References
Alley, R.B., Anandakrishnan, S., Dupont, T.K., Parizek, B.R. and Pollard, D. 2007. Effect of sedimentation on ice-sheet grounding-line stability. Science 315: 1838-1841.
Anandakrishnan, S., Catania, G.A., Alley, R.B. and Horgan, H.J. 2007. Discovery of till deposition at the grounding line of Whillans Ice Stream. Science 315: 1835-1838.
Anderson, J.B. 2007. Ice sheet stability and sea-level rise. Science 315: 1803-1804.
Frank
6 years ago
CO2 Science magazine
Ah yes, the magazine that ran the above-quoted Gore piece also declared back in July 2000 that there was no global warming. The ice in the arctic must not be melting then?
In view of the extreme likelihood that there has thus been no net warming of the planet over the past 70 years, during which time the vast majority of all anthropogenically-produced CO2 has been emitted to the atmosphere, we conclude that since there should have been a sizeable CO2-induced increase in atmospheric radiative forcing over this period, there must have been a suite of compensatory negative feedbacks that totally overwhelmed the standard "greenhouse" impetus for warming (see our Position Paper on Carbon Dioxide and Global Warming: Where We Stand on the Issue). Hence, there would appear to be absolutely no foundation in factual data of any sort for supposing that any further man-induced increases in the air's CO2 content would warm the planet either.
Well, I know I feel better now.
mopled
6 years ago
Oh,Frank, I detect a pattern
You just conflated and confused two issues.
The ghastly pollution and destruction we are inflicting on the planet,
with wether or not the small proportion of the annual production of CO2 by human activities is accelerating what is a rather normal warming trend in the northern latitudes after a period of cold in what seems to be a cyclical process which may be acertained by observation of the rest of the Solar System.[b]
G West
6 years ago
Thanks for that Truman
I see you've moved on now.
Glad you agree that icebergs weren't part of the problem and that the melting of Greenland glaciation will have a significant impact on sea level rise if present trends continue and/or accelerate.
I wonder if you could address the potential downside to rampant deforestation in many areas of the globe in order to produce seasonal crops to be turned into ethanol.
Frank
6 years ago
Conflated and confused
Say what?
Frank
6 years ago
mopled
Are you saying that realisticman's "CO2 Science" people are all wet as regards their editorial back in 2000 declaring there was no global warming?
Because why would they say there is no warming if you say its a normal warming trend? Now since you and CO2 science are on the same side of the climate change debate you can't both be right and say the other is part of a conspiracy.
mopled
6 years ago
Here's an interesting article
http://junkscience.com/mar06/Time_AnotherIceAge_June241974.pdf
Time Magazine from 1974 discussing the coming Ice Age (which scenario was pushed by the movie The Day After Tomorrow)
May I remind you again...the amount of warming of the planet over the last 100 years is 6 Tenths of 1%.thats .6%. Can you say hysteria?
Frank
6 years ago
Hysteria
.6% doesn't sound bad at all. There's no way ice and permafrost will melt if that's the case. Thanks, feeling cheerier already.
Well, not as cheery as when I read that the Chairman of CO2 science says there was no warming at all but still cheery just the same.
G West
6 years ago
Time Magazine from 1974
That's an interesting scientific reference.
Is it peer reviewed?
Frank
6 years ago
Time magazine
Just one article about the coming ice age? I was alive in the 70's and I don't recall hearing about a new ice age at all but then we didn't subscribe to Time. However, I have also read here that the Ice Age thing was all over the news on a constant basis. Shouldn't there be thousands of articles and tv reports the honest brokers at junkscience.com could point to while asking us for money to fight global smarming?
Frank
6 years ago
Need to know
Let's say I'm a climate change denier. Can I just ask who I should believe in this debate thing, junkscience.com or CO2science.com? Which is the credible source?
mopled
6 years ago
Wow Guys, your agenda is showing
Denier...remember the definition I posted. How can I be a denier when there is nothing to deny... because nothing has been proven.
Keep that gate closed guys...don't let the sheep even see the opening.
Frank, how old were you in the 70's? How long has the internet been a source of news and archivalled material? Of all the stuff written before the net, how much is available on it?
You make nonsensical points meant to push people off the track into irrelevancies.
I've been posting my sources, don't red herring me.
Yeoman
6 years ago
checkout junkscience.com's
checkout junkscience.com's lineage at sourcewatch.com
Yeoman
6 years ago
www.sourcewatch.org/index.php
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=JunkScience.com
mopled
6 years ago
Here's a source on CO2
Environment Canada. Need to use Sourcewatch for that?
The original article was from Time Mag. archived at Junk Science. Another red herring folks. Approved sources only, stay in the pen!
Greenhouse Gases
Carbon Dioxide
On a worldwide basis, the anthropogenic emissions of CO2 are known to be small. In comparison with the gross fluxes of carbon from natural systems they represent only a fraction (~2%) of total global emissions, but they are perceived to account for most of the observed accumulated CO2 in the atmosphere. On the basis of available emissions information, the primary anthropogenic sources of CO2 are fossil-fuel combustion (including both stationary and mobile sources), deforestation (resulting in permanent land use change), and industrial processes such as cement production. A global CO2 emission rate of approximately 23.9 Gt has recently been estimated by the Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Centre (CDIAC). Deforestation, land use and subsequent soil oxidation have been estimated to account for about 23% of human-made CO2 emissions. The primary natural sources include: respiration by plants and animals, decaying organic matter and fermentation, volcanos, forest/grass fires and oceans. On a net basis, natural carbon balancing processes such as photosynthesis and the oceanic reservoir remove most CO2. Over the 45 years leading to 1996, global emissions of carbon dioxide grew from about 6.4 Gt to 23.9 Gt, almost a fourfold increase.
Methane & Nitrous Oxide are also covered.
Currently some long-lived gases - particularly hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs, a CFC substitute), perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) - contribute little to radiative forcing, but their projected growth could contribute several per cent to radiative forcing during the 21st century (IPCC, 1996).
http://www.ec.gc.ca/pdb/ghg/about/gases_e.cfm
G West
6 years ago
mopled
I read that Time article at the time it was written - one of those fancy-dan el cheapo deals you get when you're a student - and it's the only one I can ever remember having seen anywhere.
It was a highly speculative piece as I recall.
I do remember it had an interesting conclusion and, I think, it suggested that a lot more study was needed.
I'll go back and read the pdf you've provided and see if my memory's accurate.
mopled
6 years ago
UNDERSTAND
All human activity accounts for +/- 2% of the yearly production of CO2.
Got that everybody!
If we were at the beginning of the public discorse on the importance of human contribution to the melting of the Northern Ice Cap, the level of this discussion might be forgiven. But the facts have been available for a long time and still this one particular fact is seldom referred to by the people who would try to sell the paradigm of Global Warming Gonna Eat Your Momma.
This is not a trivial matter since we have already have a glimpse of what may be in store for us in the way of taxation on a global level.
realisticman
6 years ago
Some interesting PDFs here
http://www.rmets.org/news/detail.php?ID=312
Another Pinatubo or big sunspots could change it all again.
Frank
6 years ago
mopled
Proven beyond doubt or proven beyond the denial side? Because so far the weight of evidence seems to be pretty much on the climate change side and not so much on the denial side. Since the evidence on the climate change side seems to keep piling up pretty fast I would suggest the denial side has to do more than simply take a scatter-gun approach and write easily disproved editorials claiming the earth hasn't warmed at all for the last 70 years.
How could I possibly keep the gate closed against government, the auto industry, the energy industry etc? Publicly funded scientists across the globe collaborating on a huge hoax to get public dollars into their departments versus the masters of the universe and its the public scientists who have bolted the gate?
What kind of conspiracy is that? At least the JFK thing has some gov't and military power behind it. What power do publicly funded middle-class scientists have? If they are doing it for money why don't they take all the millions the energy, auto and gov't sectors want to throw at them to write "the truth"? There has to be more than a retired climate guy from the U of Manitoba willing to take the dollars.
This dog is not going to hunt.
In my teens, "Who's Next" was a great album by the way. As for the internet I think the energy sector alone has enough money to pay people to put every piece of "the coming ice-age" material on the net in pdf form.
Note what I said about the supposed conspiracy that would have to be at the heart of the matter.
They simply aren't as credible as the other side.
Archimedes
6 years ago
I don't want to waste
I don't want to waste everyone's time on this as it's not the main issue, but a 200 lb block of styrofoam in a swimming pool will displace exactly 200 lbs of water, for the simple reason that 99.9% of the styrofoam will not even be below the surface of the water. And the principle only applies to floating objects, so lead is not a valid example. I question the scientific qualifications of anyone who doesn't understand this; however, I do have a life, so this is all I'm going to say on the subject.
Stump
6 years ago
Titan and Earth
are so very similar that clearly whatever process might have created methane on Titan would be responsible for the same thing on Earth. It's so very obvious. And whatever is warming Titan is no doubt responsible for warming Earth too.
Yessiree, a frozen moon millions of miles away, and a green lush planet right under our feet. How could one even tell the difference?
mopled
6 years ago
Disinformation thy name is
There shouldn't be sides on this.
This is supposed to be about science.
The very fact that Gore is involved...because part of this is about a Draft Gore thing happening on US discussion boards with the same type of gatekeepers working as here, makes it suspect.
So I quote sources like Environment Canada...and Frank scoffs and calls me a bloomin' denier. And please don't give me that Green David and Oil Soaked Goliath nonsense....because there is a heck of a lot of money riding on getting the cap and trade system going ...a new market to ride up and then dump when the truth comes out. It is just hidden behind US based foundation walls.
I used to think you were a naif, Frank.
No, longer.
Fii
6 years ago
Believe your eyes
I guess there will always be two camps of people when it comes to issues like this. I do know that as a child in the 70s I climbed over snowbanks 5 ft high on my way to school... Ontario rarely sees snow like that anymore. I do know that I've lived for years in parts of the world where summer temps have hit 38 degrees not including humidity and where I've had to wear a face mask while driving my motorcycle. If you have never left this continent that kind of pollution is something you CAN'T imagine. I've camped under glaciers that are all but gone and I have this gut feeling... I'm practical by nature and I believe the facts I'm reading these days.
I guess there is no h
Fii
6 years ago
Believe your eyes
I guess there will always be two camps of people when it comes to issues like this. I do know that as a child in the 70s I climbed over snowbanks 5 ft high on my way to school... Ontario rarely sees snow like that anymore. I do know that I've lived for years in parts of the world where summer temps have hit 38 degrees not including humidity and where I've had to wear a face mask while driving my motorcycle. If you have never left this continent that kind of pollution is something you CAN'T imagine. I've camped under glaciers that are all but gone and I have this gut feeling... I'm practical by nature and I believe the facts I'm reading these days.
I guess there is no h
Fii
6 years ago
whoops...
I guess there is no hope of a discussion between people so divided. All we can do is wait and see; those of us who believe can continue to try and do a little good to slow the process down- if that is even possible.
Frank
6 years ago
mopled, Quote:This is
mopled,
Okay, are you a scientist?
And so you're putting forward the idea that there was a huge war-chest built up by a group of people who wanted to trade carbon credits but didn't have a reason to do so so they bought off the world's scientists, gave them so much money even the oil industry couldn't compete?
The really weird thing is that Kyoto pre-dates Inconvenient Truth and Gores run at president. Why would someone create "climate change" in the early 90's to draft Gore for the presidency in 2008? Wouldn't they have given up the whole climate thing when he ran in 2000?
As for being a naif, I still am in so many ways. But I learn as I go. As for others, well, the jury is still out.
clubofrome
6 years ago
Comprehend this!
The reasons for "change" are many and varied. Global Warming is a bad handle, the better term is climate change. The earth is always changing and includes warming and cooling. The panic should be that we haven't got any plan for either. Nor could we be expected to with population in exponential growth. Human activity is having an impact far beyond this debate on GW/CC. This will be the first in many challenges to come. Do you people ever stop to read Ed Deaks posts and what the consequence of runaway capitalism is? Can you imagine the input required to keep this growing population in consumer goods let alone food, shelter and water? We're not talking about a footprint here, it's a total eclipse of the resources, depletion at rates far beyond any capacity to recover. The reasons for climate change today are as much our own fault as any one other factor. Just the change in how water is now managed has had a huge impact. 35,000 damns, dykes and all the disrupted rivers used for agriculture etc, have changed the flow of nutrients and the evaporation rates of water, our most precious resource. Plus as stated above, we piss in it, everywhere. We've altered natural systems that gave us our ecology, our foundation for life. Go ahead finish clearing the old growth forests and the tropical rain forests, I'm sure nothing bad will happen, we'll just plant more crops. (yeah right...) To understand what is happening to our earth takes more knoweledge than we have right now. We're only scratching the surface right now in terms of understanding how climate change and human activity are inter related. Anyone confessing they know why, is a liar and a fool. That seems to be the majority, which makes perfect sense because that's how we vote too! No imagination, no plan for the future no regard for community, just what's in it for me. Stupid, stupid humans. Really rose to the top quickly but in the end were a blink of the eye in time compared to the rule of the dinosauers. Check out the big brain on T-Rex!!
Solar activity my ass Truman, if you knew anything about science you'd know the only thing certain is uncertainty itself. Stop the BS everyone and start looking for real solutions before you doom future generations to chaos. We take everything we do for granted, just flush the toilet or throw the garbage in the trash, out of sight, out of mind. The climate will change and we will have to change too. Not adapt, change. The luxury of time and space to adapt is now missing from the equation. That's what you get with 6.5 soon to be 7, 8 and 10 billion humans. Personally, I say we're doomed before 10 billion. Anyone care to guess when that is projected to happen?
mopled
6 years ago
Belief is what it is about..not science
You just proved what I have been trying to say Fii. No one is denying your experience.
It is the meaning of it that is in question.
It really looks from the evidence that what we are experiencing is part of a cycle within many cycles.
We are on a planet hurling through space and we are just beinning to explore and understand what that means.
To say that our miniscule contribution to a natural process will bring on catastrophe
and then manipulate us by our love of this place and each other ...for profit and to our detriment, is deplorable at best.
We have been sold a bill of goods before. Free trade doesn't seem to be working quite the way we were told it would by the Right.
The Left NDP was on side for that one, but couldn't admit it openly at the time. Heck,Layton and Broadbent in a press scrum after Layton became leader, went on record as saying NAFTA was a good thing.
When all parties are united in Canada. Watch out!
This is yet another swindle.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Yes, but lets keep our eyes on the ball
Fii, yes I think the winters were colder and snowier when I was a kid too, but the question is whether human activity is the cause.
I think it would be fruitful to examine one issue here. Mopled has said that human activity such as burning fuel hydrocarbons contributes about 2% of the total C02 emitted into the atmosphere each year.
I've looked into this a lot, too, and I'm sure that our contribution is somewhat less than 10 per cent.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR THE ANTHROPOGENIC THEORY OF CLIMATE CHANGE IF IT IS TRUE THAT HUMAN ACTIVITY CONTRIBUTES LESS THAN 10 PERCENT?
Well mathematically, it means that of those 35% of C02 increase over the last 100 years, humans are responsible for only 10 of those 100 or so parts per million than C02 prevalence in the atmosphere has increased.
Therefore natural causes are responsible for the vast majority of the C02 increase; therefore the anthropogenic influence of burning fuel hydrocarbons has been vastly exaggerated by the proponents of anthropogenic climate change. Would it not, therefore to look to changes in solar activity for the answer?
So, let's concentrate on being precise about the true percentage of yearly C02 emissions that can be honestly and realistically attributed to the burning of fuel hydrocarbons.
Is it true?
Do humans only contribute 10% of the total C02 emissions?
Who's got sources and documentation?
If Mopled is correct, we can drop the Daniel Wood-type estimations of anthropogenic warming and understand that they are manifestations of presenting temporary weather, even local climate disturbances, for long-term climate change.
If we can get agreement on this true percentage, then the next step will be to try to converge the percentage with the actual percentage of the total greenhouse absorption of total infrared radiation that C02 can be responsible for, with the knowledge that water vapour is responsible for about 90 percent of the absorption of rebounding infrared radiation, and as such is the true greenhouse gas.
If I am following the logic correctly, the result can only be that anthropogenic warming has been vastly and ridiculously exaggerated.
Correct? Or Incorrect?
Truman Green
6 years ago
Oh, and Club of Rome
For a smart guy, you're not making any sense today. What's your point?
Frank
6 years ago
Quote:If I am following the
By whom and to what end?
clubofrome
6 years ago
Truman
Sorry about that, made sense in my mind. Do you read GNN? There's an article there about how human impact has effected climate and or ecosystems. I have doubts that we stop change by reducing certain emmisions, I believe it's a wholesale change in our way society operates. This ain't no carbon tax or greening of the consumer solution, by the way, it's a total stop and rethink. This would have to include a max population which would be ZPG (ZERO population grwth) and then cull the herd. The goal, to get back to 5 billion ASAP. (4 billion would be better) Economies based on ecology phased in, the end of runaway greed for the chance at future generations a hundred and even a thousand years into the future.
So the point is that climate change is just the tip of the melting iceberg. Real food shortages are upon us, species are disappearing. Time to get a handle on things is slipping away... Tick, tick, tick...
G West
6 years ago
Truman
I thought you said it was all about farting cows?
And mopled, that thing about the NDP and Nafta...here's the appropriate section of their campaign literature from the 2006 election:
Truman Green
6 years ago
Did you say "Cull the herd," Clubofrome?
I admit to not at first seeing the words 'Club of Rome' in your handle when I first saw it last year or so, Clubo, (and for which I felt quite foolish), but when I realized that you took the name of the Club of Rome, I wondered if you were an advocate of some or all of the ideas of the Club of Rome.
And certainly 'culling the herd' is foremost among the ideas of this group.
So how would you go about culling the herd, Clubo, and which groups of people do you believe should become immediately eligible for culling?
One of our foremost recent herd cullers, as you know, was Pol Pot, who wanted to take the Cambodian society back to the Middle Ages days of Angkor Wat with his hand-picked chosen few--who would be the survivors of an 88% reduction in the population.
Only the invasion by Vietnam prevented this culling holocaust, for which they have never been properly thanked and recognized by the world community.
Pol Pot managed to cull 3 million of his unlucky citizens while the world watched quietly, pretending that it didn't notice.
Truman Green
6 years ago
More on the Club of Rome
And here's what William Cooper wrote about the Club of Rome. You decide if it's true or not.
http://www.thewatcherfiles.com/cooper/aids.htm
The brain
6 years ago
Hi, Truman. I'll debate your earlier claims!
Got to pick up some mail (hoping some ebay stuff has arrived, :-) so I'll be brief, but you know where I'm coming from, we've been here before, and I'm better briefed since the last time.
So here it is...
Think Milankovich theory. With me so far?
Think depleted ozone. Last winter was the largest hole on record in the north. More radiation, more heat.
Think more CO2. You dismiss its importance. I don't.
Think more methane. I doubt that this gas has been mentioned yet. Its worth noting.
Think ozone radiation that is killing the plankton.
Think deforestation and with it, less chance for carbon to be plucked from the atmosphere.
Its not any one factor, Truman. Its all of them. And the largest one of all is earth's orbit. So here is a brain teaser for you, and its worth taking the time to look for a serious answer. It will tell all as to where this planet is headed.
Noting the eccentricity of earths orbit, (not the up and down wobble that occurs every 40,000 years, or earths axis tilt every 21 to 22,500 years, theorized by Milankovich of course) are we getting closer, or farther from the sun? And when will the distance reverse itself?
Its a brain teaser that tells all. Earths eccentricity is the largest factor that relates to the natural occurance of global warming and cooling.
Someone got an answer? (a correct one please)
Truman Green
6 years ago
Nothing tricky about this, Brain, old friend.
You write: "Earth's eccentricty is the largest factor that relates to the natural occurrence of global warming and cooling."
I haven't written anything which would dispute such a finding.
You might have noticed that I said variations in solar radiation rebounding from the earth's surface as infrared radiation was the primary cause of warming and cooling.
And it's a perfectly reputable theory that variations in the earth's orbit cause fluctuations in the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth.
An interesting and possibly correct theory, Brain, although I suspect that this might have been looked at by astronomers. It wouldn't be particularly difficult to track and correlate the orbit with historical warming and cooling trends.
Has this been done? Maybe I'll email Seth Shostak, with whom I've had several interesting discussions, and ask him. (Okay I admit it...I'm name-dropping here). He's the director of astronomy for SETI.
Truman Green
6 years ago
I'm ready, Brain, go for it.
The googlized wisdom is that the changing distance from the sun is not important because the over all distance from the sun is so great compared to the comparatively small diameter of the earth, and the orbit is actually closer to circular than elliptical anyway so even seasonal variations such as winter and summer are actually more dependent upon the earth's axis than the altering distance between the earth and the sun.
So what do you say? Of course, we do live in an expanding universe...which means that everything is moving away from everything. Is that the current model?
Archimedes
6 years ago
Sorry, Truman
This explains my point better than I can
http://www.physlink.com/education/AskExperts/ae389.cfm
mopled
6 years ago
Look at the link I posted above
to Environment Canada's page on Greenhouse Gasses. Discusses, Nitrous oxide& Methane too. Also points out, as I thought I had emphasised that the total contribution to the yearly production of CO@ from all activities is +- 2%....not 10%, which is far too generous and might be a problem.
Lovely article today in the Winnipeg Sun:
http://www.winnipegsun.com/News/Columnists/Gleeson_John/2007/04/13/4002082.html
War On Terror Looks Like A Fraud
snert
6 years ago
Raw data
A lot of raw data in available from this page. Some of it provides some potential for conflicting conclusions.
Yeoman
6 years ago
This debate is pointless
No matter what the pro GW voices say, the anti's will always reject it for one simple reason: to admit to GW is to acknowledge that growth (read consumption) on earth is not unlimited and that externalities do matter. This admission would require wholesale rejection of the foundation of neoclassical economics. To do so would be anathema to the anti's.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Here's mopled's Environment Canada source
Here's Mopled's Environment Canada source, Yeoman, so please cut the uncalled-for ad hominems and whining. We know there are limits to growth. We're debating whether burning hydrocarbons and emitting C02 is anthropogenically causative of climate change here.
From Mopled's source:
"On a worldwide basis, the anthropogenic emissions of C02 are known o be small. In comparison with the gross fluxes of carbon from natural systems they represent only a fraction (plus or minus 2% of total global emissions, but they are perceived to account for most of the observed accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere."
The statement goes on to describe the natural emissions of C02.
Weird world full of silly people we're living in. Environment Canada says anthropogenic emission of C02 is plus or minus 2% of the total but the deniers claim that it plays a huge role in global warming.
Go figure!
snert
6 years ago
Easy to say.
Yeoman
Be a bit more specific this time. Just how much and what kind of upheaval are you suggesting might occur?
mopled
6 years ago
Yeoman, I'm a truth seeker
I don't give a flying squirrel about being politically correct...so get off the soap box.
When such slimes as Al Gore, Ted Turner and Maurice Strong are the ones selling the disaster scenario, if your antenae don't start quivering immediately...you're gonna have problems with being taken for a ride.
The fact that the bandwagon is lead by the Left Identified Elite is interesting, but it's just the elite screwing us again.
Oh, I just noticed Left Identified Elite spells LIE...neato!
Stump
6 years ago
Slime?
Why exactly are the men you've mentioned slime?
BTW, you can't spell mopled without "dope".
zalm
6 years ago
Ooops!
Truman sez:
Here's a peer-reviewed article that points out that cloud cover does not block solar-sourced long-wave radiation in the Arctic, and in fact increases the temperature through the snow and into the Arctic ice surface.
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel3/36/14284/00655316.pdf?arnumber=655316
Seems to me my (admittedly ancient) texts also said that cloud cover also reflected a lot of ground-generated infrared back to earth, again increasing the warming of the local area. Add all those things to the Brain's notes, and your admission that water vapour is a significant contributor (to cloud-formation, I'll admit) and I'd have to say that your case for global cooling is pretty shaky, Truman.
I'd like to see some calculations on the CO-CO2 reactions, however. It does have a significant impact in my own field (combustion engineering), so if you can point me to an article....
snert
6 years ago
OOPS 2
Zalm
Peer reviewed you say, done with microwaves no less. How about infra-red. That's where the problem lies.
Yeoman
6 years ago
As for being specific, not
As for being specific, not sure exactly what you mean Snert. My point is that "progress" has to be re-framed in something other than GDP. As for Mopled's comment, I second Stump's quirey as to why they are "slime". To back up Zalm on the cloud cover issue - take a look at Venus.
With respect to the issue of relative contribution of co2, it seems like trueman is not familiar with the concept of non-linear relationships. I could change certain chemicals in your body by minute amounts and the effect on your health would be catastrophic. Small perturbations in otherwise stable systems can be significant.
If you really want to score points, explain ocean acidification for me.
snert
6 years ago
Reframed as what?
Yeoman
zalm
6 years ago
Uh, not quite, Snert
Nearly everything that is received by the earth in the way of radiation is re-radiated as infra - you're correct there, and that's where part of the problem lies. Cloud cover insulates that infra from escaping into space, contributing to warming. We have to have some, or we get the wild temperature swings that characterize other planets such as Mars which make Antarctica seem like a day in Hawaii.
But what is received is only partly infra - mostly it's the rest of the spectrum from radio, through micro, UV and visible light down to radio waves (the sun is the biggest source of radio frequency energy, even behind the ionosphere, by many orders of magnitude). And its absorption, first by layers of the atmosphere, and later by the planet, and re-radiated, appears to be what's significantly changed. Reflectance seems to be part of the issue, sez the article.
Truman has already mentioned water vapour (clouds) being another piece of the puzzle, but he didn't say why - I'm not sure why not.
Truman Green
6 years ago
the old C02 tipping point hoax, Yeoman
Yeah, Yeoman, I'm familiar with this little inevitable hoax called tipping point C02. What this actually means Yeoman is that the global swarmers understand that anthropogenic contributions to the total CO2 prevalence in the atmosphere are indeed tiny--around 2 percent.
They've retreated to the position that it's this 2% that tips the homeostatic balance created by the hydrologic water vapour cycle and naturally occurring C02 emission so that it's this 2% that is catastrophic. 2% is more likely to result in a spiking of phytoplankton growth in the oceans and vegetation on land from which oxygen is derived--which is fairly important, as you possibly have noticed.
Unfortunately there are many who believe this total nonsense and what should be the last refuge of a pack of fools and dissemblers of information.
There's no reputable science that explains how or why a 2% contribution to the prevalence of C02 in the atmosphere is catastrophic.
Incidentally, the biggest lie I've ever read about anthropogenic climate change appeared in a CanWest paper week or so ago. Something like: "Scientists say 30% of species will die because of global warming."
2% tipping point C02 is in the same category of hoaxification.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Zalm and Yeoman, I thought...
I thought you guys might have noticed that clouds tend to block solar radiation from reaching the earth, thereby reducing the amount of infrared that can be rebounded.
Maybe try googling: "Clouds block solar radiation."
Truman Green
6 years ago
Five ways to save the earth.
Did you guys see the film, Five Ways To Save the Earth--or the planet--not sure which. It was about saving the place from the new catastrophic global swarming.
If I recall three of he ways were by blocking solar radiation. One was by blasting the water from the oceans into the atmosphere because salt attracts water thereby increaseing the density of cloud cover and blocking more solar radiation.
Another was by shoot aluminum dust into space to divert solar radiation from hitting the earth.
Another was by building fake trees to add to the total sinkification of C02; another was to shoot sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere to block solar radiation.
That's right pollution in the form of smog actually has a cooling effect by blocking solar radiation--a thorny little piece of infomation seldom mentioned b the global swarmers.
(Not that I like pollution.)
And then there was the idea of increasing the really important C02 sinkification (oceans are the biggest C02 sinks) of the oceans by sequestering C02 into them thereby increasing the growth of phytoplankton which absorbs C02 like there's no tomorrow, and incidentally releases oxygen as a waste product--and that's important, eh.
Yeoman
6 years ago
Cloud Obsessed
Haven't seen the film but the ideas are so outlandish as to be laughable: we are going to pollute our way out of this with SOx's??? and salt???. Look out below when that crud falls with the rain. I have to respect your passion Truman but you unfortunately prove the saying "little knowledge is a dangerous thing" Zalm was right on about clouds.
Yeoman
6 years ago
Snert
My point is that anything other than GDP growth is a "recession" and that this automatically cuts off the political / economic options. Such thinking requires a jurisdiction to grow in terms of population/infrastructure/consumption regardless of carrying capacity. Its like saying, on a personal level, "i have to spend more, eat more, make more etc every year" Essentially it mimics the behaviour of an addict that develops a tolerance to their drug.
Yeoman
6 years ago
That Peak Oil Scam
Interesting that the US believes it too:
www.gao.gov/new.items/d07283.pdf
Truman Green
6 years ago
Pretending that I'm in favour of pollution
Pretending that I'm in favour of creating solar-radiation-blocking pollution doesn't add to your respectability as a debater, Yeoman.
It's not difficult for you to find out whether I'm correct or not when I write that sulphur dioxide, a serious culprit in acid rain and pollution has an offsetting effect on C02 infrared radiation.
If you think I'm incorrect, let's see your references. Anything that creates a haze in the sky will block solar radiation from reaching the earth, whether clouds or smog.
Zalm couldn't be 'right on' about clouds because in all respect he doesn't understand the difference between infrared absorption by water vapour and solar radiation-blocking by clouds. Clouds play a multidimensional role in temperature manifestation. They both block (by reflecting), and absorb radiation depending upon the frequency, that is wave-length. It's the infrared part of the spectrum, commonly known as heat, that is absorbed as it leaves the surface of the earth, thereby retaining heat in the atmosphere and theoretically increasing the temperature.
Truman Green
6 years ago
"The US" doesn't believe monolithically
Yeoman, some in the US believe it; others don't, just as many Americans are waking up to the hoaxs of 911, the wars on terror, the wars on drugs, the war in Iraq, the 'fossil fuels' hoax, as well as the pretense that we're running out of oil. If it's true why worry about global warming.
Surely if we're running out of fuel hydrocarbons 'peak oil' will take care of the problem.
There coming catastrophe of global warming will be diminished as the fuel hydrocarbons are depleted, wouldn't you think?
What's wrong with this picture?
Booker
6 years ago
Psychology
Truman wrote (yesterday)
As I mentioned earlier in the comments, I'm less interested in the arguments of the denialists than in the psychology of denialism. The arguments of the global-warming denialists (here on the Tyee comments, in the oil-industry funded think tanks, the American Enterprise Institute, the right-wing media) are illogical, selective, obtained from cranks, and are simply a grab-bag of contradictory statements that, when rebutted, simply morph into something else.
I include the quote above because it completes a "full-house" of denialism: global warming is a lie, 9/11 inside-job, evolution is a lie, and HIV doesn't cause AIDS, that all seem to go together with this kind of thinking.
An acquaintance took me aside one day a couple of years ago, and in low tones described how the WTC was secretly detonated by the government just after the airliners were flown into it. It was my first exposure to the Coven of 9/11, and I was amazed that someone could come up with that idea. At the end of his disclosure he said enthusiastically, "I just love this stuff!" Every time I explained how buildings can easily fall when 767s full of fuel are flown into them at 500 mph he shifted his argument to some other "unexplained" incident. After each item was rebutted he would search his mind for something else that could fit into the conspiracy. He loved conspiracies and wild ideas. It was almost a form of entertainment for him.
I'm not a psychologist or sociologist, but I find this phenomenon to be pretty widespread, and I think, in these times, it needs to be challenged.
mopled
6 years ago
Who pays the Gatekeepers?
The whole "denialist" shtick is a very interesting operation. The word of course, is associated with questioning what did go on in WW2. The next instance of it being used to keep people in line,was by Dr. Mark Wainberg about people who question the HIV hypothesis, which, by the way, Dr. Wainberg profits from enormously. Dr. Wainberg wants people jailed for questioning the HIV hypothesis. Now it's being used to keep us in line with the Big Lie of Global Warming.
Since when is it wrong to question the course of history or the facts of science. To try to block legitimate inquiry by branding the questioners with a label like Denier
smacks of authoritarianism at best and intellectual gangsterism at worst.
G West
6 years ago
Booker
Amen.
Anthough, in some cases, I think that arguing the point simply encourages the phenomenon and permits it to morph into other even more bizarre examples of the pathology.
Reality is, as it were, quite enough to cope with absent the black helicopters and purposeful grey characters sitting behind curtains pulling a series of levers.
Canada has lost, with June Callwood's death, a real hero and someone who spent her life trying to make a difference in the REAL world.
She'll be missed.
Archimedes
6 years ago
Five Ways to Save the World
Not sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere, but sulphur into the stratosphere. Not quite the same as pollution in the form of smog, although smog does have a cooling effect, known as global dimming. For more on the TV programme, see
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/6298507.stm
mopled
6 years ago
War on Terror and Global Warming
“Al Gore and Maurice Strong have made Global Warming the new terrorism,” writes Judi McLeod. “Osama bin Laden, getting by in a cave somewhere in nether regions of Afghanistan-Pakistan will be bypassed, unless he can be caught polluting the environment.”
Ms. McLeod is trying to make funny. But she is closer to the truth than she may realize. It’s not simply Al Gore and Maurice Strong—the latter a United Nations globalist, described as a “cross between Rasputin and Machiavelli,” an adviser to the World Bank, Mr. Earth Summit, a George Soros collaborator—but now Newt Gingrich as well.
Both Gingrich and Kerry “agreed the problem was increasingly urgent, citing a new report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that said rising temperatures and sea levels were linked to the growing quantity of greenhouse gases emitted by cars, power plants, and factories. Without a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, the panel warned, 20 percent to 30 percent of plant and animal species could face extinction,” the Boston Globe continues.
“Gingrich criticized the limit proposed by Kerry and said the senator’s policy was to create a ‘level of pain’ to compel businesses to cut their emissions, whereas he said he wanted to create a ‘level of pleasure’ through tax breaks that would give incentives to polluters to develop new carbon-reducing technologies.”
Of course, the “level of pain” is reserved for us, the peons, the indentured servants, the wage and tax slaves indebted to global government, not the multinational corporations because, as should be obvious, they are behind Gore, Maurice “Machiavelli” Strong, Gingrich, indeed the whole neolib order as it strives to implement the global gulag. Corporations and bankers rule the world, they are not slated for pain levels, as the neocon Gingrich asserts, that’s a fate reserved for the little people, the chumps so effortlessly bamboozled by camp fire stories, be they about Muslim terrorists or melting ice caps."
http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=826
Yeoman
6 years ago
Funny how global warming
Funny how global warming becomes a plot to enslave the masses by the "New World Order" (to use a 90's term). I would look at it from the other side and say the "freedom" you have now is actually the slavery to be socially, politically, culturally and militarily dominated by a petroleum economy (controlled by a verified cartel). Use GW to encourage diversifying, decentralizing and thinking local!
mopled
6 years ago
Under Sea Volcanos Warm Oceans
http://www.iceagenow.com/Ocean_Warming.htm
Pages and pages showing that Ocean Warming is happening because of increased under sea volcanic activity. In fact a great deal of it is being discovered near.....Ta Da.....Greenland.
http://www.iceagenow.com/Volcanoes_in_Arctic_Ocean.htm
How about:
Hot springs found in Norwegian Sea
11 August 2005 – Norwegian researchers have found underwater hot springs – hot enough to sustain coral - in the chilly waters of the
Arctic .
“The researchers were stunned when the mini-sub glided into an
underwater forest featuring pinnacles from which streamed water
nearly 500 degrees F and saw sea life including shrimp, sea spiders,
coral and eel.”
http://science.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_1040716.php/Hot_springs_found_in_Norwegian_Sea
So, Yeoman, tell me how the oil companies are doing it!
G West
6 years ago
Judi McLeod
mopled,
DO you have any idea who Judi McLeod is and what she represents?
I think you need to do a little homework. She and Rachel Marsden are peas in pod, a pod created and designed by the likes of Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin.
Saying Judi McLeod criticizes anyone is like giving the object of her ire a get out of jail free card.
The only place you're going to find her writing is the same neighbourhood where Glen Beck, FoxNews, Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, and folks from The Rant hang out.
Even quoting her as a serious source about anything is a huge mistake. She cut her teeth in a self-published free rag in Toronto during the Mike Harris years that was full of ad hominem attacks on anyone to the left of Attila the Hun and the family that headed the Toronto Police Union. You might also want to do a little search and find out what became of them as well. Nice company.
Next time do a little checking.
Booker
6 years ago
Inguiry
mopled wrote
Legitimate inquiry is what I'm arguing for.
G West wrote:
I think you're right. It's a conundrum -- do we risk fanning the flames by challenging a lie or a fallacy? Sometimes it's best to let sleeping dogs lie, but other times we need to beat back the nonsense.
mopled
6 years ago
Nimmo doesn't know McLeod
He just recognizes the truth of what she's saying...this time. I don't know her either, but sorry G.West/Alcibiades, I think I have more trouble with what you say...I know you!
Booker, maybe it is your definition of what is "legitimate" inquiry that is at fault here. You want us to not only accept a premise that has not been proven...and can't be because it is so silly, but to stay within an artificial boundary of approved sources.
The modus operandi of the Big Lie shows throughout the whole of the Global Warming nonsense. When otherwise intelligent people push a paradigm that is so clearly lunatic, something else is going on....and it ain't science.
Booker
6 years ago
Legitimate
mopled wrote:
Yes, you and I definitely disagree on what "legitimate" means, what a credible source is, what logic is, what the scientific method is, what deduction is, what research is....
mopled
6 years ago
Won't talk about undersea volcanos?
It seems you all would rather discuss my unapproved source for a political opinion, than discuss what may really account for the ice melting in the Arctic.
Sorry, but that is suspicious in itself and an obvious tactic...speaking of denial...by denying the validity and solidity of the research presented. How do you dismiss the validity of Environment Canada as a source when all you offer in return is Realclimate whose founder Michael Mann, creator of the infamous Hockey Stick, won't let anybody see how he did it.... and no one else can reproduce it with the available data.
No, those who question the Big Lie are called Deniers! What sleaze!
The brain
6 years ago
Getting back to you Truman (busy day)
So? lol, it still doesn't dispute this very important fact. I believe we locked horns a while ago with you arguing that the ozone had alot to do with global warming. I argued that it did not. You were right, by the way. Its all about light and gases, yes, but mainly light and if ozone (O3) isn't there to block the suns radiation to the same degree and we get more light! More shorter light waves (gamma, UV, infrared) than we would like that hits CO2, H2, methane, the surface of earth, whatever it can!
Quite right, but it also has to come from the sun (where distance is highly applicable) and get through O3 before light does this.
Closer to the earth, more light (radiation). Farther from the earth, less light. The earths tilt proves it in spades and it appears that Milankovich's theory is correct.
Its has! The Milankovich theory.
It wouldn't be particularly difficult to track and correlate the orbit with historical warming and cooling trends.
It would have been at the time Milankovich did it. And he did it well. I'm normally not a Wiki man, but everything I'd like to show you is here, truman. Some guy/gal took the time to put it together and it gets to the heart of earth's changing environments/climate before man got here. And... it explains some things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
A quick click onto this window spells out something quite relevant in this graph:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vostok_420ky_4curves_insolation.jpg
Essentially, analyzing these graphs indicate that we have CO2 spikes and Methane gas spikes that correlate with the eccentricity of the earths orbit. So its like this. We know that the eccentricity and the spikes and rises of CO2 & Methane are at times where the level of light is at its highest level from the sun to the earth, and while life is at its fullest. Its not as volcanically related as people think on this thread, but rather, life related when it comes to levels of sunlight, CO2 and Methane. And surely, we should know it now. Plankton, tree's and greenery, what does it take for life? Light. And when this planet gets more light, it gets more life. And when the planet gets more life, the life modifies the earths atmosphere.
The brain
6 years ago
Cont.
Two thirds of the history of the surface of planet earth is likely a history of that of a frozen rock. Think Jupiter's moon, Europa, and we've arrived. The continental drift goes back how far? 250 to 350 million years? And the asteroid collisions over time... And what happens to suns as they get older... they get hotter? Brighter? From infancy to elder, our solar system also has its cycles of birth, maturity and death.
We have more light/heat & life, and we have more CO2 and methane produced. And people might think that's great to live in a warmer planet and winters suck and all the rest, but to not think about the earths orbital effects on the earths environment first, before recklessly effecting the earths atmsophere the way we have with fossil fuels... well, that's just plain stupid.
The graph I put up there is also now dated. Epica ice assay's taken over the last 5 years and completed last June indicate through its 3.2 k's of ice just what weve had for atmopsheric gases like the last link I provided, but over 1 million years instead of 400,000 and the eccentric 100,000 year cycle as well as its CO2 and Methane links are just as easily seen. The chart with CO2 Al Gore uses? That's the CO2 and eccentricity line we see on the chart of "an Inconvenient truth".
CO2 rises in the earth's atmosphere at the same time as Earths eccentricity. Earths orbit hasn't always been the same either, (think dinosaur era, KT boundary, astoroid collisions) but it has for the last million years or more, and with a predictable orbit comes predictable light, predictable models for lifes influences on the planet earth's atmoshpere AND...
Look where we are now!!! Look at how much this planet has changed atmospherically over the last 1,000 years... over the last 50 years alone! CO2 & Methane gases have more than doubled since the last million years of historical highs. Thats saying alot!!! Lets just say that if Earths skyrocketing CO2 and methane levels were as high 50, 100, 275, 550 a million years ago as they are today, we would have seen this big huge spike on the charts. None, folks. No big spikes. We've changed the atmosphere of this planet.
If I was Al Gore, I might have used more charts... and he did, but its the timeline charts that he could have used more effectively, I think. Some more explanation on Earths orbit and its present and historical models and their enviromental effects, but that would have been too distracting for the average person. Pictures of oil refineries might work just as well, who knows? But if every 100,000 years or so this planet experiences 100,000 year highs in light, CO2, Methane and therefore "life" and we are experiencing double these highs through the introduction of humanity at the half way point of eccentriicty from buring oil... and us humans can't even decide once and for all whether or not we have any effects on the environment...
Truman Green
6 years ago
Booker, you're too smart for that
Booker, you know darn well the wtc buildings were blown up by some kind explosive energy. Did you notice the top 20 or so storeys of that building explode into dust as it began to tilt back?
Hit by a plane, eh.
Wtc building number seven was not hit by a plane.
Why not stop shilling for the global snakes who did the 911 false flag 'fool the eye' operation and come on board with the people who are interested in the truth.
Planes crashing into buildings make them collapse, eh. How about buildings that collapse even though no planes hit them, like WTC BUILDING NUMBER SEVEN.
WTC building number seven must have collapsed by some kind of sympathetic magic. Shall I repeat:
It wasn't hit by a plane.
It was 'pulled,' as you know very well.
Why not stop pretending that you think those of us who are smart enough to see the truth have some kind of mental illness.
You know better than that, Booker.
More than half the population of the US knows the US government is lying about 911.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Brain, I read it, but...
I read it, Brain, but it seems a bit convoluted. How has human activity affected the eccentricity of earth's orbit, or vice versa? (Mostly vice versa, I might guess. Kidding!)
You mention methane. Do you know how much methane is in the earth's atmosphere? A very tiny amount. It has 23 times the absorption capability of C02, but C02 is 200 times more prevalent.
C02 comprises 360 parts per million. According to environment Canada, anthropogenic contribution to the total 360 parts per million is 2%.
Can you do one concise paragraph outlining the correlation between anthropogenic infrared absorption and the eccentricity of the earth's orbit, Brain?
Ditto for solar radiation and the eccentricity of the earth's orbit?
mopled
6 years ago
Look at this
http://climate.uah.edu/dec2006.htm
Notice how uneven the temperatures are globally.
Notice how much warmer it is in some places than others. How does CO2 manage that trick?
Notice how much warmer the Actic is compared to the Antactic. Gee, that Ol'Devil CO2 just keeps confusing us.
Find similar basic information on Real Climate.
That's your assignment for today. I'm going out to enjoy what little sunshine there is.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Mopled, Booker and G.West up to their...
Mopled, Booker and G.West are up to their usual tricks, trying to divert the discussion from a debate of the claims of the global warmers to gossip about the personalities of the commentors and journalists.
Booker, what do you think it means that Environment Canada says that human activity is responsible for 2% of the total C02 content of the atmosphere and the rest is contributed by natural causes?
Forget whether Charles Manson makes the claim or Environment Canada.
The question is: What does it say about Daniel Woods' Arctic scientists' warnings of impending C02 doom if it is true?
G.West and Booker, why not cut the dissembling routine and contribute something to the discussion besides your insipid gossip about personalities.
Is global warming occurring on other planets in our solar system? If so, what do all the planets have in common.
Hint: Where do they get their solar radiation?
Think hard. But drop the gossip about personalities. (G.West-Alcibiades' specialty)
G West
6 years ago
mopled
Thanks so much for bringing that up again. How it's relevant to the current debate I'm not at all certain. But, since I've nothing to hide and I don't post "authoritative opinions" from folks like Judi McLeod I'll provide the link for anyone else who is interested in G West/Alcibiades so they can inform themselves of the background.
love the advertising, btw.
http://thetyee.ca/Views/Teacherdiaries/2007/02/27/BoyTrouble/
It's the comments thread you're looking for if anyone still cares.
Now. About that "scientific" evidence?
Yeoman
6 years ago
Mopled
Findind a website that puports to explain warming/cooling with subsea volcanic activity doesn't prove anything other than the fact that there is a diversity of opinions out there. Besides, you really need to get past the fact that climate change is not a constant and consistent warming. Finding localized cooling does not prove or disprove anything.
I really would like an answer to as to how the present petroleum era is any more "free" than what may follow.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Oops, that heading sounded as if...
Oops, Mopled, that heading seemed to include you in the list of dissemblers. Sorry. I'm only accusing G.West and Booker of trying to divert the discussion to gossip about personality.
G West
6 years ago
Tricks, Truman
Like inviting people to phone and then refusing their calls when they do.
I don't think I could teach you a thing about tricks my friend.
mopled
6 years ago
Yeoman, the Obscurantist
Here check this one out.
Greenland warming of 1920-1930 and 1995-2005
Geophysical Research Letters, 33, L11707, 13 June 2006, doi:10.1029/2006GL026510.
Abstract:
We provide an analysis of Greenland temperature records to compare the current (1995-2005) warming period with the previous (1920-1930) Greenland warming. We find that the current Greenland warming is not unprecedented in recent Greenland history. Temperature increases in the two warming periods are of a similar magnitude, however, the rate of warming in 1920-1930 was about 50% higher than that in 1995 - 2005.
http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Chylek/greenland_warming.html
So not only has Greenland warmed before in living memory, but it was also more intense.
Now, I am out of here, so the disinfo activities and the attacking of the messenger can continue in peace.
SharingIsGood
6 years ago
Skeptics of GW - Burn in Hell
I have read quite a number of peer-reviewed journal articles about global warming. I believe global warming to be true, and something we must prepare for. Can't we do that instead of creating and fighting wars all of the time. Can't the millitary industrial complex change its focus to fight a three-front war against global warming, environmental degredation and world hunger instead? I fear that even those questions are not enough to change many people's thinking. There are still many skeptics found in the world and, indeed, they exist at The Tyee.
It has been my observation that Scientific American has moved a bit more toward making topics in science accessible to the masses (even though it is a good deal more glossy than what one found 3+ decades ago). However, they still seem to be committed to presenting and advancing truth as nearly as it can be distilled with our own myopic (human) lenses. The following link leads to an article about a global warming blog that was created by George Musser. The blog is/was an attempt to compile the arguments of global warming skeptics (GW skeptics - if you will). In the future, Mr. Musser hopes to write about his findings related to those arguments - whether they agree or disagree with global warming. He provides a cornucopia of naysaying. In the event that you are a GW naysayer, you can find a fairly complete list from the link in the article to help yourself feel cool as the oceans rise, the deserts spread, diseases proliferate, and extreme weather events (hurricanes - tornadoes) increase in amounts roughly proportionate to rising planet temperatures.
http://blog.sciam.com/index.php?title=are_you_a_global_warming_skeptic&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
Here is link to Skepticism.net to further help you naysayers. Perhaps you can use some of the information to continue your ostrich-like behaviour so that we may all have a sampling of hell on earth.
http://www.skepticism.net/faq/environment/global_warming/index.html
G West
6 years ago
Pardon me?
You're talking about "insipid" gossip?
snert
6 years ago
Yeoman
I didn't ask for an explanation I asked for your suggestions to replace this system. Like I said originally, "easy to say" but what is the antithesis? Just stopping will leave a horrendous vacuum.
SharingIsGood
6 years ago
Why don't we work toward sharing?
Snert asks/says:
Rather than using the fruits of our labours to build bombs, tanks, bigger houses, more big-box stores and more shopping malls, why don't we use the system that is to improve the lives of the poor and starving. Instead of building huge houses and stores filled with unnecessary things, we could be building schools and fresh water systems. Instead of capital being spent upon things that people don't really need, it could be spent on helping others procure the things they need while we begin implementing strategies 1) to reduce our dependence on burning carbon-based products: coal, oil, wood, ethanol etc., and 2) to reduce the consumption of meat and fish. We could find ways to consume less of the planet (and poison it less in the process). We could become less selfish. We could learn to share!
The brain
6 years ago
Back to you, Truman!
It hasn't. You're extrapolating... or something, lol.
Yes, Truman, I think you are correct... but some methane here, some H2O there, some CO2, less O3 and more/less light do to orbital proximity of the sun and it all adds up!!! Kind of like the old expression, "if you look after the pennies, the dollars take care of themselves." Ok, I'm extrapolating here now, lol.
Its not just any one thing, Truman, we know this. Its the combination of all things, but the real point I'm trying to make here is that the orbital variations of the Earth are not quite as responsible for the warming trend of this planet at this present time. If it was 40 to 50 thousand years from now, I'd say eccentricity is directly responsible but its not. It is atmospheric changes that are leading to global warming more than any other factor right now. Eccentricity being the greatest factor of all in glacial formation and melts, simply isn't a factor here at this present point in time and the charts in the links provided prove it.
I'd really question this statistic's accuracy in terms of application. If its human breath were dealing with, that's one thing. But if its the human choices to burn oil, natural gas and wreck the ozone the rates we've been at it, that's quite another. Human choices have doubled the CO2 content of the atmoshpere, Truman, not by mere breath... but by environmental influences do to industry.
Lets quickly define Anthropogenic, shall we? Anthropogenic is Human, rather than natural (some still hold out for both being one and the same) causes to environmental change. So in answer to your question, humans do not effect earths orbit. But humans do effect the levels of O3, CO2 and CH4. These levels effect the amounts of shortwave light (radiation) penetrating the trophosphere, atmoshere and surface that collide with surface and greenhouse gases, having a direct effect on global warming/cooling trends. Are humans causing our current global warming trend?
By a hell of alot more than 2%!!!
Cheers
mopled
6 years ago
Don't let the facts bother you Brain
The amount of CO2 in the air is agreed upon, the whole of human activity's contribution to it is also agreed upon. Look it up yourself will you. Stop speculating because it is not about intuition, it's about basic science.
Jeesh!
Fii
6 years ago
Cute idea, G West
I checked out that link- pretty creative. However, I wouldn't really look to the Japanese for ideas on saving the environment; they're probably one of the more wasteful societies in the world, with their electronic gadgets that are upgraded and replaced every year or so. Their landfills must be a site... and most of the Japanese women I know aren't really in need of what the site was advertising. As a shopping bag, yeah... but otherwise...
SharingIsGood
6 years ago
Cost of one Tomahawk cruise
Cost of one Tomahawk cruise missle:
$1.4 - 2 million US
http://www.softwar.net/bgm109.html
cost of one treadle pump for irrigation:
about $100 US
http://www.hrwallingford.co.uk/projects/IPTRID/grid/g8tread.htm
The above articles are both a little dated, so the costs for both items may have changed, but even being conservative (a good general rule of accounting) one could buy 10,000 treadle pumps for the same price as one cruise missle! If we, the "haves", used our resources carefully, we could help all the people on the planet feed and clothe themselves without really changing our lifestyles (except that many of the haves would be paid to produce things of true value instead of things of destruction).
G West
6 years ago
Oh I know Fii
Just seemed that sometimes a smile is a good idea too.
I do think getting rid of all the plastic bags would be a good idea though - except that's not a very practical alternative...for either use - as you point out.
LOL
Yeoman
6 years ago
So Snert, Mopled etc, lets
So Snert, Mopled etc, lets just say that, against your wishes, western civilization embraces GW and starts to change life, industry, energy etc. Paint a picture for me of what this will result in. What will life in BC look like in 2050?
Yeoman
6 years ago
Snert - my alternatives
How about efficiency, durability, and working towards total re-use of goods? Living at a slower pace. Learning real things rather than what the latest celebrity scandal is. Placing value on conservation rather than consumption. Total cost accounting. Greater reliance on the local rather than global. Appreciating life, nature, and family. Measuring human worth not by what one aquires but rather by what one gives.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Brain, old buddy, this is not true; in fact...
I feel a little bad telling you, brain, but this sentence is, well, uh, ahem...uh, just jibberish, and has nothing to do with science or logic--or climate change, or in fact, anything.
"But humans do effect the levels of 03, C02 and CH4. These levels effect the amounts of shortwave light (radiation) penetrating the troposphere, atmosphere and surface that collide with surface and greenhouse gases, having a direc effect on global warming/cooling trends."
Let's deconstruct this mess.
You say that the levels of ozone, carbon dioxide and methane effect the amounts of light penetrating the troposphere.
Not true. Of the three only ozone blocks solar radiation. C02 and methane affect the amount of infrared that remains in the atmosphere after it has left the surface of the earth, but they do not reflect or block solar radiation.
You claim: "These levels (of CO2, CH4 and 03)effect the amounts of ...light that penetrate the atmosphere and collide with...greenhouse gases.
Brain, sorry but this is a rampant tautology. You're saying greenhouse gases effect the amount of light that collides with greenhouse gases.
Which is not, well, uh...sensible. Your feedback loops are going a bit mad, wouldn't you say. As a matter of fact, if we had to rely on such chaotic, infinite and contingent complexity, we wouldn't be able to come up with a single reliable suggestion about the nature of climate, or weather, or even language.
Not saying that everything doesn't change everything. Just that we'll have to wait for the next science era and the UNIFIED
THEORY of EVERYTHING before we can evaluate some of your more exotic relationships.
Know what I mean?
mopled
6 years ago
How about stopping this mess
Instead of messing around with the levels of a beneficial gas, why don't we get the military to stop this.
http://imageevent.com/firesat/strangedaysstrangeskies?z=3&c=4&n=1&m=-1&w=4&x=0&p=14
Canada should get out NATO and NORAD, then we might get our clear skies back.
Global Warming is being used both as an excuse to blanket our skies with toxic Barium, Aluminum and ghastlies like red blood cells and as a diversion from real problems. Maybe if we weren't being scared to death over nothing, we'd raise our eyes occasionally and notice what's going on.
mopled
6 years ago
By the way
Chemtrail spraying started in 1998.
Who was the Vice President of the United States at that time?
Not a slime?
Then pair him with our own Maurice Strong who has been a champion of drastic population reduction for close to 40 years, and I wonder if we see a chance of seeing 2050.
Jonagold
6 years ago
Was it Kipling?
A lot of these denialists (good word, by the way!) remind me of the Kipling (I think) story about the five blind men and the elephant. They grasp one piece of the story and try to extrapolate. It's poor logic and intellectual laziness.
They say that since Mars is also warming, Earth's warming can't be caused by human activity. They say that some warming is caused by solar activity, which means no warming is caused by human activity. They point to small bits of science here and there that may, when taken in a certain light, run counter to the overwhelming evidence against their position, and argue that it's really more important. And they point to unanswered questions as proof that their own conspiracy theory is unquestionable.
I am curious: why do the deniers put their faith in these small bits of possibility instead of the overwhelming evidence? It's weird -- almost religious.
It is, of course, entirely within the realm of possibility that the denialists are right and the overwhelming bulk of the global scientific community are wrong. We're walking into unknown territory, of course.
But those aren't good odds. When push comes to shove, I'll put a lot more faith in the world's learned scientific community than I do in some wingnuts on a website.
Jonagold
6 years ago
Screwloosechange
And hey, Truman. You really ought to watch the screwloosechange video. It does debunk a lot of the wild-eyed assertions of the loose change video you seem to be so fond of, its own poor reasoning notwithstanding.
snert
6 years ago
Most done today already.
Yeoman
One has to have something to give. What are you suggesting, life becoming one big potlatch?
You haven't proposed (I use the term loosely) anything practical or realistic, for that matter, that isn't already being done by some if not many. You seem to be bent on creating Utopia.
How do you plan on turning your fantasies into reality for 6.4 bln people? That's the question, not where will we be in 2050.
mopled
6 years ago
It is amazing to watch the washed
brains operating around here.
Jonagold, you might have a point if it were only Mars heating up along with Earth, but it is also Jupiter,Saturn, Pluto and moons of Neptune and Saturn.
Again I post the information.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/05/global-warming-on-jupiter.html
Jonagold
6 years ago
So?
You have a pile of, say, 10 pebbles on one side of you. You have a pile of, say 10,000 skull-side boulders on the other. Which has greater weight?
Agreeing that the boulders are of greater weight doesn't deny the existence of the pebbles, but the pebbles will never outweigh the boulders.
I do so enjoy the denialists arguing that those of us who have listened to people who know what they are talking aboutare somehow brainwashed. Yet those selfsame denialists are absolutely taken by a few selected facts thrown in the way.
Again, I'll ask: why do the denialists ignore the overwhelming evidence which argues against their theory, choosing to focus only on the small amount of evidence to the contrary?
mopled
6 years ago
Because there is none!
What overwhelming evidence are you talking about. The evidence hasn't even been presented yet...just the POLICY STATEMENT!
And since other portions of the Solar System are also warming, I want to know who is driving the SUVs on Pluto?
Jonagold
6 years ago
Where have you been?
They've been talking about climate change for 20 years. You can't really believe the IPCC report is the be-all and end-all, can you? It's the latest statement in a discussion that's been happening for decades.
Truman Green
6 years ago
You just invented this Janagold:
"...loose change video you seem to be so fond of."
I've never seen the loose change video so how could I be 'so fond' of it.
Most people have dropped the strawman technique, but not you, I see.
I've never expressed any fondest for the loose change video, Jonagold.
Jeez, with all the stuff I've said about 911 you'd think you might be able to choose something I actually said to ridicule.
mopled
6 years ago
And climate is always changing
30 years ago, the scare was we'd be in a new Ice Age now...we've been through all this.
Read the thread before you pile in with the same old same old. Read the references before you assume the media blitz we are being subjected to is anything but just that!
Truman Green
6 years ago
What was that about the rocks again?
What was that about the rocks again?
Thanks for explaining that. If I had known that the little pebbles will never outweight the big pebbles I would have just admitted that I'm wrong about everything.
Here's a question for you:
Environment Canada says that humans are only responsible for 2% of the of C02 in the atmosphere. That 98% of it is derived from natural causes.
If this is true how can the arctic heroes Daniel Woods interviewed for this article be trusted when they claim that we're on the verge of a global catastrophe that we're causing my emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? None of the subjects Woods interviewed made an overt claim that we're responsible for the preponderance of C02 emissions, but I'm suggesting that they'd be happy if the gullible would make that connection.
And maybe no more pebbles and boulders stuff in your reply, if you don't mind.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Just figured it out, Mopled.
Guess what? I just figured it out. These denialists didn't learn their fractions in grade 4. The teachers somehow just let them pass without knowing what percentages mean.
So when they hear that the temperature has risen somewhere (depending on whose study) between 23% of 1 degree and 2 degrees over the last one hundred years, they don't know what that means. They think it means half or something.
And they don't know what a hundred means, because anyone with even 2% of a working brain would know that humans will have no trouble adapting to a 1 degree increase in temperature over the next one hundred years.
These people are so gullible it's beyond belief.
People!
1 degree over a hundred years means nothing. Some human beings are smart enough to adapt, eh.
Anyways, I'm glad the global swarmers have finally dropped the Polar Bear crap.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Here's another one for you, Janogold...
From Daniel Woods' article:
Woods' "Henry" apparently: "...knows the soil is warming. The permafrost , located just 30 centimetres below the ground's surface is rapidly melting, too. The hardy polar plants now grow bigger, flower earlier and produce more seeds. The grassy plants get woodier. New species move in. More bees come. There's more forage for the island's musk ox, too."
Read further in the essay and Woods' Henry says: 10% of the earth's animals will go extinct. For animals adapted to cold climate, things are more dire.
IN A WARMER WORLD, THERE'S NO PLACE TO HIDE." (Truman's emphasis)
So, Janogold, what's wrong with this picture.
Okay, I'll tell you. Woods' "Henry" details how the plants and animals are adapting to a warmer world, then claims that: "For animals adapted to cold climate, things are more dire."
No place to hide apparently.
Some of these critters have been around for millions of years. (Ice Ages, warmings, the whole nine yards)
Guess how?
They adapted.
Jonagold
6 years ago
Adapted
Species have adapted because change has occurred over tens of thousands of years. We're talking about climate change over a hundred years. Things don't adapt that fast. They go extinct.
It's not about the warming of the planet. The climate changes naturally. It's the speed at which the change is occurring.
mopled
6 years ago
Speed?
Not even 1 degree C over 100 years you call speed?
It is really hard to believe that we can even be discussing this...but that is the nature of the Big Lie.
A Big Lie is so big, so contrary to every day experience, that people just can't believe that it isn't true, especially when there is so much authority backing it the lies.
G West
6 years ago
The denialists are definitely into big lies
In the end it boils down to people who aren't scientists calling scientists like Greg Henry names. Largely because, and forgive me but I can't avoid this conclusion, the GW denialists really have a congenital attraction to the 'idea' that conspiracies are rampant in this culture.
I think Wood's journalism is a little lacking in precision and scientific detail and I'd have been a lot happier if the links to Henry's research provided something more concrete, but, on the question of the effects of whatever's happening in the far North, I think I'll take Greg Henry's testimony as being considerably more valuable than mopled's and Truman Green's.
But that's just me. Others may want to listen to a couple of internet google-meisters as scientific authorities.
I think I'll accept that a 6 degree Centigrade increase since 1970 in the average winter temperature in the far reaches of the Canadian Arctic as measured by someone who's been there as slightly more reliable evidence.
OK
mopled
6 years ago
What's this? Chopped herring?
Read it!
The American Geophysical Union is not is not a conspiracy site and Mr. Henry has seen the second Greenland warming of the 20th Century, not the Apocolypse.
http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Chylek/greenland_warming.html
iv) The Greenland warming of the 1995-2005 period is similar to the warming of 1920-1930, although the rate of temperature increase was by about 50% higher during the 1920-1930 warming period.
[19] v) There are significant differences between the global temperature and the Greenland temperature records within the 1881-2005 period. While all the decadal averages of the post-1955 global temperature are higher (warmer climate) than the pre-1955 average, almost all post-1955 temperature averages at Greenland stations are lower (colder climate) than the pre-1955 temperature average.
[20] An important question is to what extent can the current (1995-2005) temperature increase in Greenland coastal regions be interpreted as evidence of man-induced global warming? Although there has been a considerable temperature increase during the last decade (1995 to 2005) a similar increase and at a faster rate occurred during the early part of the 20th century (1920 to 1930) when carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases could not be a cause. The Greenland warming of 1920 to 1930 demonstrates that a high concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is not a necessary condition for period of warming to arise. The observed 1995-2005 temperature increase seems to be within a natural variability of Greenland climate. A general increase in solar activity [Scafetta and West, 2006] since 1990s can be a contributing factor as well as the sea surface temperature changes of tropical ocean [Hoerling et al., 2001].
[21] The glacier acceleration observed during the 1996-2005 period [Rignot and Kanagaratnam, 2006] has probably occurred previously. There should have been the same or more extensive acceleration during the 1920-1930 warming as well as during the Medieval Warm period in Greenland [Dahl-Jensen et al., 1998; DeMenocal et al., 2000] when Greenland temperatures were generally higher than today. The total Greenland mass seems to be stable or slightly growing [Zwally et al., 2005].
[22] To summarize, we find no direct evidence to support the claims that the Greenland ice sheet is melting due to increased temperature caused by increased atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. The rate of warming from 1995 to 2005 was in fact lower than the warming that occurred from 1920 to 1930. The temperature trend during the next ten years may be a decisive factor in a possible detection of an anthropogenic part of climate signal over area of the Greenland ice sheet.
Copyright 2006, American Geophysical Union.
ov
6 years ago
Comment 231 in this thread
Quote from Archimedes comment #111938
Skimmed through because I was wondering how none of the other topics had any comments in them. The quoted incident made it worthwhile though. Then instead of doing the forehead slap and admitting to a brain fart, Truman Green goes on to defy the Archimedes principle, losing any credibility to scientific reason that he might have had. Un frigging believable.
Quote from Yeoman comment #111934
We have a bingo. Give the man a purple jelly bean, hell give him a whole bag of purple beans.
I'm pleased to meet you two and hope to hear from you on the boards.
zalm
6 years ago
Truman
You need stop googling and read some books. My Collins Stellar Astrophysics and Chaisson's Astronomy both agree that infra is less than half of the total output of the sun, that most of the atmosphere is transparent to most forms of radiation, with a substantial exception being infra (clouds). A lot of energy continues to get to the surface regardless of whether or not there are clouds.
You seem remarkably sure of yourself that warming is a myth. Considering how rough the science is on both sides, I would think you'd be considerably more cautious. It's OK to be hard on Gore and his film, but you're going psycho on people who have a reasonable scientific/technical background, who aren't grinding axes, and who want to have a conversation based on facts. And you're clearly guessing.
And you're calling them names. Don't you think you should be a little more cautious?
snert
6 years ago
Jonagold
Because the "overwhelming evidence" points only to one thing, a warming planet. Everything and I mean everything else including the degree to which the factors contribute is open to speculation.
All it takes is one small amount of significant evidence to the contrary to blow the whole thing out of the water but if everybody stops looking for it then we could be just as doomed as if the pessimists are right.
You are absolutely certain that nothing has been overlooked and this is the very first time in history that a scientific consensus is absolutely correct?
Must be nice to go to church on Sundays and let the priest do all the thinking for you for the rest of the week.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Zalm, you're hallucinating..
I've never mentioned the words 'Al Gore' or 'An Inconvenient Truth' on this thread.
So how could I have been hard on either Gore or the film?
You quoted me as saying: "Clouds play a multidimensional role in temperature manifestation. They both block (by reflection) and absorb....."
And: "It's the infrared part of the spectrum (commonly known as heat) that is absorbed as it leaves the surface of the earth...."
What did I write in the paragraph which you quoted that you believe is incorrect?
Or did you just quote me for effect?
Now let me ask you this: Do you believe that Daniel Woods' scientists went to the Arctic to find evidence of global warming or to find the truth about global warming?
Did you read the Woods' article? Can you sense an agenda here? Exaggeration perhaps?
Incidentally, I went along with the global swarmers as recently as a few months ago, until I started searching for evidence and soon discovered that the so-called scientists who support it always leave out the offsetting of their evidence by ignoring cooling effects such as evaporation and blocking of solar radiation by pollution and clouds,
and the vast role played by water vapour.
And most weirdly of all: By pretending that the anthropogenic contribution to the total C02 content of our atmosphere is orders of magnitude higher than it actually is.
The vast preponderance of C02 in our atmosphere is derived from natural sources.
Environment Canada says our contribution is 2%.
And, heaven forbid, they hate acknowledging that a degree or two of temperature increase over a hundred year period just might have some benefit.
Just one obvious thing: If it gets a bit warmer, we might need less fuel hydrocarbons to heat our homes and buildings of all types.
Crops might be grown where it's now too cold.
And 'ov' you should try looking up: "If the icebergs melt will the sea level rise."
The answer is 'no' and I've explained exactly why.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Who said warming is a myth?
Zalm, I didn't say warming is a myth. Like taxes and death, warming and cooling in the long term are here to stay, at least until the sun burns up its allowance of hydrogen and can no longer do the fusion we depend upon for the existence of the heavier elements, particularly carbon, upon which all life is based.
All I am saying is that the current slight warming trend is not catastrophic; that C02 could never do what it is being accused of; that water vapour is the greatest 'greenhouse' gas and it has conveniently been omitted from the current batch of climate models; that there will be some temporary benefit to global warming in the order of one or two percent per century; that the unidimensional climate change claims of the global swarmers are offset by the hydrologic cycle and the amazing reality that homeostasis continues to balance the effects of 'greenhouse' absorption, if not the minds of the exaggerators.
Yeoman
6 years ago
Why "denialist"?
Much has been made by the anti forces about how the term "GW denialist" is prejudicial and is contrary to encouraging debate. However, in reading the sum of this thread I think it appropriate. Unlike genuine scientific sketicism, the anti-GW voices opertate by saying everything is wrong and concede nothing. The global political-scientific conspiracy allegation doesn't help either. As for mopled and his chemtrails, I can make you a great tinfoil hat.
If the anti forces were genuine scientists, they would be GW agnostics - they would believe it given the right evidence. I suspect nothing will ever be enough - even when their home is getting flooded out or burned by a wildfire.
Yeoman
6 years ago
Still looking for an answer
No one has answered my question regarding life in BC in 2050. How will "bogus GW measures" affect our lives?
Yeoman
6 years ago
Falseman Green
Three basic mistakes:
1)Melting permafrost will result in more co2 release, result in loss of all most all houses, roads, pipelines etc. Re-vegetation will not help that.
2)Icebergs come from glaciers (that are on land), melting equals more sea water and higher levels. Who cares about Archimedes then?
3)More crops require more water-that in North America mostly comes from snowpacks.
mopled
6 years ago
Do you suppose?
Global Warming Alarmists in Media Ignore Freezing Fire Hydrants in Alaska
April 5, 2007 A rather inconvenient truth occurred in late March that went totally unreported by the global warming alarmists in the media.
On the very day that soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore was informing Congress of the planet’s imminent doom, the Anchorage Daily News reported that this winter has been so cold there that fire hydrants are exploding.
A cold spell last November, plus a too-cold March, drove frost deeper than usual in Anchorage this winter, down to about nine feet, which is just one foot above the official burial depth of city water pipes.
Pipes buried 10 feet underground are freezing all around the city, according to the Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility.
But even as spring slunk into town, fire hydrants popped out of the ground Monday and Tuesday nights and sent water flowing into buildings. And the spurs that lead to houses -- which property owners are responsible for -- are freezing around the city.
"Everything in town is freezing up faster than we can keep it thawed out," said Larry Libby, owner of Libby Thawing Service, who was out trying to get a main line flowing on Fort Richardson on Tuesday.
November's weather lies at the heart of the problems this month. November is generally one of Anchorage's snowiest months, said National Weather Service meteorologist-in-charge Bob Hopkins. The snow insulates the ground. But in fall 2006, there was virtually none until December.
On top of that, November temperatures averaged a low of 5 and a high of 18, versus the normal average high of 28, according to National Weather Service data. The frost deepened and the stage was set for frozen pipes in the spring.
This year's freeze isn't the worst ever -- that was 10 years ago, when the frost reached about 13 1/2 feet deep, Libby said.
Hmmm. So the worst-ever freeze was ten years ago? I thought the globe has been warming for the past century?
Facts certainly are a stupid thing, aren’t they? Maybe folks like Gore and his not so merry band of alarmists should try them sometime.
Of course, that wouldn't fit with the agenda being driven, would it? After all, if we want Americans to believe the globe is warming, we certainly wouldn't want to report the parts of the planet that are actually colder than usual, would we?
Conversely, if this were the mid-70s, and the fear-mongering was an imminent ice age, do you think exploding fire hydrants in Alaska would have been headline news?
America's Media Motto: We Only Report What Fits Our Agenda!
What a disgrace!
Truman Green
6 years ago
90% of the world's ice is in the Antarctic
90% of the world's ice is in the Antarctic, which has 8% more ice now than it did 30 years ago. The Antarctic, particularly the easter section, is getting colder.
Remember, we're talking GLOBAL here. The antarctic's on this planet, eh.
Another little inconvenient truth.
Booker
6 years ago
Scientists
Truman wrote:
I don't doubt your sincerity when you say you are interested in "the truth". However, all I see in you is a disposition to believe in far-out ideas over what you call "the establishment" or "consensus". Also, as I have known scientists all my life, and have several in my family, I find your blanket condemnation of them, and of what they do, to be a discredit to your positions.
Quoting you from the Mair article on global warming:
To me this shows a propensity to discount any argument made by scientists, hardly and attitude of truth-seeking.
But the bottom line is that your arguments are so poor that it's hardly worth the energy to counter them.
Perhaps you are just a part of "the Age of Aquarius":
http://photoninthedarkness.blogspot.com/2007/04/age-of-unreason.html
Yeoman
6 years ago
Funny how the anti's are
Funny how the anti's are avoiding getting to the heart of the matter and really disclosing what the adgenda is. No one can argue with that kind of passion over abstract "scientific bankrupcy". Like I have said many times, what are you afraid of? How will combatting GW (real or imagined) affect you????? Why protesteth so hard?
mopled
6 years ago
$1.7 Billion
is what is in this years US budget for climate science. Now I don't begrudge the money,since it is far better spent on trying to figure out how the planet works than spending it on its destuction via the military. But it is still an enormous amout of money, and perhaps in order to justify it there needs to be some crisis or other.
Booker feels that it is pointless arguing points the consensus has declared to be written in stone, but before you leave Booker answer this:
Why, when other planets are warming too, does man-made CO2 get the blame here on Earth?
Why, when undersea volcanos are discharging gases heated to between 4-500C in areas where Arctic Ice is melting is man-made CO2
blamed instead?
Why, when Europe has experienced warming trends before which then were balanced by cooling trends...before the industrialization of Europe...is man-made CO2 blamed for the minor over-all warming trend now?
Why, when the portion of the yearly production of CO2 by human activity is +-2% of the whole
are we made to feel that we are guilty,, guilty, guilty?
It is very peculiar, wouldn't you agree?
When presented by such an illogical conclusion that man-made CO2 is leading to catastrophe, one then has to ask..
CUI BONO...or Who Benefits?
So before you depart this conversation, please attempt an answer to my very valid questions.
Yeoman, G.West...any takers?
mopled
6 years ago
Sorry I'm not a boomer
Another hypothesis shot to hell, eh Yeoman?
As to your question which is essentially why not do the right things for the wrong reason, I think it is because one wastes a great deal of talent, energy, resources and money when galloping off in the wrong direction.
We have plenty of problems which need solutions. If we spend time and money solving a fake problem there is so much less available for the real....a convenient oversight.
G West
6 years ago
Who benefits?
Good question.
There are plenty of things that need investigating - not least the current fascination with turning food into ethyl alcohol when the planet hasn't been able to meet its grains and rice supply needs without dipping into stored reserves for many of the last 10 years; not least the criminal fact that international travel for business reasons is still a deductible expense in an age when electronic video conferencing is a perfectly viable alternative; when tariff barriers and subsidy fences tend to discourage indigenous agriculture and local trade.
There are real substantial problems and misalignments of effort that need to be addressed - lots of them.
Instead, so much denial effort is being put into a succession of pointless quibbles about 6 degrees C in the Canadian Arctic and whether or not it's snowing in Antarctica.
In my view, it's just the same kind of sloppy thinking that imagines George Bush directed those planes on their flight into the WTC.
Ask the folks who live in this part of India about who's imagining things:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/11/world/asia/11india.html
Folks in the Sundarbans sure aren't benefiting, are they?
I think this is one case where engaging in this debate actually diffuses positive efforts. Therefore, it’s irresponsible to even participate and I’m simply not going to bother any longer.
I see the Green Party has just rejected Kevin Potvin’s candidacy because of some of his crackpot statements surrounding 9/11 eh!
Truman Green
6 years ago
Alcibiades-G.West
Sounds like you're shutting down the thread.
All 'pointless quibbles,' eh. And debating in issue 'diffuses positive efforts'.
Too late for that kind of nonsense, G.West. We already know you're an extremely intelligent person. So stop feigning stupidity.
So you think this issue is not worth debating and you're leaving.
Bye.
mopled
6 years ago
Potvins Statements
seem to have been about "they had it coming".
Otherwise he's onside with the OFICIAL CONSPIRACY THEORY.
The OCT has magic unburned passports found a few blocks away and kerosene fires turning buildings to toxic dust.
Magic! Moslem Magic!
Still no takers on the fact vs fiction of what is resposible for the .6% average warming over 100 years?
I guess you're all sticking with the Magic CO2 Theory of Ultimate Doom!
Truman Green
6 years ago
Yeah, Mopled, weird how they found those
Weird how they found those hijackers' passports which came through the infernos that melted steel but couldn't burn paper.
As I said before (and copied from someone else, as I do now), they should have made the planes' black boxes out of that same paper. The black boxes were all rendered (apparently) useless by the fires.
But not those special indestructible passports.
snert
6 years ago
Pretty weak example
G West
What is happening there would happen no matter what. The area is an unstable river delta for god's sake. Nothing stays the same.
"Certainly nature would have forced these islands to shift size and shape, drowning some, giving rise to others. But there is little doubt, scientists say, that human-induced climate change has made them particularly vulnerable."
Yeoman
6 years ago
A false crisis, Mopled ?
Sorry, that motivation doesn't hold water as being the real reason to promote global warming hypothesis. To claim that the US government, that is beholden to the petroleum industry would do that is preposterous. To even say the words GW in official US government documents was, until recently, basically outlawed.
Considering what has been spent on Iraq so far ($500 billion?) and on very dubious grounds and a trumped up "crisis", are you putting a proportional effort into opposing that debacle?
Your statement about being made to feel guilty is rather interesting, though. It reflects well on my earlier musings about acceptance of GW as being personally difficult for anti's. Do you have guilt?
So if $1.7billion is spent per year for the wrong reasons what will this result in? What will life look like in 2050?
BC Dude
6 years ago
As we happily blog BC Mining
As we happily blog BC Mining with Campbell's and Harper's ble$$ing is supplying the war machine with this
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=WEB20070403&articleId=5258
Shame on US for allowing this travesty of "War Crimes Against Humanity" to continue!
I just watched the SunRun with 54,000+ people participating, great! Maybe the reason for all this cancer and all other worsening diseases check out www.globalresearch.ca ?
So why is it that WE can't get that many or more to come out for a World Peace March? = Apathy
mopled
6 years ago
You twisted what I was saying
Yeoman. I was intimating that perhaps in order to keep the money flowing, climate scientists have a vested interest in the doom scenario.
You tried to create a diversion from my basic question, which is, why when other factors are unquestionably greater, ie, periodic warming and cooling not under our control proven by the warming simultaneously elsewhere on other planets. right now, and it's happened before in Greenland in living memory, etc.,
is CO2 given prime place as the cause?
When a faulty thesis is pushed by a massive public relations exercise before the facts are out for free examination, SOMETHING VERY ODD IS GOING ON.
You are the one with the conspiracy theory here....that it is the oil companies who are trying to muddy the information waters.
Actually, Shell and BP are onside having lined up their ducks on solar and nuclear a long time ago and recently another oil company climbed on board publicly...I think it began with a P.
I suppose you would say they saw the light of truth blazing through. I say, with that much money to invest, they should be right in there trading in carbon credits.
Two of the biggest Wall Street brokerage houses have just announced they will go into carbon trading.
Get ready to be suckered into another Commodities Market. As Ed Deek pointed out, they'll run it up and then dump it when they can't hold back the truth because it just might get cold again.
Suckers just meant to be skinned!
G West
6 years ago
Can't you read?
But there is little doubt, scientists say, that human-induced climate change has made them particularly vulnerable."
G West
6 years ago
more
January 8, 2006
A Paradise Drowning
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
When President Bush visits India next month, he should add a whistle-stop at this gorgeous chain of tropical islands southwest of India, for they are a window into the future if we continue to spew carbon into the environment.
These palm-lined islands, where colored fish and small sharks play in the coral reefs, are a paradise. But old-timers point to myriad changes wrought by the rising seas, and the government is already moving some inhabitants from the lowest atolls to those that are a bit more elevated.
Alas, the high point in this entire nation of 1,200 islands is only eight feet above sea level. So people here worry that eventually the entire nation may have to move, making the Maldives perhaps the first country in the world to be destroyed by global warming. (Tuvalu and Kiribati, both small Pacific island nations, are other contenders for the title of the first modern nation to be drowned.)
''There is a realistic threat that we could be the first environmental refugees in the world,'' said Mohamed H. Shareef, the chief government spokesman.
He notes that some scientific models have suggested that the seas may rise in this century by two or three feet, as polar ice caps melt and seawater warms and expands. He adds, ''As 75 percent of the total land area of the Maldives is under three and a half feet, our islands would be submerged to such an extent that we would have to relocate.''
The tsunami a year ago offered a glimpse of what may come: when the waters reached their peak, most of the Maldives disappeared under the Indian Ocean for a few minutes.
One reason for Mr. Bush to drop by is that the Maldives may be the most pro-American Muslim country in the world. Local tolerance and pragmatism are exemplified by the attitude toward liquor: don't drink it, but overcharge foreigners for it.
G West
6 years ago
here's the rest of it - split by length limits
But the more important reason for Mr. Bush to come is not geopolitical but environmental. He should witness a paradise that is gravely threatened by irresponsible environmental policies in the U.S. -- the world's leading source of greenhouse gases -- and other major carbon emitters. As evidence mounts that climate change is real, is caused by humans and is accelerating because of feedback loops in nature, I find it astonishing that the U.S. still refuses to adopt serious measures to curb greenhouse gases.
Granted, there is considerable uncertainty about the scale of the damage we are inflicting on the earth. But that's no reason to play Russian roulette with our biosphere.
So we must encourage conservation and fuel efficiency, support alternative forms of energy like wind, solar and biofuels, and -- I'll get hate mail about this -- grudgingly accept nuclear power, because it doesn't produce greenhouse gases. We should also adopt a carbon tax, and join the Kyoto process of binding curbs on emissions.
A visit to the Maldives is sobering because it juxtaposes extraordinary beauty and extraordinary fragility. The islands have perfect white sand beaches, and the most exclusive resorts here charge several thousand dollars per room per night. And yet the luxury rooms are on sandbars barely peeking above the horizon. When the tide is coming in, you have the creepy feeling that unless it stops very quickly, you'll be left treading water in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
Local people say that the rising seas have already led to severe erosion on some islands, to wells filling with saltwater, and to storms' becoming more violent.
''My island sits lower in the water now, because of rising seas,'' said Hasan Ibraahim, a fisherman from the island of Kandholhudhoo. Twice a year, he said, waves now wash over the island -- and so, after the tsunami, the government decided to relocate the island's entire population.
He's sad to say goodbye to the land of his ancestors, but after the tsunami it was three days before he found his 8-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son -- and he doesn't want to live through that nightmare again.
So Mr. Bush should come and talk to fishermen who endure the mutating climate every day -- and then he should ponder the implications of rising seas for Florida, the Carolinas, Long Island. The Maldives may be the canary in the world's coal mine.
''Our message to the U.S. is as simple as this,'' said Mr. Shareef, the government spokesman. ''Sea level rise is not just a phenomenon which is just going to engulf the Maldives and then stop. If it affects us tomorrow, it will affect you the day after.''
G West
6 years ago
sorry I couldn't just post the link
It's behind the subscription wall
mopled
6 years ago
I thought you left West
Has made what vulnerable...the Suckers?
mopled
6 years ago
Not the Maldives again
West, It's been proven the ocean has been droping around them. It is supposed to be because of greater evaporatiom from the Indian Ocean. I already posted the video link. I'll do it again. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIbTJ6mhCqk&mode=related&search=
Actually, thank you...what a wonderful example you provided of disinformation.
Memory slipping West? Perhaps that was a diversion since I was starting to show just who will benefit from the scam...and it ain't goin' to be people in the Maldives, cause they are no more in trouble today than they've been throught the history of settlement. The skull found embedded in the coral is 1000 years old. I will let you ponder that one.
mopled
6 years ago
Salt water intrussion happens
when too much fresh water is taken out of wells on islands, especially on waterfront...ask anybody on Salt Spring.
Frank
6 years ago
Quote:Yeoman. I was
And yet, as I pointed out before. Exxon and the other oil companies would happily pay them more than double whatever they're getting now to "disprove" global warming.
If that's the proposed reason why scientists are all in collusion behind climate change that is pretty much the dumbest reason I've ever heard.
Frank
6 years ago
Monbiot
The Union of Concerned Scientists found that 58% of the 279 climate scientists working at federal agencies in the US who responded to its survey reported that they had experienced one of the following constraints.
1. “Pressure to eliminate the words ‘climate change,’ ‘global warming’, or other similar terms” from their communications.
2. Editing of scientific reports by their superiors which “changed the meaning of scientific findings”.
3. Statements by officials at their agencies which misrepresented their findings.
4. “The disappearance or unusual delay of websites, reports, or other science-based materials relating to climate”.
5. “New or unusual administrative requirements that impair climate-related work”.
6. “Situations in which scientists have actively objected to, resigned from, or removed themselves from a project because of pressure to change scientific findings.” They reported 435 incidents of political interference over the past five years(9).
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/04/10/the-real-climate-censorship/
Oh ya, sure sounds like government, business and scientists working closely together to pull the wool over everyone else's eyes.
Frank
6 years ago
More from Monbiot
"At hearings in the US Congress three weeks ago, Philip Cooney, a former aide to White House who was previously working at the American Petroleum Institute, admitted he had made hundreds of changes to government reports about climate change on behalf of the Bush administration(14). Though he is not a scientist, he had struck out evidence that glaciers were retreating and inserted phrases suggesting that there was serious scientific doubt about global warming(15)."
mopled
6 years ago
Yup, Monbiot writes for the
Guardian, which is having a Global Warming fest sponsored by BP and Shell in June, just around the time that the IPCC publishes the Facts...the papers they relied on for their political statement. They've had to clean up the act when Monckton called them on the outright falsehoods...like how high sea levels will rise.
And 9/11 Truther that I am,Monbiot had a recent hissy fit over how Truthers were giving the Left a bad name, so I don't pay too much attention to him now. Elegant writer though he is, he's still just another Left Gatekeeper.
mopled
6 years ago
Frank, what you are missing
is that Man Made Global Warming will be a boone to the Financial Community and to governments who can impose all kinds of taxes.
Exxon is just the designated Villain in this tale of good and evil we are being treated to. Exxon will benefit too, don't you worry about that.
Look up Exxon Nuclear, in business since 1969. Picking up the tab for the Anti-warming Science is probably peanuts comparred to the profit to be made when new plants are built.
Exxon Nuclear manufactures nuclear fuel assemblies.
Getting a tiny bit of a handle on this yet?
mopled
6 years ago
Exxon and Uranium
http://www.sea-us.org.au/gulliver/exxon.html
Exxon began mining uranium in the 196Os and its involvement has continued to the present day (12), even though its uranium and nuclear fuel fabrication interests have proved consistent financial losers (2).
Exxon Nuclear Company was founded in 1969 to manage and market nuclear products and services and consolidate the inroads the company had already made into nuclear fuel provision. As with its entree into coal, Exxon made a clean sweep - hiring staff, purchasing leases and equipment - from the ground up, and using the best personnel available from the nuclear industry, national laboratories and the universities (2).
Within a decade Exxon Nuclear had spent some US$200 million, was employing 800 "highly-qualified personnel" and had mapped out plans for potential investment of some US$2.1 billion by the turn of the century, most of it on the development of an enrichment plant and reprocessing plant (84). Based in Richland, Washington (site of much war-time development of nuclear weapons), by the late 1970s the Exxon enrichment project had started assembling and testing its first superspeed enrichment centrifuges, with a view to developing a 3000 tonnes of SWU (separative work unit) capacity (84). Plans for a reprocessing plant - the only ones finally submitted to ERDA for approval - envisaged operations at Exxon's site near the ERDA Reservation (sic) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, as starting in 1986, providing political hurdles were overcome first (84). In 1981, Exxon planned to spend US$13.5 billion on new capital projects with "nuclear" as a priority (85).
Gore was the Senator from Tennessee before being VP and was then a champion of Nuclear Power.....a perfect circle.
G West
6 years ago
mopled - you're still watching that CBC show?
Desperation I guess. What else can I say?
Do you say a prayer to Bjorn Lomborg at bedtime every night?
mopled
6 years ago
West how pathetic
I just showed something very important, i.e. that all of the nonsense about scientists who took money from Exxon are to be discounted is part of the GAME PLAN.
Evil...and there is no doubt about that, Exxon...which was Standard Oil....which is Rockefeller ....wins if the Global Warming Scenario does. Just by funding the real experts, Exxon knocks the consideration of their findings out of bounds. and goes on to finally realize some return on their heavy investment in both Nuclear Technology and Uranium mining. Brilliant!
IT'S DIABOLICAL! Quick...does Dr. Suzuki know! Somebody had better tell him before he makes a fool of himself.
snert
6 years ago
I can read.
G West
How vulnerable is the area to tidal waves and very large storms. The likelihood of either is pretty good. It's an area of hightened risk. That's why I used the word weak and not bad.
The following is from the Wiki page on Calcutta, the nearest large city.
"Much of the city was originally a vast wetland, reclaimed over the decades to accommodate the city's burgeoning population."
"According to the Bureau of Indian Standards, the town falls under seismic zone-III, in a scale of I to V (in order of increasing proneness to earthquakes)[16] while the wind and cyclone zoning is "very high damage risk", according to UNDP report.[16]"
I guess the wetlands might just go about reclaiming themselves.
G West
6 years ago
more on Greenland
January 16, 2007
The Warming of Greenland
By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF
Flying over snow-capped peaks and into a thick fog, the helicopter set down on a barren strip of rocks between two glaciers. A dozen bags of supplies, a rifle and a can of cooking gas were tossed out onto the cold ground. Then, with engines whining, the helicopter lifted off, snow and fog swirling in the rotor wash.
When it had disappeared over the horizon, no sound remained but the howling of the Arctic wind.
''It feels a little like the days of the old explorers, doesn't it?'' Dennis Schmitt said.
Mr. Schmitt, a 60-year-old explorer from Berkeley, Calif., had just landed on a newly revealed island 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle in eastern Greenland. It was a moment of triumph: he had discovered the island on an ocean voyage in September 2005. Now, a year later, he and a small expedition team had returned to spend a week climbing peaks, crossing treacherous glaciers and documenting animal and plant life.
Despite its remote location, the island would almost certainly have been discovered, named and mapped almost a century ago when explorers like Jean-Baptiste Charcot and Philippe, Duke of Orléans, charted these coastlines. Would have been discovered had it not been bound to the coast by glacial ice.
Maps of the region show a mountainous peninsula covered with glaciers. The island's distinct shape -- like a hand with three bony fingers pointing north -- looks like the end of the peninsula.
Now, where the maps showed only ice, a band of fast-flowing seawater ran between a newly exposed shoreline and the aquamarine-blue walls of a retreating ice shelf. The water was littered with dozens of icebergs, some as large as half an acre; every hour or so, several more tons of ice fractured off the shelf with a thunderous crack and an earth-shaking rumble.
All over Greenland and the Arctic, rising temperatures are not simply melting ice; they are changing the very geography of coastlines. Nunataks -- ''lonely mountains'' in Inuit -- that were encased in the margins of Greenland's ice sheet are being freed of their age-old bonds, exposing a new chain of islands, and a new opportunity for Arctic explorers to write their names on the landscape.
''We are already in a new era of geography,'' said the Arctic explorer Will Steger. ''This phenomenon -- of an island all of a sudden appearing out of nowhere and the ice melting around it -- is a real common phenomenon now.''
In August, Mr. Steger discovered his own new island off the coast of the Norwegian island of Svalbard, high in the polar basin. Glaciers that had surrounded it when his ship passed through only two years earlier were gone this year, leaving only a small island alone in the open ocean.
G West
6 years ago
The foregoing
Also from the New York Times.
Here's the rest of it:
''We saw it ourselves up there, just how fast the ice is going,'' he said.
With 27,555 miles of coastline and thousands of fjords, inlets, bays and straits, Greenland has always been hard to map. Now its geography is becoming obsolete almost as soon as new maps are created.
Hans Jepsen is a cartographer at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, which produces topographical maps for mining and oil companies. (Greenland is a largely self-governing region of Denmark.) Last summer, he spotted several new islands in an area where a massive ice shelf had broken up. Mr. Jepsen was unaware of Mr. Schmitt's discovery, and an old aerial photograph in his files showed the peninsula intact.
''Clearly, the new island was detached from the mainland when the connecting glacier-bridge retreated southward,'' Mr. Jepsen said, adding that future maps would take note of the change.
The sudden appearance of the islands is a symptom of an ice sheet going into retreat, scientists say. Greenland is covered by 630,000 cubic miles of ice, enough water to raise global sea levels by 23 feet.
Carl Egede Boggild, a professor of snow-and-ice physics at the University Center of Svalbard, said Greenland could be losing more than 80 cubic miles of ice per year.
''That corresponds to three times the volume of all the glaciers in the Alps,'' Dr. Boggild said. ''If you lose that much volume you'd definitely see new islands appear.''
He discovered an island himself a year ago while flying over northwestern Greenland. ''Suddenly I saw an island with glacial ice on it,'' he said. ''I looked at the map and it should have been a nunatak, but the present ice margin was about 10 kilometers away. So I can say that within the last five years the ice margin had retreated at least 10 kilometers.''
The abrupt acceleration of melting in Greenland has taken climate scientists by surprise. Tidewater glaciers, which discharge ice into the oceans as they break up in the process called calving, have doubled and tripled in speed all over Greenland. Ice shelves are breaking up, and summertime ''glacial earthquakes'' have been detected within the ice sheet.
''The general thinking until very recently was that ice sheets don't react very quickly to climate,'' said Martin Truffer, a glaciologist at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. ''But that thinking is changing right now, because we're seeing things that people have thought are impossible.''
(snip)
Frank
6 years ago
Exxon
So they are purposefully undermining their existing business, where they make billions and billions in profits all because in the future they expect to make just as much as they do now selling different forms of energy?
So you believe the "real" experts are the people currently being supported by Exxon?
snert
6 years ago
Link to your article
G West
It has 8 x 10 glossy pictures with circles and arrows. Apologies to Arlo Guthrie.
It seems to be outside the subscription wall.
Link
G West
6 years ago
Thanks snert...
I got what I posted from my own saved word files - the Times usually restricts access to everything (not just Times Select) after a few weeks - it wasn't originally behind subscription..
mopled
6 years ago
Experts Tainted, Not Supported
Speaking fees and grant money. Singer is retired, Lindzen's work is mostly gov't funded...Come on Frank....the facts speak for themselves, don't they?
The best people in Climate Science were deliberately knocked out by peanuts in terms of money.
We are not going to stop using oil overnight, and even though Exxon is heavily invested in coal too, they will realize more from nuclear...especially since 2 1/2 Billion had already been invested in Nuclear by Exxon...think of the lost interest, they are.
T
BTW, coal has become a problem for public relations, not because of CO2, but because of strip mining. Appalachia has changed over the last 30 years. So many companies have moved there, that there is now a middle-class, and that's where the pressure is coming from to stop the mining.
mopled
6 years ago
Sea Levels Falling Tuvalu too!
But first the Maldives:
http://www.iceagenow.com/Sea_levels_are_falling.htm
In 2003, Nils-Axel Mörner and his colleagues (see below) pub-
lished a well-documented paper showing that sea levels in the
Maldives have fallen substantially – fallen! – in the last 30 years.
I find it curious that we haven't heard about this.
"The Maldives in the central Indian Ocean consist of some 1,200
individual islands grouped in about 20 larger atolls," says Mörner.
In-as-much as the islands rise only three to seven feet above sea
level, they have been condemned by the IPCC to flooding in the
near future.
Mörner disagrees with this scenario. "In our study of the coastal
dynamics and the geomorphology of the shores," writes Mörner,
"we were unable to detect any traces of a recent sea level rise.
On the contrary, we found quite clear morphological indications
of a recent fall in sea level."
Mörner’s group found that sea levels stood about 60 cm higher
around A.D. 1150 than today, and more recently, about 30 cm
higher than today.
"From the shape and freshness," Mörner says, "one would assume
that the sea level fall took place in the last 50 years, or so."
In the last 50 years!
I find it difficult to understand how the IPCC could have missed
this information - unless they did it deliberately.
All they had to do was ask the locals.
"Local people report that the dhonis (local fishing boats) could pass
straight across theMaduvvare Falhus thila in the 1970s and 1980s,"
Mörner reports, "whilst they in the last 15 years have had to make
a detour around the thila, because it is now too shallow. The thila
has not grown, so it must be the sea that has fallen."
"In the IPCC scenarios," Mörner concludes, "the Maldives were
condemned to disappear in the near future." "Our documentation
of actual field evidence contradicts this hypothesis."
From "New perspectives for the future of the Maldives"
Nils-Axel Mörner, Michael Tooley, and Göran Possnert,
Global and Planetary Change, Vol. 40, Issues 1-2,
Jan 2004, pp 177-182
Nils-Axel Mörner, Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics,
Stockholm University, Sweden
Michael Tooley, Geography and Archaelogy,
University of Durham, Durham, UK
Göran Possnert, The Angstrom Laboratory,
Uppsala University, Sweden
Read entire paper (for a fee) at:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/
Yeoman
6 years ago
So lets see if I understand
So lets see if I understand this. GW is a hoax perpetrated by Wall Street, Governments and the Oil Companies.
Did you forget your meds this week?
doggone
6 years ago
Tecktonics
Have you heard of them?
Mopled:
Ain't it funny the planet won't do exactly what we think it might?
Could portions of the ocean floor near the equator be lifting slightly?
My impression is that it is somewhat more complex than any one knows.
But simply put:
More melt water will raise sea levels.
Unless this extra water is evapourated into the atmosphere.
mopled
6 years ago
It seems it is evaporation
doggone, can you watch the video link I posted above? Prof Moerner explains it better than I. I don't think he mentions anything about plate techtonics.
As for you Yeoman, the game is over. CO2 causing Global Warming is a fraud. There will be plenty of benefit to the elites togo around from the 35 cent a gallon tax they were talking of imposing on the world at the conference in Oslo held in Feb.
As soon as one is accused of being off one's meds by an opponent in an argument about facts, the oponent has lost the argument and has nothing real to say.
Got something real to say Yeoman?
mopled
6 years ago
Whoops, make that $1 per gallon
http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/20070408135904324
According to a recent article in the American Free Press (March 24, 'GLOBALISTS GATHER IN BRUSSELS') at a recent Trilateral Commission meeting, members of the government and the corporate elite have come up with an innovative solution to the global warming problem. With all the resources available to this group of individuals; government studies, climate reports, and taxpayer dollars; we can all rest assured that the most effective and informed decision was made. What is this wonderful, radical solution that will adequately deal with the threat of global warming? Another tax of course.
And not just any tax, we are talking about a whopping one dollar per gallon gasoline tax as "penance" for causing pollution. Apparently these are the kinds of solutions being recommended at these super secret Trilateral Commission meetings by the ultra wealthy and former heads of the Central Intelligence Agency. But wait, the Trilateral Commission is a committee of private citizens from North America, Japan, and Europe isn't it? Who are they to be pushing additional taxation on the average taxpayer?
The terminology used at this meeting is also suspect. The fact that this tax should be imposed as "penance" should raise a few eyebrows. Penance? Like punishment or discipline? This suggests that this one dollar per gallon tax is simply reparations and not toward any effort to clean up the environment. So where will all this additional revenue go? Will any of it at all go to the environment? If so, who will police this new revenue stream? Can we trust a government with this huge windfall when it has shown such little respect for our hard earned tax dollars in the past?
So as usual the solution to this problem, like every other problem the government has to deal with, is to increase taxes. Problem, reaction, solution. But surely this private group of elites doesn’t have the power to lobby for such a tax, do they? Let’s dig a little deeper.
According to the same American Free Press article, back in 1991 at a meeting in Tokyo, the Trilateral Commission had called for a 10 cent increase in gasoline taxes. The Washington Post, who was in attendance, immediately followed up with an editorial on the topic the very next day. Would this pattern repeat itself this time? A quick search for "Carbon Tax" on the Washington Post website returns several results including two published on April 1; one entitled "Tax on Carbon Emissions Gains Support" and another entitled "We Can Get Out of These Ruts" which specifically mentions a dollar per gallon gasoline tax, but makes no reference to the Trilateral Commission. Are we to believe that both parties arrived at the exact same conclusion independently?
continues at link
Frank
6 years ago
Conspiracy
So democratically elected governments have a big earth-wide conspiracy going. The idea is that they invent and fund global warming in order to raise the gas tax. Perhaps even by enough to pay for all those scientists they've bought off. And the opposition parties are all in on it.
I buy it. That sounds really really believable. Don't know how I could have been so blind.
mopled
6 years ago
It becomes more apparent
that Frank and Yeoman are here to keep the sheep in the pen.
Money buys elections, remember. Politcians whore themselves for party donations. Are you telling me sellouts havn't happened before? Look at this Province for heaven sake.
Frank, there are lots of angles to this swindle. A buck a gallon to the World Bank...did you finish the article...it seems that's where the Carbon Tax on gas will go...never to be seen again.
We are dealing with real pathology here, haven't you noticed. And in the US there is no democratically elected government in the Whitehouse.
There are a group of crooks who stole two elections. Where have you been the last few years, hiding in a warehouse with the Iraqi WMDs?
G West
6 years ago
Mörner disagrees with this scenario
Well isn't that nice for Mörner. I take it he'll be accepting the responsibility if he's wrong.
Frank
6 years ago
mopled
Just exactly what would convince you that all the earth's scientists, governments and energy companies aren't involved in some grand conspiracy to make the rest of us believe in global warming?
Is there anything at all?
mopled
6 years ago
It doesn't take All
All scientists are NOT onside. What we are being subjected to is a carefully orchestrated FALSE CONSENSUS which is run by 1 PR company.
Just look at the client list of Fenton Communications. Look at the Foundations they represent and the "Green Orgs."
It was the Turner Foundation which gave the money to establish the UN Foundation which in turn bankrolled the IPCC.
http://www.fenton.com/pages/3_ourwork/1_clients/clients.htm
"The answer has much to do with misunderstanding the science of climate, plus a willingness to debase climate science into a triangle of alarmism. Ambiguous scientific statements about climate are hyped by those with a vested interest in alarm, thus raising the political stakes for policy makers who provide funds for more science research to feed more alarm to increase the political stakes. After all, who puts money into science--whether for AIDS, or space, or climate--where there is nothing really alarming? Indeed, the success of climate alarmism can be counted in the increased federal spending on climate research from a few hundred million dollars pre-1990 to $1.7 billion today. It can also be seen in heightened spending on solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol and clean coal technologies, as well as on other energy-investment decisions.
But there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis."
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=LIN20070407&articleId=5294
The very sophisticated PR campaign we are being subjected to runs on well greased wheels. Actually, it fits the definition of Psyop.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Brrrrrrr it's cold
Unlike the 911 and Aids hoaxes, which depend upon the unfortunate circumstance that the average human IQ hovers around 100, this little fake hyped climatology will run its course as soon as the warming turns into a cooling as it always does--which, judging by the cold days we're having around here, could be some time soon.
I repeat: 90% of the world's ice is in the Antarctic and it's not melting. The Antartic ice fields have grown by 8 percent since l978.
Look it up.
G West
6 years ago
Conspiracies
I think I read something a while back about the American Revolution and the Declaration of Indpendence being a Masonic conspiracy.
I understand King George IV is claiming a mulligan.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Daniel Woods forgets to mention Antarctic..
Unless I missed it, the word 'Antarctic' doesn't appear once in the entire Daniel Woods article.
Which, of course, is absolute proof that neither Daniel Woods or his scientists are interested in presenting the whole, meaning 'global' story about global warming.
Jeesh, the nerve of these propagandists!
I mean, how can you do a story about melting ice without mentioning what is happening to 90% of the world's ice?
Kinda like proving the climate's cooling because it's colder than hell in Newton today for this time of year.
Come on, people. Think!
Truman Green
6 years ago
Here's a conspiracy, straight-face, even
Paraphrased: "It's now proven beyond any reasonable doubt that Saddam Hussein has developed weapons of mass destructution and he intends to use them against our allies in the middle east and against us."
Guess who? And guess what he's conspiring to do as he builds this transparent hoax.
Truman Green
6 years ago
And so, I would ask Daniel Woods
I'd like to address this question to Daniel Woods.
Do you not think it is immoral and unethical as a journalist to do a story about global warming and the melting of ice fields without mentioning the fact that 90 percent of the world's ice is in the Antarctic and it's not melting, but growing in size?
Even if you have some rationalization for this anomaly in the global warming theory, do you not think it is important for you to at least mention what is happening in the Antartic?
clubofrome
6 years ago
Culling the herd...
Zero population growth means no additional net humans. Culling the herd would mean negative growth until total population was reduced. Not as Truman implied with respect to Pol Pot. I doubt very much that any of your facists had limits to growth in mind when they were planning genocide. So Truman if you want to be taken seriously, then cut the crap. Not everyone who quotes the bible is evil. And so not everyone who quotes the Club of Rome or Limits to Growth is plotting mass genocide. Just as there are "do gooders" from faith there are also genuine concerns from the Club of Rome. If the CIA or the Bilderbergers secretly run these institutions then no group is safe and the Boy Scouts of America is a subversive group too. We'll never know, until it's too late anyway. So yes I believe there are dark forces at work in the MIC and the power elites but I still support truth and justice even though there may be no place for these in the world you are discribing. All we know for certain is what you see for yourself and I would find it hard to believe that you or I are Dr Evil is disguise.
If you remember obscure theories then you'll know that I believe at some point in the future the MIC and power elites may make a concious decision to "cull the herd." The alternative is chaos and a savage end for society. So the human race will carry forward, but not as we know it today. You might happen to think that AIDS has been introduced as described in your link. I always thought it was Gaia fighting back against the human cancer. Given enough time she will regulate the planet, but if I understand what you're saying you believe it's already started by man. Certainly makes 9/11 pale in comparison! I've asked you before, do you read GNN? I won't ask again again, as you seem to get annoyed easily these days.
Another thing, if you're going to mention that part of Antarctica is cooling then don't forget to include that the Ross Ice Shelf seems to have packed it's bags and moved to the other side of the Contintent.
Truman Green
6 years ago
"Cull the herd" your phrase, Clubo
I think it's fairly obvious than when ranchers are forced to 'cull' their herds they don't sit around and wait for them to die of old age.
It was your phrase (cull the herd) Clubo. The Club of Rome includes advocates of reducing the human population, as you well know, and not all of their techniques are passive.
And I suspect that you also know that Aids was a result of experimentation with biological weapons and the homosexual community was targeted, probably by the vectoring of the pathogens in the hepatitis B vaccines a year or so before the first cases of anomalous and extreme immunosuppression were reported in the young male gay populations of New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
And in that regard you wrote this, Clubo: "I always thought it was Gaia fighting back against the human cancer."
"Human cancer", eh. Are you possibly edging towards mild misanthropy here, Clubo?
And failing to mention the Antarctic in a story about melting ice fields is nothing less than creating propaganda. It's like doing an experiment to find out if biphenol A causes aneuploidy in female mouse reproductive cells, then throwing out the observations of what happens to 90% of the female mouse cells.
mopled
6 years ago
Culling the herd
I think a depopulation agenda is part of what is going on. Actually, the elites have been pretty open about it. Remember the Duke of Edinborough saying he'd like to be re-incarnated as a killer virus?
What bothers me though is the blame the victim mentality. These are the same people who are profiting from the destruction and then blaming the folks who are forced to live off garbage dumps for cluttering up the place.
The developed countries are no longer reproducing at a sustainable level.
Obviously part of the solution is not only birth control, but a certain amount of affluence, but the greedy b'tards can't allow that.
clubofrome
6 years ago
misanthropy?
I find the human condition an interesting problem. Humans are part of the ecology, we are animals and as such whatever we may do must be natural, but that doesn't mean smart. You'll recall the fact that reptiles ruled the earth for millions of years, an achievement unlikely to be duplicated by our species. The earth will recover and carry on without us just fine. As life must be throughout the universe so is the experiment here on earth. It's unfortunate that we of higher brains don't understand what we have. The human species may just be a form of cancerous life on earth hell bent on destroying everything around it. That appears to be our fate. Species extinction is happening at a rate much higher than would naturally occur except for events such as asteroids and such. These extinctions threaten human survival as they compromise the ecology we rely on. Personally I think all life has a right to life, because I sense were in this together. So when one species decides to rape and plunder and cull the life for it's own benefit I believe it's our duty to ring the alarm bell. I'll mourn for the loss of all species not just one that has misguided belief of devine right of ownership. Stewardship maybe. I'm not going to debate climate change with you. You know as well as I do that the scale of the problem is still beyond our comprehension, but we are altering the ecology that we survive on. So, while this Climate change/GW debate rages on, the real problems are gathering momentum. Species extinction for example. Keystone species to be specific. Genetic crops replacing indigenous and wild species, more loss of diversity and hence a dangerous position for insurance against change in climate, which as you know is a natural occurance. So you see we're not nearly as smart as we think we are. You hear people talking about how technolgy will save us! All we can hope for is that the Dolphins will survive to take their natural position as rulers of the planet! Now bow down before your true god, Flipper!
Frank
6 years ago
Culling the herd
Well, if the energy companies have faked climate change in order to make profits from new energy sources then why would they want to cull the herd? Wouldn't depopulation mean less profits?
G, King George was a giant lizard. The Am Rev was a big shell game to break the Iroquois. Didn't you notice how Butler's Rangers were funded by the Crown and they burned a few places in New York State and got everyone mad at the natives? Result, no 6 nations homeland. Flawless logic n'est pas?
clubofrome
6 years ago
Minister of Logic
Repeat after me: I swear to uphold the the laws of the Secret Dolphin Society....
neocon
6 years ago
Man trying to change the weather...
is the epitome of self-importance. If it weren't so sad it would be funny.
Come to think of it, it really is funny!
Truman Green
6 years ago
Jeez, I just went outside and nearly froze
Holy Keeriste, it's cold. I just went outside and nearly froze to death. I think we gotta ice storm going on.
Exactly when is this global warming s'posed to kick in, anyway?
mopled
6 years ago
Rockefeller Foundation+Eugenics
J.D.Rockefeller said "I want to own nothing and control everything.", by which he meant that often as little of 1% of a major, widely held corporation would in effect be the controlling interest and that was easily done through thetax-free foundation
mechanism.
Rockefeller interests control Exxon.
The Rockefeller Foundation has funded the Eugenics movement since its inception in 1909.
The sainted Tommy Douglas was a supporter of Eugenics, so much so that Sask. was still sterilizing aboriginal women until the 1960s. Eugenics was always about getting rid of so-called inferior strains of people...and they were usually not white.
It is still going on, under cover of public health programs. BTW, the HPV vaccine that Texas tried to make mandatory has as a side effect, sterility. Other sterility promotors are being administered through vaccination programs funded by the World Bank (think Wolfowitz, would you take a vaccine recommended by that man?) and administered by WHO.
http://www.thinktwice.com/birthcon.htm
G West
6 years ago
mopled
Very interesting mopled, and it certainly indicates that you're a Ted Byfield reader.
You might want to check out the circumstances concerning the sterilization of Preston Manning's brother too.
Alberta was far more a headquarters for eugenics than Saskatchewan ever was.
I think you should also read a little more about what Douglas himself actually wrote - beyond his 1930s Master's Thesis that is. This is another of Licia Corbella's fevered imaginings. What's up with her by the way - I haven't heard a lot of her ravings of late?
As to his attitudes about homosexuality as a psychological disorder, you should check the DSM-III, on that subject - he was in perfect step with majority opinion relative to the matter at the time.
Frank
6 years ago
Springtime for Hitler
(Thanks Mel)
From that well-known Lefty, Arnold
That pretty much sums it up for me. I'm not a scientist. Wouldn't know a bunsen burner from a syringe. Yet if 98 guys that do tell me one thing and 2 tell me they're all wrong, I'm going with the 98.
I swear to do whatever the Dolphins tell me to...