Climate Change

[Punzie]

Immense ice shelf breaks off in Canadian Arctic: researchers

by Guillaume Lavallee
12/29/06

MONTREAL (AFP) - An enormous ice shelf broke away from Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic last year, researchers said, warning it could be another symptom of global warming.

The 66-square-kilometer (25.5-square-mile) ice island tore away from Ellesmere, a huge strip of land in the Canadian Arctic close to Greenland.

The break occurred in August 2005 and was so violent that it caused tremors that were detected by Canadian seismographs 250 kilometers (155 miles) away, but at the time no one was able to pinpoint what had happened.

The Canadian Ice Service contacted geographer Luke Copland of the University of Ottawa, who reconstructed the chain of events by piecing together data from the seismic readings and satellite images provided by Canada and the United States.

"This loss is the biggest in 25 years, but it continues the loss that occurred within the last century," Copland told AFP, saying 90 percent of the the ice cover had been lost since the area was discovered in 1906.

"What is important and interesting is that it is sudden, quite large even," he said.

"In the past, we looked to climate change (and) thought perhaps ice shelves ... would just melt apart by losing a little piece day by day, but it now seems that when you reach some kind of threshold, when you reach that level, the whole thing just breaks apart."

Following the discovery, biologist Warwick Vincent of Laval University in Quebec, visited the icy waters of the Arctic to view the "new island."

Vincent said he had seen nothing like it in the past decade. "It really is incredible," Vincent was quoted as saying by the newspaper National Post.

"People talk of endangered animals -- well, these are endangered landscape features, and we are losing them," he said.

Louis Fortier, scientific director of ArcticNet, a Canadian Artic research network, said the massive breakoff signaled a rise in Arctic warming.

"This Ellesmere ice shelf was sheltering unique ecosystems on the planet; there are freshwater lakes which were forming above and under the ice shelf," Fortier told AFP.

"The breakup of the ice cover on Ellesmere Island has been going on for 12,000 years, but it seems to have accelerated in recent years which is another indicator, among many others, of warming of the entire Arctic cryosphere," he said, referring to low-temperature elements of weather such as ice and snow.

Canada conducts land, sea and aerial observations of the Arctic ice surface, but often these studies target certain areas and ignore vast, uninhabited areas, the environment ministry says, making satellite images crucial.

The sudden formation of a "new island" in the Arctic "is a symptom among a cluster of symptoms of global warming, the most important evidently being the spectacular redcution in the extent and thickness of the Arctic ice field," Fortier said.

In an article published in December, Canadian and US researchers predicted that by 2040 Arctic Ocean ice will nearly disappear in the summer off the north coast of Greenland and Canada, opening a maritime corridor that would reduce shipping time between Europe and Asia.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061229/sc_afp/canadaarctic




http://www.naturalist.co.uk/maps/high_arctic.jpg
Ellesmere arial map, pre-ice shelf break.

[ablarc]

Polar bears will drown?

.

[Punzie]

Polar bears will drown?

.
I read my articles again and did keyword searches for synonyms for the word "drown". Can you please quote the paragraph(s) to which you're refering?

The idea of Polar Bears dying out over time by drowning is preposterous; I'm sure I would have dismissed an artlcle that said or implied that.

[ablarc]

They stay on the ice floes as they melt to near-nothingness in the open ocean.

Then...

Cover story, Time Magazine, about a year ago.

[Punzie]

They stay on the ice floes as they melt to near-nothingness in the open ocean.

Then...

Cover story, Time Magazine, about a year ago.

I agree with you, it was irresponsible journalism:

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/US/03/26/coverstory/timecover.small.jpg
March 26, 2006


The specific quote: "...and with sea ice vanishing, polar bears are starting to turn up drowned."

"Time" offers no statistics on this, no detail of scientific studies, not even anecdotal evidence. No explanaiton is given as to how this can happen. All we see is a sensatonalist magazine cover: a polar bear standing on an ice patch surrounded by an oily, black sea.

"Time" is hurting the environmentalists' cause, not helping it.

[ablarc]

No explanaiton is given as to how this can happen.
Not hard to imagine.


Time is hurting the environmentalists' cause, not helping it.
How?

My waiting room had that issue for a while for clients who are mostly Bush Republicans and say things like, "Global warming is a myth made up by liberal tree-huggers."

To my surprise, one of them pointed and declared, "That photo makes me wonder if global warming might be real."

[BrooklynRider]

All this stuff about "global warming" is a bunch bull. The warming going on is being caused directly by my landlord who has the furnace running at full tilt all hours of the day and every season of the year. Me and the other tenants are forced to keep our windows open around the clock. If he installed a working thermostadt, we might actually enter a new ice age!

[ablarc]

^ :p

[Punzie]

When I first saw that cover of "Time" last spring, I said to myself, "Whose side is the magazine on?" Healthy polar bears would not end up in that position. The bears would detect the disturbance in the ice shelf days before and would move inland. Recall the behavior of the animals near the 2004 tsunami: days before, they moved inland in droves.

It would be interesting to learn if autopsies were performed on the drowned polar bears. They could have been unhealthy or weak specimens having their last swim, so to speak.

When "Time" does a big spread on an issue, it becomes a (temporary) "authority" on the issue. In the case of global warming, the "authority's" irresponsible reporting weakened the credibility of the issue.

[ablarc]

In the case of global warming, the "authority's" irresponsible reporting weakened the credibility of the issue.
It's not a matter of scientific accuracy; science is always fine-tuning its explanations, anyway.


"Time" is hurting the environmentalists' cause, not helping it.

Nonsense. For starters, its not the envirmentalists' cause; it's a cause for all of us. And my perception is that for us rubes it was a wake-up call. I may have been convinced long ago, but not so my bible-belt clients. For them it was dramatically mind-altering. The cover was enough, none of them read the article anyway.

Fine questions like what may have gone wrong with the bears' early-warning system may provide a researcher with five years of grant funding, but they are utterly not central to convincing Escalade drivers it's time to buy a Prius and support mileage standards.

You may know more about animal behavior than Time's reporters, but they did the world a greater service. No question whose side the magazine was (is) on.

.

[Bob]

None of you has yet convinced me that this "global warming" thing is anything but a bunch of baloney. I just don't buy it! Now, you can engage in all the name-calling you want, but you simply have to be patient and continue to argue your case. As I see it, the evidence is all around us (and highly visible) that the Earth has been through multiple cycles of cooling/warming. On Long Island, there are two terminal glacial moraines...an older one on the southern half, and the more recent one on the northern half. My house in Wading River sits just about directly on top of the northern terminal moraine, about 130 feet above sea level. Now, in order for a 6000' foot thick glacial sheet to have advanced all the way here (at least twice) that means the Earth was plenty cool as late as 6000 to 16000 years ago. The Earth was cold. The Earth got warmer. Over and over and over. Species either moved, evolved, or vanished in response to these changes. I can understand how the global warming crowd is saying, "yeah we know all that but the problem now is development is causing far-too-fast changes." What I don't accept is the entire premise! The Earth is truly larger than you think, and far more resilient than you think. Sea levels are not going to change significantly in your lifetime, or anybody else's. So, if you consider yourself an environmentalist, why not do something really important and buy a chunk of the Amazon rainforest to keep it from being developed. That has more bang for the eco-buck and is a definite and positive action.

[ablarc]

None of you has yet convinced me that this "global warming" thing is anything but a bunch of baloney.
Now as for Bob, he's digging in for an eon of cognitive dissonance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive dissonance)…




( And he's not even in the bible belt ! )

[BrooklynRider]

None of you has yet convinced me that this "global warming" thing is anything but a bunch of baloney...

With no rudeness intended, is this thread intended to convince you or to discuss the subject? Bob, even taking into consideration the warming and cooling cycles of the planet, the warming cycles would be considered "global warming." If you don't believe in global warming, what exactly is the the thought and intention behind your encouragement to "buy a chunk of the Amazon rainforest"? Long Island was once forest and plains and you live happily in a developed part if it that ultimately destroyed the natural environment. Why would you want to deny people and businesses in the Amazon from developing as well?

-----------------------------------------

In general, I have no doubt that we are experiencing global warming. The evidence is there. Ignoring it does not negate it.

The challenge I find in the science is whether it is caused by changes in the atmosphere, changes in the planetary positioining in relation to the solar system or galaxy, or changes in the actual temperature of the planet having nothing to do with the atmosphere.

I have no doubt it is happening.

We are entering the end of the 12,000 year Mayan calendar. We are in the emergence of the Fifth World of Hopi Prophecy, which foresees global destructio. Did they know something we didn't?

[Punzie]

Did they know something we didn't?

I can't tell if this is a serious question. I really can't.:)

____________________
Researchers: Warming may change Amazon

By MICHAEL ASTOR, Associated Press Writer
12/29/06

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Global warming could spell the end of the world's largest remaining tropical rain forest, transforming the Amazon into a grassy savanna before end of the century, researchers said Friday.

Jose Antonio Marengo, a meteorologist with Brazil's National Space Research Institute, said that global warming, if left unchecked, will reduce rainfall and raise temperatures substantially in the ecologically rich region.

"We are working with two scenarios: a worst case and a second, more optimistic one," he said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

"The worst case scenario sees temperatures rise by 5 to 8 degrees until 2100, while rainfall will decrease between 15 and 20 percent. This setting will transform the Amazon Rain Forest into a savanna-like landscape," Marengo said.

That scenario supposes no major steps are taken toward halting global warming and that deforestation continues at its current rate, Marengo said.

The more optimistic scenario supposes governments take more aggressive actions to halt global warming. It would still have temperatures rising in the Amazon region by 3 to 5 degrees Celsius and rainfall dropping by 5 to 15 percent, Marengo said.

"If pollution is controlled and deforestation reduced, the temperature would rise by about 5 degrees Celsius in 2100," said Marengo. "Within this scenario, the rain forest will not come to the point of total collapse."

Marengo's finding were part an 800,000 real ($373,000) study that began two years ago and that will continue until 2010. The study, financed by the World Bank and the British government, seeks to project climatic changes that will effect Brazil over the next 100 years. European governments frequently finance environmental and conservation studies about Brazil's Amazon rain forest.

Sprawling over 1.6 million square miles, the Amazon covers nearly 60 percent of Brazil. Largely unexplored, it contains one-fifth of the world's fresh water and about 30 percent of the world's plant and animal species — many still undiscovered.

Marengo said he was optimistic that the worst-case scenario could be averted, but he said that would require a major effort by industrialized nations to reduce emissions of so-called greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

He said Brazil should do its part by reducing deforestation and burning in the Amazon region.

Destroying trees through burning contributes to global warming, releasing about 370 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year — about 5 percent of the world total — scientists say.

About 20 percent of the rain forest has already been cut down and while the rate of destruction has slowed in recent years, environmentalists say it remains alarmingly high.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061230/ap_on_sc/brazil_amazon_warming

[pianoman11686]

The Earth is truly larger than you think, and far more resilient than you think. Sea levels are not going to change significantly in your lifetime, or anybody else's.

This is reminiscent of something I encountered a few years ago. It's called Gaia Theory, which describes the idea of earth as a self-regulating system. Its founder, James Lovelock, formulated three basic principles:


The global surface temperature of the Earth has remained constant, despite an increase in the energy provided by the Sun.

Atmospheric composition remains constant, even though it should be unstable.

Ocean salinity is constant.

This last one is of especial concern to us, given all the dire predictions of the North Atlantic Oscillation being disrupted by melting ice causing the Gulf Stream to decrease in salinity and cease functioning. It's the fundamental idea behind The Day After Tomorrow.

More on Gaia Theory from the Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_theory_(science)) article.

[Ninjahedge]

1. Global Warming is happening, as evidenced by the rapidly retreating ice shelves and unusual weather patterns over the past few decades.

2. It is happening faster than a natural "position change" would warrant. No gelogical evidence has shown this MUCH melting in this little time.

3. Geological evidence also suggests that we were actually slated for another Ice Age right about now. Although those take a while to occur, it is just another oddity in the whole warm winters we have been having.

4. Polar Bears may tell if an ice sheet is breaking, but after it breaks, and you see some tasty seals on one chunk of ice measuring 22 MILES wide, would you think twice about swimming out that few hundred yards to have a snack on that new island?

Now what happens if you finish, and your "island" has moved a good half mile away from shore? (he may have had a FEW snacks.... ;)) I do not think these bears were just sitting on the ice when it fell and were carried off into the sea, I think this was just a case of Mount Everest. They were able to get out there, but did not think of how hard it would be to get back.



So whatever. Ocean levels rising, average temperature going up slightly and ice shelves melting and a bunch of people do not want to give up their SUV's or look for some way to curb their dependance on substances that we do not even control locally.

Regardless of whether or not you believe in GW, it still makes sense to start looking for ways to stop tweaking the environment so much over such a short period of time with no real way to reverse what we are doing if we continue. (What have we invented that will convert CO2 to O2? What would be able to do it in the higher atmosphere?).

SO whatever. Believe what you will.

[lofter1]

http://www.condenet.com/images_covers/cover_newyorker_190.jpg

[lofter1]

Group: ExxonMobil paid to mislead public

businessweek.com (http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8ME02900.htm)
The Associated Press
January 3, 2007


WASHINGTON
ExxonMobil Corp. gave $16 million to 43 ideological groups between 1998 and 2005 in a coordinated effort to mislead the public by discrediting the science behind global warming, the Union of Concerned Scientists asserted Wednesday.

The report by the science-based nonprofit advocacy group mirrors similar claims by Britain's leading scientific academy. Last September, The Royal Society wrote the oil company asking it to halt support for groups that "misrepresented the science of climate change."

http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/ExxonMobil-GlobalWarming-tobacco.html (http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/ExxonMobil-GlobalWarming-tobacco.html)

ExxonMobil did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the scientific advocacy group's report.

Many scientists say accumulating carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases from tailpipes and smokestacks are warming the atmosphere like a greenhouse, melting Arctic sea ice, alpine glaciers and disturbing the lives of animals and plants.

ExxonMobil lists on its Web site nearly $133 million in 2005 contributions globally, including $6.8 million for "public information and policy research" distributed to more than 140 think-tanks, universities, foundations, associations and other groups. Some of those have publicly disputed the link between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.

But in September, the company said in response to the Royal Society that it funded groups which research "significant policy issues and promote informed discussion on issues of direct relevance to the company." It said the groups do not speak for the company.

Alden Meyer, the Union of Concerned Scientists' strategy and policy director, said in a teleconference that ExxonMobil based its tactics on those of tobacco companies, spreading uncertainty by misrepresenting peer-reviewed scientific studies or cherry-picking facts.

Dr. James McCarthy, a professor at Harvard University, said the company has sought to "create the illusion of a vigorous debate" about global warming.

------

On the Net:

Union of Concerned Scientists: http://www.ucsusa.org (http://www.ucsusa.org/)
ExxonMobil: http://www.exxonmobil.com/corporate (http://www.exxonmobil.com/corporate)

[Ninjahedge]

It said the groups do not speak for the company.

There is a slight, but significant difference between for and with......

[Punzie]

Ninja, you should be a trial attorney. (A compliment, in my book.)

Lofter, the report by the Union of Concerned Scientists is so good that it should be posted in full::)

Scientists' Report Documents ExxonMobil’s Tobacco-like Disinformation Campaign on Global Warming Science

Oil Company Spent Nearly $16 Million to Fund Skeptic Groups, Create Confusion

Union of Concerned Scientists
January 3, 2007

WASHINGTON, DC, Jan. 3–A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists offers the most comprehensive documentation to date of how ExxonMobil has adopted the tobacco industry's disinformation tactics, as well as some of the same organizations and personnel, to cloud the scientific understanding of climate change and delay action on the issue.

According to the report, ExxonMobil has funneled nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science.

"ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer," said Alden Meyer, the Union of Concerned Scientists' Director of Strategy & Policy. "A modest but effective investment has allowed the oil giant to fuel doubt about global warming to delay government action just as Big Tobacco did for over 40 years."

Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air: How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco's Tactics to "Manufacture Uncertainty" on Climate Change details how the oil company, like the tobacco industry in previous decades, has
raised doubts about even the most indisputable scientific evidence
funded an array of front organizations to create the appearance of a broad platform for a tight-knit group of vocal climate change contrarians who misrepresent peer-reviewed scientific findings
attempted to portray its opposition to action as a positive quest for "sound science" rather than business self-interest
used its access to the Bush administration to block federal policies and shape government communications on global warmingExxonMobil-funded organizations consist of an overlapping collection of individuals serving as staff, board members, and scientific advisors that publish and re-publish the works of a small group of climate change contrarians. The George C. Marshall Institute, for instance, which has received $630,000 from ExxonMobil, recently touted a book edited by Patrick Michaels, a long-time climate change contrarian who is affiliated with at least 11 organizations funded by ExxonMobil. Similarly, ExxonMobil funds a number of lesser-known groups such as the Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy and Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. Both groups promote the work of several climate change contrarians, including Sallie Baliunas, an astrophysicist who is affiliated with at least nine ExxonMobil-funded groups.

Baliunas is best known for a 2003 paper alleging the climate had not changed significantly in the past millennia that was rebutted by 13 scientists who stated she had misrepresented their work in her paper. This renunciation did not stop ExxonMobil-funded groups from continuing to promote the paper. Through methods such as these, ExxonMobil has been able to amplify and prop up work that has been discredited by reputable climate scientists.

"When one looks closely, ExxonMobil's underhanded strategy is as clear and indisputable as the scientific research it's meant to discredit," said Seth Shulman, an investigative journalist who wrote the UCS report. "The paper trail shows that, to serve its corporate interests, ExxonMobil has built a vast echo chamber of seemingly independent groups with the express purpose of spreading disinformation about global warming."

ExxonMobil has used the laudable goal of improving scientific understanding of global warming—under the guise of "sound science"—for the pernicious ends of delaying action to reduce heat-trapping emissions indefinitely.

ExxonMobil also exerted unprecedented influence over U.S. policy on global warming, from successfully recommending the appointment of key personnel in the Bush administration to funding climate change deniers in Congress.

"As a scientist, I like to think that facts will prevail, and they do eventually," said Dr. James McCarthy, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Biological Oceanography at Harvard University and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's working group on climate change impacts. "It's shameful that ExxonMobil has sought to obscure the facts for so long when the future of our planet depends on the steps we take now and in the coming years."

The burning of oil and other fossil fuels results in additional atmospheric carbon dioxide that blankets the Earth and traps heat. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased greatly over the last century and global temperatures are rising as a result. Though solutions are available now that will cut global warming emissions while creating jobs, saving consumers money, and protecting our national security, ExxonMobil has manufactured confusion around climate change science, and these actions have helped to forestall meaningful action that could minimize the impacts of future climate change.

"ExxonMobil needs to be held accountable for its cynical disinformation campaign on global warming," said Meyer. "Consumers, shareholders and Congress should let the company know loud and clear that its behavior on this issue is unacceptable and must change."


http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/ExxonMobil-GlobalWarming-tobacco.html

[Ninjahedge]

It is odd that E/M did not have the smarts to just fund a couple of genuinely independent research teams to help lend credence to the others faulty claims by sheerly not agreeing with them.

Look at it this way, if they funded 40 different groups, and 30 said "there is no significant problem" and 10 said there was, you would get the feeling that it was more an independent opinion rather than a bunch of yes-saying cherry-pickers.

They are getting better at hiding the trail and direct links, but they are still rather heavy-handed in their tactics.

Sad part is, those tactics WORK!

[pianoman11686]

Dr.(?) Patrick Michaels: the scientific equivalent of a quack.

[lofter1]

More on "Dr." Michaels:

http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.php?id=4

Another Shill the Media Should Ignore: Pat Michaels (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laurie-david/another-shill-the-media-s_b_20759.html)

http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/denialmachine/michaels.html

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/edu/gwdebate/ (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/edu/gwdebate/)

[RandySavage]

Today, I was walking through Boston Common and noticed full blossoms on all Cherry trees. It's been in the 50s/60s for the past couple days, but this is a first. These organisms are clearly very confused as to what season it is... another canary in the coal mine.

[ablarc]

Today, I was walking through Boston Common and noticed full blossoms on all Cherry trees. It's been in the 50s/60s for the past couple days, but this is a first.
What do you think is happening in Washington around the Tidal Basin?

Will the tourists miss their springtime show?

Once trees do this, do they blossom again when the real Springtime arrives?

[antinimby]

^ Yes, they'll go back to sleep after the next chill and bloom once again come Spring time.

[MidtownGuy]

I saw cherry trees in full bloom last week in a little park in Chinatown. There are also some blooming at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden.
Wildlife is very confused, I just read that in Russia many of the hibernating creatures have not gone to their dens.
The Alps in Europe are suffering a ski season with very little snow. Finally, the plants in my windowbox are still fully green.
Does anybody still seriously doubt this? What will it take to get people more alarmed? I guess they're busy enjoying the pleasant warmth, before the hurricanes and droughts start raging.
Soylent Green, anyone?

[BrooklynRider]

There were lady slippers and daffodil blooming in Battery Park and all the trees have buds on them.

[SilentPandaesq]

There were birds chriping outside my window on saturday morning...The nice old Jewish Lady on my floor was NOT wearing a shall, both of which have not happened in January in recent memory...a troubling omen indeed.

[Jake]

There were birds chriping outside my window on saturday morning...The nice old Jewish Lady on my floor was NOT wearing a shall, both of which have not happened in January in recent memory...a troubling omen indeed.

lmao, a sure sign of impending doom!

[antinimby]

I know this is a few days old, but I might as well put this article in here since we're discussing the unusually warm weather.


72-Degree Day Breaks Record in New York


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/01/07/nyregion/07heat.xlarge3.jpg
While many New Yorkers reveled in the record warmth, members of the Coney Island Polar Bear Club,
a winter swimming club, staged a silent protest on the beach in Brooklyn.


By MANNY FERNANDEZ
Published: January 7, 2007 (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/nyregion/07heat.html)


Hundreds of tourists and locals packed the ice-skating rink at Rockefeller Center yesterday, pretending that it really was a cold, snowy day in early January as they circled the ice beneath the giant Christmas tree. In Brooklyn, eight members of a cold-water-braving organization known as the Coney Island Polar Bear Club walked toward the waves, some wearing nothing but swim trunks.

The only thing that ruined this winter imagery was the temperature, which in the middle of the afternoon in Central Park yesterday reached a record-breaking 72 degrees.

And so the make-believe winter collided with reality: People wore T-shirts as they ice-skated on the wet and slushy rink at Rockefeller Center, and the Polar Bears held a moment of silence, turned their backs on the Atlantic and headed toward the boardwalk, a protest, albeit an underdressed one, against global warming, they said.

Louis Scarcella, 55, a former homicide detective and president of the Coney Island club, said the weather has been so mild that he is considering canceling the group’s winter swimming season, which usually runs from November to April. A club season has not been canceled since the group was founded 104 years ago.

“I have not made the decision yet,” Mr. Scarcella said gravely. “I have to meet with my board.

“It’s a possibility,” he added. “It’s not the extreme sport that we love. It’s a very easy swim.”

The unseasonably warm spell shattered records around the city and the state as well as throughout New Jersey and Connecticut. In Central Park, the high temperature at 1:37 p.m. — 72 degrees — broke the date’s previous high of 63 degrees in 1950, the National Weather Service reported.

It tied the highest temperature recorded in the park in January since record-keeping began in the late 1800s, sharing that distinction with a 72-degree high on Jan. 26, 1950.

The difference between the old and new records was even greater in Bridgeport, Conn., the weather service said, where the high of 68 was 15 degrees above the previous record, in 1949. In Newark, the high of 72 was 11 degrees over the old mark, from 1950.

Although global warming is a popular theory for the Northeast’s warm winter, the Weather Service cited a specific meteorological cause. “We have a mild air mass that we’re in right now, kind of tropical in nature,” said John Murray, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Upton, N.Y. “The cold air masses in Canada have stayed up there.”

At the Rockefeller Center rink yesterday, it was hard to find anyone in the mood to complain. Susan Berardesca, who was visiting the city from Pennsylvania, brought her son and two daughters, because yesterday seemed as perfect a day for ice-skating as any other, she said.

“It is what it is,” she said of the weather. “I’m just enjoying it. The snow will be here soon enough, then everyone will be complaining.”

The nearby ice-skating rink in Bryant Park, behind the New York Public Library, was not as lucky. Managers kept it closed because the chilling system could not keep the ice on the top layer of the rink frozen in the warm weather.

Scattered puddles dotted the rink as people stood around glumly, snapped photographs and rearranged their schedules.

“I just bought new skates,” said Aileen Kwok, 18, a student at New York Institute of Technology, who stood with her friends and her Bauer ice skates at the padlocked door. “I guess now I have to go shopping.”

The rink was scheduled to reopen today, with temperatures expected to be in the low 50s.

The Weather Service said that there was a “slight chance of snow showers” on Tuesday, and that the low temperature by Tuesday night was expected to fall to 29 degrees.

In Times Square yesterday, one street performer was rejoicing in the seasonal flip-flop: Robert Burck, a k a the Naked Cowboy, who trolls for cash wearing nothing but his cowboy hat, underwear, boots and guitar. Business was brisk. “This is like a $1,000 day instead of a $50 or $100 day in the winter,” he said.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[MidtownGuy]

From the article on Val d'Isère:

Val d'Isère is most recognisable by its charming "chalet" architecture. Along with nearby Tignes the area forms part of the "l'Espace Killy," the self-titled "Most Beautiful Ski Area in the World." Beauty aside, the combined space is one of the largest ski areas in the world.
The glacier de pissaillas (Pissaillas Glacier) offers summer skiing, as well as the usual winter fare. Summer skiing has not operated recently as the glacier has shrunk due to the effects of climate change.

[kz1000ps]

I saw cherry trees in full bloom last week in a little park in Chinatown. There are also some blooming at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden.
Wildlife is very confused

Today in Boston's public garden:

http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/5730/img0934az9.jpg

[MidtownGuy]

:eek: ^^
I'm sure we'll get some snow soon, and certainly a storm in February, but this is nothing like what winter in the Northeast used to be.

[MidtownGuy]

Bob said:

As I see it, the evidence is all around us (and highly visible) that the Earth has been through multiple cycles of cooling/warming...

This is a standard response of those who haven't done further research into the cycles of warming/cooling. Believe it or not, Al Gore's movie does a good job of breaking down the meaning of all those cycles, and when you learn what the peaks and valleys mean on all those factually compiled charts, you won't keep singing that Limbaugh-worthy soundbite. Gosh, when I hear that response I can't help but think of the people who kept insisting the Earth was flat, or Evolution is bunk.

Bottom line, you can't keep pumping all that crap into the atmosphere of a closed system and not expect it to have an effect.

And Rapunzel, I'm surprised by your polar bear remarks!

[Bob]

If you don't like the "standard response," that's quite alright. I don't like the "standard company line" from those who insist there is such a thing as global warming. I consider myself an environmentalist, but that doesn't mean I have to buy into every theory, every political argument, and every initiative brought forth by the loudest elements in the environmental movement. I believe in a more practical approach. If you believe that there IS such a thing as global warming, then bring forth some practical proposals other than trotting out the same tired solutions: "consume less," "drive a Prius," "walk to work," "lower your standard of living so the Chinese can do whatever the hell they want," etc. Technology has saved us time and time again. If there IS such a thing as global warming, this is something technology can and should address. Simply telling everybody to feel guilty because they choose to drive a Ford F150 truck or a high performance sports car is NOT the way to generate support for the cause. Find a practical way to accomplish what you want, and stop with the "sky is falling" stuff, because the majority of people simply aren't buying it. Including me.

[Ninjahedge]

Bob, look at the graph.

It is cyclical during times where the planet was not overwhelmingly influenced by mechanized emanations.

The global temp seemed to follow lock-step with global CO2 levels.

That being said, predictions (even conservative ones) have shown that CO2 levels will be going MUCH larger than they have in the past. This also just happens to be co-incidentally at the same time as a natural CO2 upswing.

Will the temperature rise be directly proportionate to the CO2 levels? No. But seeing how closely the two are tied, you know that they will be effected.


Look at it more like a stock. If you had a stock that followed some other trend, say US military spending, or interest rates, and you saw that Interest rates were slated to double in the next year, wouldn't that make you start paying more attention to that stock? Nature is not that different you know...

[NYatKNIGHT]

The Basics
Connecting the Global Warming Dots

By ANDREW C. REVKIN (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/andrew_c_revkin/index.html?inline=nyt-per)

Published: January 14, 2007

If thought of as a painting, the scientific picture of a growing and potentially calamitous human influence on the climate has moved from being abstract a century ago to impressionistic 30 years ago to pointillist today.

The impact of a buildup of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is now largely undisputed. Almost everyone in the field says the consequences can essentially be reduced to a formula: More CO2 = warmer world = less ice = higher seas. (Throw in a lot of climate shifts and acidifying oceans for good measure.)

But the prognosis — and the proof that people are driving much of the warming — still lacks the sharpness and detail of a modern-day photograph, which makes it hard to get people to change their behavior.

Indeed, the closer one gets to a particular pixel, be it hurricane strength, or the rate at which seas could rise, the harder it is to be precise. So what is the basis for the ever-stronger scientific agreement on the planet’s warming even in the face of blurry details?

As in a pointillist painting, the meaning emerges from the broadest view, from the “balance of evidence,” as the scientific case is described in the periodic reports issued by an enormous international network of experts: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, www.ipcc.ch (http://www.ipcc.ch/). The main findings of the panel’s fourth assessment since 1990 will be released in Paris on Feb. 2.

In the panel’s last report, issued in 2001, and in more recent studies reviewed for the coming report, various trends provide clues that human activity, rather than natural phenomena, probably caused most of the recent warming. A number of trends have been identified:

¶The global average minimum nighttime temperature has risen. (This is unlikely to be caused by some variability in the sun, for example, and appears linked to the greenhouse gases that hold in heat radiating from the earth’s surface, even after the sun has gone down.)

¶The stratosphere, high above the earth’s surface, has cooled, which is an expected outcome of having more heat trapped by the gases closer to the surface, in the troposphere. (Scientists say that variations in the sun’s output, for example, would instead cause similar trends in the two atmospheric layers instead of opposite ones.)

¶There has been a parallel warming trend over land and oceans. (In other words, the increase in the amount of heat-trapping asphalt cannot be the only culprit.)

“There’s no urbanization going on on the ocean,” said Jay Lawrimore, chief of the climate monitoring branch of the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

Another important finding comes from computer simulations of the climate system. While the several dozen top models remain rough approximations, they have become progressively better at replicating climate patterns, past and present.

In the models, the only way to replicate the remarkable warming, and extraordinary Arctic warming, of recent decades is to add greenhouse gases as people have been doing, Dr. Lawrimore said.

“Without the greenhouse gases,” he said, “you just don’t get what we’ve observed.”

http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2007/01/13/weekinreview/14basics.306.1278.jpg

Copyright 2007 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html)The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[pianoman11686]

I think that for people like Bob, one of the main problems with accepting the theory of global warming is that so much of the data relies on a laughably small time frame. Most official weather records have only been kept since the late 1800s. And, of course, there's no basis of comparison. This is the first time Earth has ever undergone non-natural (manmade-enhanced) warming.

[MidtownGuy]

We are not relying on a small time frame at all. Pianoman, have you seen An inconvenient Truth? The information there goes beyond the TV talking points, and beyond those above graphs. It explains methods of climate analysis other than the kind of weather records you refer to. The science is vast and goes back millenia.
As for Bob, you're like an ostrich, head buried deep in the sand.
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/68/165030029_68d2393214_o.gif

[antinimby]

I believe Global Warming (or Climate Change according to some people) is very real and I'm quite worried actually.

[antinimby]

The Warming of Greenland


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/01/15/science/01green.1.600.jpg
A penisula long thought to be part of Greenland's mainland turned out to be an island when a glacier
retreated.


By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF
Published: January 16, 2007 (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/science/earth/16gree.html)

LIVERPOOL LAND, Greenland — 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.


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/01/15/science/green_map_lg.jpg
Map of Warming Island


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.

“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.


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/01/15/science/green_old_lg.jpg
A 1986 photograph shows land covered by glacial ice.


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.”


http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2007/01/15/science/16green2.500.jpg
NEW LANDS Glacial ice is melting across the Arctic Circle.


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.”

A study in The Journal of Climate last June observed that Greenland had become the single largest contributor to global sea-level rise.

Until recently, the consensus of climate scientists was that the impact of melting polar ice sheets would be negligible over the next 100 years. Ice sheets were thought to be extremely slow in reacting to atmospheric warming. The 2001 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, widely considered to be an authoritative scientific statement on the potential impacts of global warming, based its conclusions about sea-level rise on a computer model that predicted a slow onset of melting in Greenland.

“When you look at the ice sheet, the models didn’t work, which puts us on shaky ground,” said Richard Alley, a geosciences professor at Pennsylvania State University.

There is no consensus on how much Greenland’s ice will melt in the near future, Dr. Alley said, and no computer model that can accurately predict the future of the ice sheet. Yet given the acceleration of tidewater-glacier melting, a sea-level rise of a foot or two in the coming decades is entirely possible, he said. That bodes ill for island nations and those who live near the coast.

“Even a foot rise is a pretty horrible scenario,” said Stephen P. Leatherman, director of the Laboratory for Coastal Research at Florida International University in Miami.

On low-lying and gently sloping land like coastal river deltas, a sea-level rise of just one foot would send water thousands of feet inland. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide make their homes in such deltas; virtually all of coastal Bangladesh lies in the delta of the Ganges River. Over the long term, much larger sea-level rises would render the world’s coastlines unrecognizable, creating a whole new series of islands.

“Here in Miami,” Dr. Leatherman said, “we’re going to have an ocean on both sides of us.”

Such ominous implications are not lost on Mr. Schmitt, who says he hopes that the island he discovered in Greenland in September will become an international symbol of the effects of climate change. Mr. Schmitt, who speaks Inuit, has provisionally named it Uunartoq Qeqertoq: the warming island.


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/01/16/science/16green.3.500.jpg
Dennis Schmitt, a 60-year-old explorer, discovered an island in Greenland that had been
bound to the mainland.http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/spacer.gifhttp://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/spacer.gif


Global warming has profoundly altered the nature of polar exploration, said Mr. Schmitt, who in 40 years has logged more than 100 Arctic expeditions.
Routes once pioneered on a dogsled are routinely paddled in a kayak now; many features, like the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf in Greenland’s northwest, have disappeared for good.

“There is a dark side to this,” he said about the new island. “We felt the exhilaration of discovery. We were exploring something new. But of course, there was also something scary about what we did there. We were looking in the face of these changes, and all of us were thinking of the dire consequences.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[infoshare]

I believe Global Warming (or Climate Change according to some people) is very real and I'm quite worried actually.

Try reading this for what ails (or worries) you. The author of this book lays out a philosophy that is utterly unique, and in the process quickly deconstructs and discards all the major schools of philosophical, political, social, economic, religious, scientific and ecological thought, from pre-history to post-modernism. There is no 'happy ending' to be found here; but pehahps you will feel less worried in light of the greater understanding this book will bring.
cheers :cool:


Excerpt from: “Straw dogs” by John Grey
"Darwin's dice have rolled badly for Earth", Gray goes on: "The destruction of the natural world is not the result of global capitalism, industrialization, Western civilization, or any flaw in human institutions. It is a consequence of the evolutionary success of an exceptionally rapacious primate."

We humans have not changed and cannot change what we are, what we do, how we behave or what we value. We are doomed by the coding in our DNA to continue along our inexorable path of self-destruction, and to inflict large-scale but ultimately transitory damage on our planet in the process.

[lofter1]

It ^^^ sure do seem that way, don't it?

[Ninjahedge]

I think it is partially right, but the thing about the rapacious primate is that it has a way of figuring things out, AND surviving almost as well as the verminous cockroach.

The trick here is to see if we can get some sort of global cooperation on this that will slow the direct effect that we have that is growing exponantially over the past few decades..

If we can slow this and buffer the change enough to make it so we can see some of the results (sea levels rising a foot or so) then maybe we can get a REAL issue to start motivating people rather than a bunch of things that, while directly associated, are hard for teh average person to see as connected or deleterious to their way of life, or in some cases very existance.

I do agree though. I think we evolved too fast.

[lofter1]

cockroaches don't have to deal with that most human of foibles: denial

and not so sure that they wreak havoc on their environment in any similar way.

[Ninjahedge]

I know what you are saying, but I am not comparing the cockroach electoral process to our own Loft! ;)

What I am getting at is that, for better or worse, we as a species have a tendency to adapt or force things to adapt to accommodate us.

All of us? No. And we will bite off the arm of our neighbor if we have to to stay alive. Great for the survival of the species, but it turns our whole lot into a bunch of evolved apes with severed arm fetishes.


The key here, to avoid the most limb-rending is to try to stem the flow and slow the change. The more radical the environmental change, the stronger the social backlash.

If we can slow the rate enough, we can even reverse it PROVIDED people actually see a direct and irrefutable result (like their beach-front property needing higher stilts, or most of Waikiki becoming, um, TRULY oceanfront.).

At this point, if we were to eliminate man-made CO2 production, I do not thing we would be able to stop the damage from proceeding further. It is a rather long cycle. But if we do NOT stop, by the time we realize it, the school-bus full of kindergardeners will be traveling too fast down that twisty steep road toward the bridge that was washed away in the storm.

How do we get it to the point where we only lose the kids that were not wearing seatbelts? (harsh analogy, but I did not want to use a Brady Bunch or Partridge Family one... This one seemed a bit more 'hip'. CHiPs-ey almost).

;)

[ZippyTheChimp]

January 18, 2007

Bills on Climate Move to Spotlight in New Congress

By FELICITY BARRINGER and ANDREW C. REVKIN

WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 — The climate here has definitely changed.

Legislation to control global warming that once had a passionate but quixotic ring to it is now serious business. Congressional Democrats are increasingly determined to wrest control of the issue from the White House and impose the mandatory controls on carbon dioxide emissions that most smokestack industries have long opposed.

Four major Democratic bills have been announced, with more expected. One of these measures, or a blend of them, stands an excellent chance of passage in this Congress or the next, industry and environmental lobbyists said in interviews.

Many events have combined to create the new direction — forsythia blooming in lawmakers’ gardens in January, polar bears lacking the ice they need to hunt and Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” along with pragmatic executives seeking an idea of future costs and, especially, the arrival of a Democratic-controlled Congress. There was evidence of the changed mood all over Washington this week.

On Wednesday, leading scientists and evangelical pastors jointly declared their intention to fight the causes of climate change and the public confusion on the subject. Cheryl Johns, a professor at the Church of God Theological Seminary, called that problem “nature deficit disorder.”

Another news conference on Wednesday featured executives of the heavily regulated electric utility industry embracing Senators Dianne Feinstein of California and Thomas R. Carper of Delaware, both Democrats. The senators were offering separate bills to add regulations, including a cap on carbon dioxide emissions.

One sign of the Democrats’ determination to move on climate bills occurred when a Democratic Congressional aide confirmed that Speaker Nancy Pelosi wanted to create a special committee on climate, apparently an end run around Representative John D. Dingell, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Mr. Dingell, through an aide, Jodi Seth, said Wednesday that such committees were “as relevant and useful as feathers on a fish.”

Mr. Dingell’s firm support of the automobile industry, a leading source of carbon dioxide emissions, and his earlier lack of enthusiasm for climate measures have made him suspect among advocates of strong climate laws.

To add excitement, the man of the moment, Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, lent his name to the best-known brand in climate-change legislation, a measure by Senators John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut.

That means that two of the three sponsors, Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain, are leading presidential contenders in 2008.

Neither party is united around any one position. And for all the flurry of news conferences and proffered solutions, the big unanswered question was what will President Bush do?

A tantalizing hint came from James L. Connaughton, chairman of the president’s Council on Environmental Quality, in an interview on Tuesday.

“There are a number of pathways for getting to a shared goal, and we should explore all of them,” Mr. Connaughton said.

He added, “Part of that, by the way, is learning about some of the flaws in the design of the economywide cap-and-trade approach, which, if corrected, might make it a workable tool.”

That suggests that some version of an emissions cap may eventually win White House support. Persistent rumors that the president might support an emissions cap, circulating in Washington and Europe, were rejected Tuesday by his press secretary, Tony Snow.

But White House aides have hinted for months that Mr. Bush was planning a dramatic announcement on the subject in his annual address. Last year, the president said, “America is addicted to oil,” and stimulated a debate over dependence on foreign oil that has overlapped with environmental groups’ calls for cleaner-burning domestic fuels.

The mechanism that Mr. Snow ruled out is the basis for most of the Democratic measures, capping carbon dioxide emissions and then giving or selling to companies allowances, effectively permits to create a certain level of emissions.

Cleaner factories or utilities could then sell the allowances and gain a new revenue source. Factories with higher than allowable emissions would have to buy the permits they need.

Such a market, already in effect in Europe, in theory would set a price for a ton of carbon dioxide emissions, and the market would stimulate innovation in technologies that would reduce emissions or produce goods or power without the same high emissions common today.

Diplomats and environmental groups speculated in Washington this week that the Bush administration would look at other mandatory actions, perhaps not an emissions cap but rather expanding the decision to increase marginally fuel-economy standards for light trucks.

A similar move for passenger vehicles, coupled with a call for sharp increases in ethanol and other renewable fuels plus new money for research into clean-energy technologies would be a bouquet approach that would expand policies Mr. Bush has put forward.

European allies have been trying to nudge Mr. Bush toward their cap-and-trade model. The White House says that would shift jobs, and emissions from one country to another without slowing worldwide growth in emissions.

The president’ s opposition to mandatory caps retains strong support on Capitol Hill.

Jim Owen, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, the trade group of the utility industry, said Wednesday: “Everything is different, but it’s also the same in some ways. You still need 60 votes to get something big done in the Senate. And there are still many complex, thorny issues that stand in the way of enactment.”

The Democratic bills announced in the last two weeks cover a broad range. A proposal by Senator Jeff Bingaman, the New Mexico Democrat who is chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, would decrease the rate of emissions growth before capping emissions and would build in a “safety valve,” freeing industries from the caps in certain circumstances.

Groups like Environmental Defense say the safety valve would undermine market mechanisms.

In an interview, Mr. Bingaman said, “The way I look at it it’s a question of what we can get agreement on.”

Less draconian than that proposal is the Lieberman-McCain approach. It would tighten controls more gradually and include subsidies for nuclear power. An emissions cap for just utilities is the centerpiece of yet another bill, by Ms. Feinstein.

Some scientists and economists have expressed concern in recent weeks that the discussions here is overly focused on emissions caps, with too little attention on what they say is an essential need, greatly expanded government-financed research on nonpolluting energy technologies.

Richard G. Richels, a climate expert and an economist at the Electric Power Research Institute, an organization in Palo Alto, Calif., that conducts energy studies for the utility industry, said a carbon dioxide cap would mainly prompt industry to deploy existing cleaner technologies that provide gains, but fail to come close to solving the climate problem.

Mr. Richels added that it would not spur long-term investments seeking breakthroughs like new ways to store intermittent power from windmills.

Felicity Barringer reported from Washington and Andrew C. Revkin from Portland, Ore. Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting from Washington.


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[Punzie]

For the first time, global warming was a consideration in determinng the Doomsday Clock time, which was reset yesterday:

http://wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?p=142084#post142084

[ZippyTheChimp]

Where's Noah?

[ZippyTheChimp]

January 20, 2007

New Warnings on Climate Change

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

The main international scientific body assessing causes of climate change is closing in on its strongest statement yet linking emissions from burning fossil fuels to rising global temperatures, according to scientists involved in the process.

In fresh drafts of a summary of its next report, the group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (http://www.ipcc.ch/), has said that it is more than 90 percent likely that global warming since 1950 has been driven mainly by the buildup of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases, and that more warming and rising sea levels are on the way.

Some scientists involved in drafting the report confirmed and clarified details but asked not to be identified because it was not finished.

In its last report, published in 2001, the panel concluded that there was a 66 to 90 percent chance that human activities were driving the most recent warming.

The shift in language in the current draft, while subtle, is substantive. If it remains in the final version, scheduled for release in Paris on Feb. 2, it will largely complete a quest that lasted decades to determine if humans are nudging the earth’s thermostat in potentially momentous ways.

Drafts of the report project a most likely warming of 4 to 8 degrees if the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rises to twice the 280 parts per million that it averaged for many centuries before the Industrial Revolution.

The carbon dioxide concentration is now roughly 380 parts per million, and many climate experts say it will be extremely difficult to avoid hitting levels of 450 or 550 parts per million, or higher, later this century, given growth in populations and fuel use and the lack of nonpolluting alternatives that can be exploited at a sufficient scale to replace fossil fuels.

Because the panel works under the auspices of the United Nations, dozens of officials from governments around the world have been critiquing drafts, and details inevitably begin to slip into the press in the weeks preceding the formal release.

Snippets of earlier drafts have leaked to some newspapers in recent months and some sections of the latest draft were first published in The Toronto Star yesterday.

Scientists involved in writing the report said the leaks were damaging and potentially misleading, mainly because the final statements are likely to go through further changes.

“The language is far from final,” said Kevin E. Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., who is a lead author of one section. “You can’t say what the I.P.C.C. says until it actually says it.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[ablarc]

Just in time to be too late?

[tljwrdnwyrk]

and just when you thought it couldn't get any worse?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1027879546389218797&pr=goog-sl

[Jake]

Global Dimming has been shown to be reversing in the past decade. It correlates to global warming patterns but does not cause them.

[antinimby]

First time I heard of GD.

Now I gotta go read up on it...

[antinimby]

Freaky weather...


Snow flurries wow Valley
Parents snap photos as children frolic in rare winter storm


http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/pics/breaking/0122snow0122.jpg
Jacob, 3, (left) and Nicholas Dolasinski, 4, play in the snow
in the front yard of their home near 52nd Street and
Thomas Road in Phoenix Sunday.


Peter Corbett and Sarah Muench
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 22, 2007 (http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0122snow0122.html) 12:00 AM


It snowed in Phoenix on Sunday afternoon and locals were crazy about it.

Flurries whitened parts of the Valley with reports of snow from Avondale to central Phoenix to Carefree and places in between.

The National Weather Service and readers reported snowfall moving from north to south, falling anywhere from five to 30 minutes. Some of the earliest reports in the Valley were about 3:15 p.m.

Danita D'Water, who lives off Dynamite Road and Tatum Boulevard in northeast Phoenix, said there were huge snowflakes in her neighborhood late Sunday afternoon.

"The children are running up and down the street, riding their scooters in the snow," she said. "The kids are pretty excited but the adults were out taking pictures."

Along the Valley's freeways, drivers could be seen sticking their hands out their windows to touch the snowflakes.

The last reported snowfall at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport was Dec. 6, 1998, and the last measurable amount of snow recorded there was four-tenths of an inch on Dec. 21 and 22, 1990, according to the National Weather Service. While it snows occasionally on the northern outskirts of the Valley, it is unusual for it to snow in Valley cities.

About 4:45 p.m., Jerry Grucky, 45, an employee of the Circle K at McDowell Road and Seventh Avenue, stood outside his 1970 Chevy Impala with his hands trying to feel the wet snowflakes drop.

"It's great. It's fun. I have lived here all my life and have only seen snow twice," he said.

Down the street, diners at My Florist restaurant stood in the window looking at the last of the snowflakes. A few employees stepped outside to play in it.

But Jason Piontkowski of Phoenix wasn't impressed as he pumped gas nearby while snowflakes fell on his blue sweater. He is originally from Philadelphia.

"I find it unusual to see snow here, but it's not that amusing," Piontkowski said.

Just before 5 p.m., traffic on Interstate 10 in downtown Phoenix was backed up near Seventh Avenue because the slushy snowfall made streets and freeways slippery.

As late as 6 p.m., readers reported that it was still snowing in parts of Scottsdale.

The National Weather Service in Phoenix said there were no accumulations of snow in the Valley - it melted within minutes - but overnight the white stuff was expected to stick in areas with elevations of 2,500 feet or higher.


How did it happen?

Many people wondered how snow could fall through air with 40- and 50-degree temperatures in the Valley, well above freezing.

National Weather Service meteorologists said Sunday that moisture particles were being lifted higher in the atmosphere, where it is very cold.

"Today, what happened was, there was a little bit of clearing in the afternoon, instability, small thunderstorms formed south of Prescott and near Cave Creek and Carefree, moved south and there was a down rush of wind and particles," meteorologist Hector Vásquez said.

He explained that all moisture in clouds starts off in snowflake form, but because the moisture was so high up in the atmosphere, it stayed colder for longer and didn't melt immediately, allowing it to remain as snow at non-freezing temperatures.

It would be the same as watching an ice cube melt slowly rather than immediately on a warm surface, meteorologist Austin Jamison said.


Today's forecast

Phoenix's high is expected to be 48 to 53 degrees today with showers this morning and skies clearing this afternoon. By midweek, temperatures should return to normal highs of about 68 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.

Northern Arizona, which got 3 to 7 inches of snow Sunday, is under a storm warning through noon today. Travelers from Phoenix are advised to check road conditions before heading to the high country, Department of Public Safety officials said.

Copyright © 2007, azcentral.com.

[Punzie]

The New York Times
February 3, 2007


Science Panel Calls Global Warming ‘Unequivocal’

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/02/02/world/03clim600.1.jpg
(Dan Crosbie/Canadian Ice Service)
Polar bears on chunks of glacial ice in the Bering Sea in 2004.
Much higher temperatures are forecast for the Arctic, climate scientists say.



By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=ELISABETH%20ROSENTHAL&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=ELISABETH%20ROSENTHAL&inline=nyt-per) and ANDREW C. REVKIN (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/andrew_c_revkin/index.html?inline=nyt-per)

PARIS, Feb. 2 — In a grim and powerful assessment of the future of the planet, the leading international network of climate scientists has concluded for the first time that global warming (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) is “unequivocal” and that human activity is the main driver, “very likely” causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950.



http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/02/03/world/03clim190.3.jpg (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:pop_me_up2%28%27http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/02/03/world/03climate.2.ready.html%27,%20%2703climate_2_ready% 27,%20%27width=720,height=600,scrollbars=yes,toolb ars=no,resizable=yes%27%29)
(Reuters)
A worker at an industrial-residue disposal site in Hanshou County in central China Friday.
A climate panel has concluded that human industrial activity is “very likely” driving global temperature rises.



They said the world was in for centuries of climbing temperatures, rising seas and shifting weather patterns — unavoidable results of the buildup of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.

But their report, released here on Friday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said warming and its harmful consequences could be substantially blunted by prompt action.

While the report provided scant new evidence of a climate apocalypse now, and while it expressly avoided recommending courses of action, officials from the United Nations (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org) agencies that created the panel in 1988 said it spoke of the urgent need to limit looming and momentous risks.

“In our daily lives we all respond urgently to dangers that are much less likely than climate change to affect the future of our children,” said Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, which administers the panel along with the World Meteorological Organization.

“Feb. 2 will be remembered as the date when uncertainty was removed as to whether humans had anything to do with climate change on this planet,” he went on. “The evidence is on the table.”

The report is the panel’s fourth assessment since 1990 on the causes and consequences of climate change, but it is the first in which the group asserts with near certainty — more than 90 percent confidence — that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from human activities have been the main causes of warming in the past half century.

In its last report, in 2001, the panel, consisting of hundreds of scientists and reviewers, said the confidence level for its projections was “likely,” or 66 to 90 percent. That level has now been raised to “very likely,” better than 90 percent. Both reports are online at www.ipcc.ch (http://www.ipcc.ch/).

The Bush administration, which until recently avoided directly accepting that humans were warming the planet in potentially harmful ways, embraced the findings, which had been approved by representatives from the United States and 112 other countries on Thursday night.

Administration officials asserted Friday that the United States had played a leading role in studying and combating climate change, in part by an investment of an average of almost $5 billion a year for the past six years in research and tax incentives for new technologies.

At the same time, Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman rejected the idea of unilateral limits on emissions. “We are a small contributor to the overall, when you look at the rest of the world, so it’s really got to be a global solution,” he said.

The United States, with about 5 percent of the world’s population, contributes about a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions, more than any other country.

Democratic lawmakers quickly fired off a round of news releases using the report to bolster a fresh flock of proposed bills aimed at cutting emissions of greenhouse gases. Senator James M. Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who has called the idea of dangerous human-driven warming a hoax, issued a news release headed “Corruption of Science” that rejected the report as “a political document.”

The new report says the global climate is likely to warm 3.5 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit if carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere reach twice the levels of 1750, before the Industrial Revolution.

Many energy and environment experts see such a doubling, or worse, as a foregone conclusion after 2050 unless there is a prompt and sustained shift away from the 20th-century pattern of unfettered burning of coal and oil, the main sources of carbon dioxide, and an aggressive expansion of nonpolluting sources of energy.

And the report says there is a more than a 1-in-10 chance of much greater warming, a risk that many experts say is far too high to ignore.

Even a level of warming that falls in the middle of the group’s range of projections would be likely to cause significant stress to ecosystems, according to many climate experts and biologists. And it would alter longstanding climate patterns that shape water supplies and agricultural production.

Moreover, the warming has set in motion a rise in global sea levels, the report says. It forecasts a rise of 7 to 23 inches by 2100 and concludes that seas will continue to rise for at least 1,000 years to come. By comparison, seas rose about 6 to 9 inches in the 20th century.

John P. Holdren, an energy and climate expert at Harvard (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/h/harvard_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org), said the report “powerfully underscores the need for a massive effort to slow the pace of global climatic disruption before intolerable consequences become inevitable.”

“Since 2001, there has been a torrent of new scientific evidence on the magnitude, human origins and growing impacts of the climatic changes that are under way,” said Mr. Holdren, who is the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “In overwhelming proportions, this evidence has been in the direction of showing faster change, more danger and greater confidence about the dominant role of fossil-fuel burning and tropical deforestation in causing the changes that are being observed.”



http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/02/02/science/0203-sci-CLIMATE.gif



The conclusions came after a three-year review of hundreds of studies of past climate shifts; observations of retreating ice, warming and rising seas, and other changes around the planet; and a greatly expanded suite of supercomputer simulations used to test how the earth will respond to a growing blanket of gases that hold heat in the atmosphere.

The section released Friday was a 20-page summary for policymakers, which was approved early in the morning by teams of officials from more than 100 countries after three days and nights of wrangling over wording with the lead authors, all of whom are scientists.

It described far-flung ramifications for both humans and nature.

“It is very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent,” said the summary.

Generally, the scientists said, more precipitation will fall at higher latitudes, which are also likely to see lengthened growing seasons. Semi-arid subtropical regions, already chronically plagued by drought, could have a further 20 percent drop in rainfall under the panel’s midrange outlook for increases in the greenhouse gases.

The summary added a new chemical consequence of the buildup of carbon dioxide to the list of mainly climatic and biological effects foreseen in its previous reports: a drop in the pH of seawater as oceans absorb billions of tons of carbon dioxide, which forms carbonic acid when partly dissolved.

The ocean would stay alkaline, but marine biologists have said that a change in the direction of acidity could imperil some kinds of corals and plankton.

The report essentially caps a half-century-long effort to discern whether humans, through the buildup of carbon dioxide and other gases released mainly by burning fuels and forests, could influence the earth’s climate system in potentially momentous ways.

The group operates under the aegis of the United Nations and was chartered in 1988 — a year of record heat, burning forests and the first big headlines about global warming — to provide regular reviews of climate science to governments to inform policy choices.

Government officials are involved in shaping the summary of each report, but the scientist-authors, who are unpaid, have the final say over the thousands of pages in four underlying technical reports that will be completed and published later this year.

Big questions remain about the speed and extent of some impending changes, both because of uncertainty about future population and pollution trends and the complex interrelationships of the greenhouse emissions, clouds, dusty kinds of pollution, the oceans and earth’s veneer of life, which both emits and soaks up carbon dioxide and other such gases.

But a broad array of scientists, including authors of the report and independent experts, said the latest analysis was the most sobering view yet of a century of transition — after thousands of years of relatively stable climate conditions — to a new norm of continual change.

Should greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere at even a moderate pace, average temperatures by the end of the century could match those last seen 125,000 years ago, in the previous warm spell between ice ages, the report said.

At that time, the panel said, sea levels were 12 to 20 feet higher than they are now. Much of that extra water is now trapped in the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, which are eroding in some places.

The panel said there was no solid scientific understanding of how rapidly the vast stores of ice in polar regions will melt, so their estimates on new sea levels were based mainly on how much the warmed oceans will expand, and not on contributions from the melting of ice now on land.

Other scientists have recently reported evidence that the glaciers and ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctic could flow seaward far more quickly than estimated in the past, and they have proposed that the risks to coastal areas could be much more imminent. But the climate change panel is forbidden by its charter to enter into speculation, and so could not include such possible instabilities in its assessment.

Michel Jarraud, the secretary general of the United Nations World Meteorological Organization, said the lack of clarity should offer no one comfort. “The speed with which melting ice sheets are raising sea levels is uncertain, but the report makes clear that sea levels will rise inexorably over the coming centuries,” he said. “It is a question of when and how much, and not if.”

The warming and other climate changes will be highly variable around the world, with the Arctic in particular seeing much higher temperatures, said Susan Solomon, the co-leader of the team writing the summary and the section of the panel’s report on basic science. She is an atmospheric scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The kinds of vulnerabilities are very much dependent on where you are, Dr. Solomon said in a telephone interview. “If you’re living in parts of the tropics and they’re getting drier and you’re a farmer, there are some very acute issues associated with even small changes in rainfall — changes we’re already seeing are significant,” she said. “If you are an Inuit and you’re seeing your sea ice retreating already, that’s affecting your life style and culture.”

The 20-page summary is a sketch of the findings that are most germane to the public and world leaders.

The full report, thousands of pages of technical background, will be released in four sections through the year — the first on basic science, then sections on impacts and options for limiting emissions and limiting inevitable harms, and finally a synthesis of all of the findings near year’s end.

In a news conference in Paris, Dr. Solomon declined to provide her own views on how society should respond to the momentous changes projected in the study.

“I honestly believe that it would be a much better service for me to keep my personal opinions separate than what I can actually offer the world as a scientist,” she said. “My stepson, who is 29, has an utterly different view of risks than I do. People are going to have to make their own judgments.”
Some authors of the report said that no one could honestly point to any remaining uncertainties as justification for further delay.

“Policy makers paid us to do good science, and now we have very high scientific confidence in this work — this is real, this is real, this is real,” said Richard B. Alley, one of the lead authors and a professor at Pennsylvania State University (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/p/pennsylvania_state_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org). “So now act, the ball’s back in your court.”

Elisabeth Rosenthal reported from Paris, and Andrew C. Revkin from New York. Felicity Barringer contributed reporting from Washington.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/03/science/earth/03climate.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

[lofter1]

Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2004397,00.html
Ian Sample, science correspondent
Friday February 2, 2007

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.

Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered.

The UN report was written by international experts and is widely regarded as the most comprehensive review yet of climate change science. It will underpin international negotiations on new emissions targets to succeed the Kyoto agreement, the first phase of which expires in 2012. World governments were given a draft last year and invited to comment.

The AEI has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees.

The letters, sent to scientists in Britain, the US and elsewhere, attack the UN's panel as "resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work" and ask for essays that "thoughtfully explore the limitations of climate model outputs".

Climate scientists described the move yesterday as an attempt to cast doubt over the "overwhelming scientific evidence" on global warming. "It's a desperate attempt by an organisation who wants to distort science for their own political aims," said David Viner of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

"The IPCC process is probably the most thorough and open review undertaken in any discipline. This undermines the confidence of the public in the scientific community and the ability of governments to take on sound scientific advice," he said.

The letters were sent by Kenneth Green, a visiting scholar at AEI, who confirmed that the organisation had approached scientists, economists and policy analysts to write articles for an independent review that would highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the IPCC report.

"Right now, the whole debate is polarised," he said. "One group says that anyone with any doubts whatsoever are deniers and the other group is saying that anyone who wants to take action is alarmist. We don't think that approach has a lot of utility for intelligent policy."

One American scientist turned down the offer, citing fears that the report could easily be misused for political gain. "You wouldn't know if some of the other authors might say nothing's going to happen, that we should ignore it, or that it's not our fault," said Steve Schroeder, a professor at Texas A&M university.

The contents of the IPCC report have been an open secret since the Bush administration posted its draft copy on the internet in April. It says there is a 90% chance that human activity is warming the planet, and that global average temperatures will rise by another 1.5 to 5.8C this century, depending on emissions.

Lord Rees of Ludlow, the president of the Royal Society, Britain's most prestigious scientific institute, said: "The IPCC is the world's leading authority on climate change and its latest report will provide a comprehensive picture of the latest scientific understanding on the issue. It is expected to stress, more convincingly than ever before, that our planet is already warming due to human actions, and that 'business as usual' would lead to unacceptable risks, underscoring the urgent need for concerted international action to reduce the worst impacts of climate change. However, yet again, there will be a vocal minority with their own agendas who will try to suggest otherwise."

Ben Stewart of Greenpeace said: "The AEI is more than just a thinktank, it functions as the Bush administration's intellectual Cosa Nostra. They are White House surrogates in the last throes of their campaign of climate change denial. They lost on the science; they lost on the moral case for action. All they've got left is a suitcase full of cash."

On Monday, another Exxon-funded organisation based in Canada will launch a review in London which casts doubt on the IPCC report. Among its authors are Tad Murty, a former scientist who believes human activity makes no contribution to global warming. Confirmed VIPs attending include Nigel Lawson and David Bellamy, who believes there is no link between burning fossil fuels and global warming.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

[lofter1]

Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report ... Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments ...

The letters were sent by Kenneth Green, a visiting scholar at AEI ...


Kenneth Green

sourcewatch.org (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Kenneth_Green)

Kenneth Green, also known as Kenneth P. Green, is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Enterprise_Institute) (AEI), where he "studies public policy in air pollution and climate change; energy and environment; transport and environment; and environmental chemicals."

Career summary

According to his AEI biography (http://www.http//www.aei.org/scholars/scholarID.112,filter.all/scholar.asp), Kenneth Green has held the following positions:

Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Enterprise_Institute), 2006-
Executive Director, Environmental Literacy Council (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Environmental_Literacy_Council), 2005-2006
Chief Scientist, Director of Centre for Studies in Risk, Regulation, and Environment, Fraser Institute (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fraser_Institute), 2002-2005
Chief Scientist, Director of Environmental Program, Reason Foundation (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Reason_Foundation), 1994-2002
Environmental Program Analyst/writer, Hughes Aircraft Company Corporate Office, 1990-1994AEI, the Fraser Institute and the Reason Foundation have all received significant funding from Exxon Mobil (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Exxon_Mobil).

***

[BryanSereny]

Even if the US gets its act together, getting China on board will be next to impossible. They are preparing for the poo to hit the fan, ie Three Gorges Dam, sinking "13 cities, 140 towns, 1352 villages, 657 factories & 30,000 hectares of cultivated land", building entire new cities on much higher ground. While NY goes underwater turns into Atlantis in 100 years, the Chinese will be sitting high and dry.

[Punzie]

Your remark got me wondering: If most other industrialized countries took the most stringent measures against global warming, could China alone still bring about global flooding?

[lofter1]

While NY goes underwater turns into Atlantis in 100 years, the Chinese will be sitting high and dry.

Lots of coastal cities in China.

But then the rulers of China over the past century have been less than sentimental about the loss of a few million of their own countrymen.

When you have a billion + plus citizens I guess one can -- from a distance -- deem those millions expendable.

[Punzie]

:eek: China's 22nd Century plan for population control?

[WebErr]

Very strange weather in Russia this winter.
Yellow snow in the south, record of higher temperature, near to record of lower temperature.

Temperature was +15 last week, now is about -30.
Unreal...:confused:

[ablarc]

^ The U.S. is getting similarly erratic weather patterns. Another outcome of global warming, possibly complicated by global dimming.

Being a farmer will grow increasingly risky.

[Ninjahedge]

Even if the US gets its act together, getting China on board will be next to impossible. They are preparing for the poo to hit the fan, ie Three Gorges Dam, sinking "13 cities, 140 towns, 1352 villages, 657 factories & 30,000 hectares of cultivated land", building entire new cities on much higher ground. While NY goes underwater turns into Atlantis in 100 years, the Chinese will be sitting high and dry.

Um, WTF are you talking about?

The three gorges dam was for water supply! This had NOTHING TO DO with global warming!


Geez man, get your arguments strait!!!

[WebErr]

^ The U.S. is getting similarly erratic weather patterns. Another outcome of global warming, possibly complicated by global dimming.

Being a farmer will grow increasingly risky.
I hope this weather is short time nonsense.

[ablarc]

I hope this weather is short time nonsense.
Don't count on it.

[Ninjahedge]

Just to stir the pot here.... An opinion from another on another site (not that I agree with him or anything...)


OK since I am not going to paraphrase all these articles that disprove the whole the world is coming to an end, the ice caps are melting let's all panic. Here is some of the othersides of the debate on global warming. I am in MN and I would have to say that the whole Global warming issue is BS since we are breaking records for cold that were set 10 years ago. I say this is cyclical. Now some of these links are blogs from others that have read up and studied the facts and have expressed their opinions and they are opinions that I believe and the first one is a transcript from a Senator Inhofe on CNN.

Sen. James Inhofe Shows Real Data to CNN's Global Warming Alarmist Miles O'Brien
http://newsbusters.org/node/10530

UK addressing the issues
http://www.abd.org.uk/green_myths.htm

Paper called "Apocalypse cancelled"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2006/11/05/warm-refs.pdf

List of Scientific papers
http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/new_page_1.htm

Scientist from University disputing Global Warming
http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Ca...ing_myths.html



So there are some of my sources and I still say this is all media hype and I don't believe the hype since I am currently freezing my arse off up here in MN.


Tell me what ya think!

[ZippyTheChimp]

I stopped after the Association of British Drivers.

LOL.

To those old enough to remember, it reminds me of an organization called the Tobacco Institute, that conducted serious research, or so the said.

[ablarc]

^ Is there a TransFat Institute?

[ZippyTheChimp]

Spokesperson for the TransFat Institute:

http://www.sciam.com/media/externalnews/2006-12-18T152808Z_01_NOOTR_RTRIDSP_2_HEALTH-ITALY-FASHION-ANOREXIA-DC.jpg

[ablarc]

^ :p

[JCMAN320]

Corzine wants feds to follow N.J. lead on emissions

Posted by The Star-Ledger March 01, 2007 12:30PM
Categories: News

In a return visit to Capitol Hill, Gov. Jon Corzine today called on Congress and the federal government to follow New Jersey's lead in placing limits on emissions that contribute to global warming. Earlier this month, Corzine signed an executive order that mandates some of the nation's most ambitious new targets for reducing emissions of so-called greenhouse gases. The order requires a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050.

Corzine told the Senate Environment and Public Works committee that while reducing emission may have short-term economic consequences, over time "the states that are the first movers in this will have a competitive advantage."

He told the panel's global warming skeptics that the consequences of global warming are already being felt at the Jersey Shore where beaches are shrinking by the year.

"You can do the scientific research, but you can see for yourself the reality that something is changing and I believe it is the unchecked...emissions," he said. Most scientists believe global warming is caused by greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, which keep heat from the sun trapped in the atmosphere.

Contributed by Scott Orr

[Ninjahedge]

http://www.workingforchange.com/webgraphics/WFC/TMW022807.jpg

[lofter1]

The Real Riddle of Changing Weather:
How Safe Is My Home?
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/09/realestate/hurricane.lg.jpg
New York Office of Emergency Management

NY TIMES (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/realestate/11cov.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)
By TERI KARUSH ROGERS
March 11, 2007

BY now it is no longer news that people are jiggling the planet’s thermostat.

One response is to go green: New Yorkers who were terrified into action by Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” are shaping up their lives and homes with a compulsion formerly reserved for the Atkins diet.

All this carbon cutting is a boon, and it certainly provides a moral high ground. But it fails to address one pesky truth: no matter how green New York City becomes, it remains hostage to huge amounts of heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions already in the pipeline and from the future environmental transgressions of others, facts made clear in the bleak conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released last month in Paris.

With no obvious savior in the wings, there is a growing urgency that global warming be understood at a local level, right down to the block, starting with: How could a rising sea level and pummeling storms affect the trillion dollars’ worth of property New Yorkers call home?

“It’s all pointing in a bad direction,” said Stuart Gaffin, an associate research scientist at the Center for Climate Systems Research at Columbia University. “There’s nothing good to encourage you to think we’re going to avoid long-term flooding events.”

Estimates provided by the center, and relied upon by New York City planners, predict that sea levels will creep up about five more inches by 2030 and another few inches by 2050. More dire estimates call for 12 inches or more between 2030 and 2080.

But while widespread permanent inundation — the sort vividly illustrated in Mr. Gore’s movie — is possible, it isn’t likely to occur in the city in our grandchildren’s lifetimes, or even their grandchildren’s. And an extra 5 to 10 inches of water over the next few decades won’t pose devastating problems for most of the city.

The bigger threat to property is the possibility of more frequent and increasingly vicious storms that could propel already encroaching waters onto the shore, could dump larger amounts of precipitation, and could lash glassy skyscrapers and crumbling tenements.

And even before that happens, real estate values in low-lying areas could erode as heightened awareness of global warming draws attention not only to long-term exposure to storms but also to near-term damage from severe storms that could happen regardless of any long-term warming trend — like the major hurricane that experts say is overdue in New York City.

One Manhattan real estate agent said the fear was already weighing on some clients’ minds. “After Katrina, they saw how ineffective the U.S. is at holding back water compared to some other places, and it has made some people concerned,” said the agent, Tom Hemann of Brown Harris Stevens, who sells downtown. He said last month’s gloomy report on global warming prompted four former clients who had bought downtown to voice concern about living in low-lying neighborhoods.

Mr. Hemann — who said he was confident that there would be solutions before there was real trouble — is nevertheless working with a couple in their 30s who are selling their loft on Elizabeth Street. They had planned to buy again in Lower Manhattan, but the February report “changed everything,” Mr. Hemann said. “Now they’re telling us that one of the main considerations is to make sure it’s not an area of low ground. They’re also considering getting a smaller place here and investing in a property in a city way above sea level.”

Most urban planning and environmental groups have just begun grappling with how to protect the city’s property from climate change. Last fall, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg created the Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability and named as its director Rohit Aggarwala, a 35-year-old former McKinsey & Company consultant with four degrees from Columbia.

As part of the new office’s broad mandate to address housing, transportation and other infrastructure needs over the next 25 years, it will coordinate the development of a climate adaptation strategy.

Drawing on other city agencies, including the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Buildings, the new long-term planning office has also met with more than 100 advocacy organizations, conducted community meetings in each borough and digested thousands of individual e-mail messages collected through its Web site, nyc.gov/planyc2030 (http://nyc.gov/planyc2030).

The early fruit of these efforts will be a plan — or at least a framework for one, to be announced by the mayor in early April — to tailor the city to its future 25 years hence.

But like Mr. Hemann’s clients, some New Yorkers are not willing to bet their nest eggs that the dice will roll their way.

Among insurers, all of whom factor climate change into their risk assessments, some like Allstate are already refusing to renew homeowners’ policies in the eight downstate counties (including metropolitan New York) most vulnerable to hurricanes and other major storms that could proliferate in a warming climate. (Allstate continues to insure individual co-op and condo units.)

“When you have trillion-dollar exposure, it doesn’t take much bad weather to cause extensive damage,” said L. James Valverde Jr., the vice president for economics and risk management at the Insurance Information Institute, a trade group based in Manhattan. “That’s really on the mind of the industry. When you’ve got this kind of concentration of people and property in a very important sector of the country, the potential for economic and insured loss really is great.”

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/09/realestate/11floyd.local.2.190.jpg (http://javascript<b></b>:pop_me_up2('http://graphics.nytimes.com/packages/other/realestate/NYstormsurge.mp4', '600_525', 'width=600,height=525,location=no,scrollbars=yes,t oolbars=no,resizable=yes'))

Video Projected Storm Surge Over New York (http://javascript<b></b>:pop_me_up2('http://graphics.nytimes.com/packages/other/realestate/NYstormsurge.mp4', '600_525', 'width=600,height=525,location=no,scrollbars=yes,t oolbars=no,resizable=yes'))

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/09/realestate/11floyd.region.190.jpg (http://javascript<b></b>:pop_me_up2('http://graphics.nytimes.com/packages/other/realestate/StormSurge.mp4', '600_525', 'width=600,height=525,location=no,scrollbars=yes,t oolbars=no,resizable=yes'))

Video Projected Storm Surge Over Northeastern Seaboard (http://javascript<b></b>:pop_me_up2('http://graphics.nytimes.com/packages/other/realestate/StormSurge.mp4', '600_525', 'width=600,height=525,location=no,scrollbars=yes,t oolbars=no,resizable=yes'))

Structures at particular risk from storm-related flooding include tenements, brownstones and any building with old masonry foundations, said Joe Tortorella, a vice president and a structural engineer at Robert Silman Associates in Manhattan and a member of the Disaster Preparedness Task Force of the American Institute of Architects.

Mr. Tortorella noted that much of the West Village and Lower Manhattan — neighborhoods whose low elevation renders them vulnerable to flooding — is on a precarious perch. “It’s like the finest sand you can find, so that even if you could put it on a table, you can’t mound it up in a pile,” he said.

In a hurricane or severe northeaster, Mr. Tortorella said, “if the water moves fast enough and recedes fast enough, there could be scouring like a tide that takes sand with it on the beach. As the water recedes, it pulls silt out and could undermine the building. It could be a disaster of epic proportions in New York for the smaller buildings.”

Unlike New Orleans, where water from Hurricane Katrina was trapped in the city’s tidal basin, a hurricane storm surge in New York City would most likely retreat after a single tidal cycle, except for the water pooled underground, where it could disable power lines, drown the subway system and choke basements, among other things. Standing water in basements could breed mold, rendering entire buildings uninhabitable.

And flooding isn’t an issue just with hurricanes. Though climate models are at odds with one another, some scientists expect the number of northeasters to increase in the next several decades, along with the amount of rain they unleash. While the storms won’t push rivers and oceans as far onto land as hurricanes could, northeasters cover more territory and linger far longer, over several tidal cycles.

In a city increasingly fashioned of glass, there are also winds to consider. Category 3 hurricanes generate sustained winds of 111 to 130 miles per hour, and Category 4 hurricanes blow at 131 to 155 m.p.h. But the city’s building code requires that windows in even the newest buildings withstand winds of just 110 miles an hour.

“Glass is a hot thing in New York City,” Mr. Tortorella said. “There’s a lot of glass structures, and you get more aggressive with what you can do with glass — actually using it for structure as opposed to just a skin on the building. The biggest problem with hurricanes is a 2-by-4 or signage from another building that falls off and blows through the glass and creates interior suction — causing the windows to blow out, the walls to blow out.”

Stronger windows could keep the winds at bay, but what about the water?

“There’s not going to be anything easy or cheap,” said Mr. Gaffin of the climate research center at Columbia. “There’s not going to be a magic silver bullet.”

One long-term but unappetizing option is to ring the city with enormous concrete sea walls. In Manhattan, this would require a wall several dozen feet high and wide enough to fit a four-lane highway on top. The higher a sea wall or levee is, the broader it has to be, and in New York City, which is interlaced with rivers, such barriers would encroach on some of the priciest real estate in the world.

(In the Netherlands, in some otherwise picturesque villages guarded by sea walls, it is possible to hear the waves crashing, see the seagulls circling and smell the salt air but never see the ocean.)

Somewhat more palatable though infinitely more complex and expensive — and politically explosive, since some waterfront acreage would not be protected — is the possibility of erecting a series of storm-surge barriers in local waterways.

“What we’re talking about is a ring of protection for metro New York that would require four large barriers, like removable dam structures, that could block off the ocean when needed,” said Malcolm James Bowman, a professor of oceanography at the Marine Sciences Research Center at the State University at Stony Brook, N.Y., and the leader of the storm-surge group there that is studying ways to protect metropolitan New York and Long Island.

“You’d need four,” he said. “One close under the Verrazano Bridge. One in Perth Amboy behind Staten Island, because the water would leak around the back into the harbor from the ocean. A third from Long Island Sound in the upper East River, perhaps between the Whitestone and Throgs Neck Bridges.

And then to protect Jamaica Bay and Kennedy Airport, you would need a fourth one across the Rockaway Inlet, but because the ground is low there, you would also need a sea wall running along the beach and up around Kennedy Airport.”

Such barriers, including lock systems to allow ships to pass through, would cost perhaps $10 billion each and take 5 to 10 years to construct. And that’s not including the 30- or 40-year prelude of engineering studies, debate, financing and court challenges.

“If you look at the European experience,” said Professor Bowman, referring to surge barriers built or under construction in the Netherlands, London and Venice, “it took up to 45 years in some cases, after a major catastrophe, before the barriers were built.”

Not that the surge barriers would be a panacea. Besides the ecological side effects like erosion, the barriers wouldn’t prevent wind damage and would fail to protect some areas, including the southern coast of Long Island. (There, said Professor Bowman, looking several decades ahead, “I think people will stay as long as they can and then slowly evacuate if it gets really bad.”)

Shorter-term fixes include mandating a costly round of retrofitting, intelligent land-use planning and reining in coastal development, or at least requiring wider buffer areas to absorb huge storm surges capped by breaking waves.
And then there’s the building code.

Even the city’s newest gleaming towers were constructed under 40-year-old rules whose own foundations seem rickety when it comes to withstanding — or even contemplating — damage from severe storms.

With regard to flooding, the building code follows Federal Emergency Management Agency regulations, which set forth a bare-minimum standard for construction in flood zones and rely on the emergency agency’s conservative flood maps drawn in 1983. Roughly translated, the maps identify areas that might be flooded by a Category 2 or 3 hurricane; in some places around New York City, the zones correspond to a mere Category 1 hurricane, with winds of 74 to 95 m.p.h.

Besides excluding areas that could be inundated by a severe hurricane, the flood zones are based on purely historical data and thus do not factor in climate change. That means that new construction may be inadequate to withstand the rigors of climate change 30, 40 or 50 years from now or the hurricane that could hit at any time.

Even the emergency agency’s newest maps, scheduled to go into use this fall — which show slightly enlarged flood zones on the south shores of Staten Island and Queens, for example; along the Hudson River in Lower Manhattan; and in Hunts Point in the Bronx — are still based only on historical data. (The new maps can be viewed online on the Buildings Department Web site: gis.nyc.gov/dob/fm/index.htm (http://gis.nyc.gov/dob/fm/index.htm).)

“The future is just too theoretical, and FEMA maps have to tell people what has happened in the past,” said Paul Weberg, a senior engineer in the agency’s office that covers New York State. “We need something to hang our hat on.”

(Mr. Weberg himself made sure to buy a home in one of the highest neighborhoods on Staten Island. “As much as I like the water, I wasn’t going to buy a place south of Hylan Boulevard,” he said, referring to the island’s southern coastline.)

For New York planners, there are other options. “If there is a concern within a city or state about long-range planning or global warming,” Mr. Weberg said, “they can always go above our regulations. We go by minimum regulations. We are almost a compromise between environmentalists and builders.”

The city’s Buildings Department has been working to modernize its code for the last three years and expects to present a plan this spring.

One section will revise the criteria for deciding how much force a window should withstand. With regard to flooding, the focus will be on shoring up a small group of critical buildings — hospitals, firehouses and the like — and only those built within identified flood zones.

But if you believe that flood zones will expand along with the frequency of storms, these zones will be inadequate.

So who’s looking out for the rest of the city?

“I do a lot of work in the West Village in new construction, and the talk of storm surges is not even on the lips of anyone,” Mr. Tortorella said. “What’s in the code is flood zones that you have to obey, and you deal with that but nothing more.”

Homeowners curious about how vulnerable they are to flooding may not find even the newest FEMA maps especially useful. Besides failing to anticipate the effects of climate change, the flood zones merely calculate odds (again, based on historical data) that a particular area will be flooded. So while it may not seem very alarming that your home (or prospective home) is in a 100-year flood zone, the designation does not mean a flood will occur only once in 100 years. Instead, it means that a flood has a 26 percent chance of occurring in any 30-year period.

An arguably more useful gauge is the hurricane evacuation map that can be downloaded at the city’s Office of Emergency Management Web site, nyc.gov/html/oem/html/ready/hurricane_guide.shtml (http://nyc.gov/html/oem/html/ready/hurricane_guide.shtml).


Dispensing with probabilities, it illustrates the areas expected to be affected by hurricane storm surges based on today’s sea levels — block by block and neighborhood by neighborhood. The agency itself takes the threat quite seriously: it not only redrew its disaster plan after Katrina, but will soon solicit designs for an urban alternative to the FEMA trailer — pods to shelter thousands of New Yorkers displaced by a disaster.


Along with global-warming talk, the hurricane map has surfaced often enough in the media to make at least some home buyers and owners aware of the potential risk. But if Lower Manhattan is an example, most people even in low-lying areas aren’t thinking about it too much.


Paddington M. Zwigard, an avid environmentalist and a downtown real estate broker with Brown Harris Stevens, just sold her $4.15 million “green” penthouse on Chambers Street between Hudson and Greenwich Streets.


Though she was long aware that its location near the river made it vulnerable to flooding — either from a hurricane or a long-term rise in sea levels — she was willing to stomach the risk to live downtown and near the river.


When she decided to sell, she thought the apartment’s location would prompt at least some questions from buyers, though when it didn’t, she suspected she knew why.


“I’ve lived downtown for 20 years, and there’s definitely a new wave of TriBeCans — younger, self-absorbed, mass-materialist consumers who are really not aware of anything outside their whatever,” Ms. Zwigard said.


She speculates that the extensive condo development has attracted a certain type of buyer: wealthier, more mobile and disinclined to look more than a few years into his or her homeowning future. Ms. Zwigard is planning to buy other apartments downtown, renovate them and sell them — betting, in effect, on others’ short-sightedness.


Wayne Tusa, a former board member of the New York chapter of the United States Green Building Council, echoed that thought. “People generally think about what’s in their face today,” he said. “You’re not thinking: ‘Gee whiz, what will happen 30 years from now? Will the value suddenly go poof because my basement is flooded three times a week?’ ”


Mr. Tusa, who lives at the edge of a 100-year flood plain, on East 90th Street between First and Second Avenues, is looking for a parking garage on higher ground. He is also considering buying a second home in the Catskills to get away from the coast.


One downtown broker, Jon Phillips, a vice president of Halstead Property, said his buyers don’t worry because they reason that “the safest place to hide is in a bank.” In other words, with so much capital at risk, if New York City flounders, they believe somebody will do something before it’s too late.

What if somebody doesn’t? Is New York one catastrophic hurricane — or a few awful northeasters — away from a huge shift in ownership?


“There are several horror stories to be written,” Mr. Tusa said.


“How does New York City survive if 20 percent of it is flooded and nothing works? What if we lose one airport, or what if the subway system doesn’t work anymore? What if the waste-water treatment systems don’t work anymore? What if 50 percent of the time there’s waves on the F.D.R.? New York City would not be habitable —that’s really the worst-case scenario. And before that begins to happen, people will make different choices like, ‘Should I move my office?’ ”


But some thoughtful voices are being heard. “The fact that the city has started raising the question now is to their credit,” said Mark E. Ginsberg, a partner in Curtis & Ginsberg Architects in Manhattan and a leader of New York New Visions, a coalition of architecture, planning and design organizations concerned with rebuilding Lower Manhattan. “Do we deal with it before something bad happens, or as is often the case in human nature, do we deal with it after something bad happens? Look what happened to New Orleans.”


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[lofter1]

Web Sites

NY TIMES (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/realestate/11cbox.html)
March 11.2007

New York City residents can find some useful information at a number of government Web sites.

You can find out whether you live in a hurricane evacuation zone by filling in your address at gis.nyc.gov/oem/he/index.htm (http://gis.nyc.gov/oem/he/index.htm) or at nytimes.com/realestate (http://nytimes.com/realestate).

The Office of Emergency Management’s hurricane evacuation map for New York City can be found in 11 languages at nyc.gov/hurricane (http://nyc.gov/hurricane). Click on the link for the “Ready New York hurricane brochure” at the bottom of the page; then click on “map” next to the desired language.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/f/federal_emergency_management_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org)’s maps of designated flood zones that will go into use next fall can be found at gis.nyc.gov/dob/fm/index.htm (http://gis.nyc.gov/dob/fm/index.htm). Click on the desired borough.

The home page for plaNYC, the city’s program for improving the infrastructure and quality of life over the next quarter of a century, is at nyc.gov/planyc2030 (http://nyc.gov/planyc2030).



Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[JCMAN320]

Solar power's future grows brighter in N.J.
Legislation would give homeowners rights

Thursday, March 22, 2007
BY RUSSELL BEN-ALI
Star-Ledger Staff

If ever there was a perfect place to install solar panels, Pratik Dalal thought he had one.

The energy-saving panels would have been installed on the rear roof of his Franklin Township home, facing the sun-drenched south but out of view of passersby.

"I have no homeowners behind my house," said Dalal, who lives with his wife and three children. "There's nothing but woods in the back, so no one can see it."

Still, by a vote of 2-0, with three members of the five-person board inactive, the homeowner association with oversight over aesthetics in his development flatly rejected his request last fall.

His case isn't unique.

With 1.2 million state residents living in deed-restricted developments, there is an increasing number of conflicts between residents who want to install the panels and homeowner associations, some of whom argue the panels hurt property values.

And since available state subsidies for the energy-saving panels decrease with time, some residents locked in these disputes feel they are losing money as time passes.

But help may be on the way.

After sluggish early progress, state lawmakers seem poised to pass compromise legislation that would give homeowners rights while still allowing boards some say.

Earlier this month, the state Assembly approved a bill sponsored by Assemblyman Larry Chatzidakis (R-Burlington) that would require homeowner associations to permit solar panels in single-family homes when owners are responsible for roof repairs.

The bill, A-2853, was introduced in March 2006 and later amended to include language the associations found more agreeable, Chatzidakis said.

"They can't deny the installation," Chatzidakis said. But "they still have control over the number of panels and some of the architectural review, and they normally like to exercise that control."

An identical bill was introduced this month in the state Senate by Sens. Bob Smith (D-Middlesex) and Martha W. Bark (R-Burlington).

The issue is being watched by groups like the Constitutional Litigation Clinic at Rutgers School of Law, which believes a case on behalf of homeowners would be easy to make.

"It's so against public policy," said Frank Askin, the clinic's director. "If they want to put up solar panels to support public policy for energy conservation, I don't think the courts are going to let (associations) prohibit that.

In 2001, after the state Board of Public Utilities began its Clean Energy Program, there were only six solar panel installations in the state, said Doyal Siddell, a BPU spokesman. Last year, there were some 2,000, second only to California.

One of those hoping to get in on the savings is Dalal, who sees recent legislative events as promising.

"I don't want to go against the homeowners association, but I'm trying to see some light," said Dalal, who is now a member of his association's board, in the Woodfields section of the Princeton Highlands development. "If the installation doesn't require any permission, then I'll be happy."

For Mukul Sinvhal, who lives in another section of the Princeton Highlands development, managed by a different association, the legislation could bring an end to his solar nightmare. He installed the panels, only to be told by his association to remove them.

"The board does not agree with the installation of solar panels for aesthetic reasons," Sinvhal, who could lose $70,000 in his dispute. "If this bill becomes a law, then they can't do anything. We can install solar panels."

[Capn_Birdseye]

Gloabl warming, climate change, they're all a big con, designed to enslave us through the application of flawed, some might say, crooked, science! I've nothing but utter contempt for those purvey these perverted theories in the name of science - wake up guys, the kings got no clothes - know the story eh?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttV2C6B8pU&eurl= )

[Ninjahedge]

Your point?

This is just rabble rousing. Got anything better besides a 75 minute YouTube link?

[Capn_Birdseye]

Your point?

This is just rabble rousing. Got anything better besides a 75 minute YouTube link?
You obviously haven't seen the programme. Open your mind to the subject, its really worth seeing. This is not rabble rousing as you so cutely call it, its about questioning some seriously flawed science!

[ZippyTheChimp]

Now I don't know who to be more afraid of: The Leaf Munching Green Nazis or the Pseudo Penis World Dominating Transsexual Fascists.

Someone should make a film:Bad Science
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle

[Capn_Birdseye]

Now I don't know who to be more afraid of: The Leaf Munching Green Nazis or the Pseudo Penis World Dominating Transsexual Fascists.
I'd go with the Green Nazi's Zippy! The PPWDT Fascists are just about changing a human body - the other lot are about changing a heavenly body!!

[Ninjahedge]

You obviously haven't seen the programme. Open your mind to the subject, its really worth seeing. This is not rabble rousing as you so cutely call it, its about questioning some seriously flawed science!

No, I have read most of the contrary opinions from the 3 reputable (but paid, which makes them of ill-repute) scientists and the 1200 that have majored in climatology while studying for their liberal arts degree.

It is a bunch of hokum. The globe is warming, sea levels have risen, and ice is melting.

Now separate that from this:

CO2 is a greenhouse gas
We are producing more than the globe can process and return to us as O2 or any other useful substance
Pollution, in general, is bad.
We are consuming more and more as time goes on.

Now, even if you cannot see a direct cause and effect link, the reasons for not conserving are STILL ludicrous. Now you add the strong possibility that the two are directly associated as supported by many studies, and you see that it is probably a good idea to start changing NOW before absolute confirmation of the fact (10 years from now) and irreversible (in our lifetimes) damage is done.

Or do you just not want to have to pay more to drive your SUV or power your Plasma TV?

[Capn_Birdseye]

Ninja, you obviously haven't seen the programme but I guess you've already made up your mind on the subject, so its case closed as far as you're concerned.

Is it a coincidence that "The War on Terror" and Global Warming/Climate Change" are all coming together at the same time and that our governments are introducing a whole raft of repressive legislation "to deal" with these issues. A by-product, some say its the real agenda, is to suppress our individual freedom and rights so gallantly fought for over many centuries.

In the UK we now have a Big Brother Orwellian state where you can even be arrested for quietly reading out the names of British service personnel killed in Iraq on a London street. 20 Police officers and 4 Police vans will arrive to cart you off to jail in handcuffs!!

[ZippyTheChimp]

Is it a coincidence that "The War on Terror" and Global Warming/Climate Change" are all coming together at the same time and that our governments are introducing a whole raft of repressive legislation "to deal" with these issues.That's absurd.

You can look back at the history of your country or mine, and find similar conditions.

We had environmental issues, Vietnam, and Watergate going on at the same time. What's up with that?

And don't even talk to me about Korea the Cold War, Joe McCarthy, and all those commies under the beds.


You have to suspect a program where one of the featured experts, Carl Wunch, professor of Oceanography at MIT, has threatened to sue:

"In the part of The Great Climate Change Swindle where I am describing the fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be dangerous - because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be very important—diametrically opposite to the point I was making—which is that global warming is both real and threatening."

[Capn_Birdseye]

That's absurd.
You can look back at the history of your country or mine, and find similar conditions.
Zippy I don't think you appreciate just how far down the Orwellian Big Brother road the UK has progressed! I don't think that Americans would have put up with whats been imposed upon us - at least you have a written constitution!

We have more CCTV cameras trained on us per head of population than any other country on Earth. The Police are allowed to take samples of our DNA and retain it even if we're not charged with an offence or found not guilty of an offence. Our political parties do not offer us any genuine choice, eg. they both support the EU (most Britons don't) and they both support the £25 Billion Trident nuclear submarine renewal programme which was rushed through with minimal public debate. There is now very little difference between the Labour and Conservative parties, even Cameron is Bliar mark2.

The government is trying to reduce (some say eradicate) trial by jury, a right fought for from the days of Magna Carta, we are not allowed to protest on the streets or anywhere for that matter - an 80year old Holocaust survivor and Labour party supporter was roughly man-handled from the Labour party conference for daring to shout out the word "rubbish" to a comment made by one of Bliars henchmen!

Political correctness has become the hand-maiden of this suppression together with the war on terror and global warming.

[Ninjahedge]

No it hasn't.

You are combining them to make one easier to argue than confronting it on its own grounds.

Since when does Global Warming have ANYTHING REMOTELY to do with CCTV and DNA samples?

Is the government deliberately melting the caps to pass a law to track your car usage/efficiency?

No.

Nice attempt to take Orwell and try to associate it with a global environmental issue. What's next? Invaders from Mars? Why don't you site McCarthy to lend further "evidence" that GW is a fake.

Why do I even bother. Those that do not want to believe will always try to find something, no matter how irrelevant, to support their feelings on the matter.

Hasn't been any difference since man evolved, and it will never go in a society that somehow still allows this kind of practice to not only exist, but carry an undue weight in the decision making of our world.

Darwin was spinning before he was even born.

[Capn_Birdseye]

Climate changes, its cyclical, and Man in his inherent belief that he can control everything uses questionable science to try to convince us he can change, nay, control Nature!!! Our pomposity and arrogance know no bounds but then again Man is in himself a flawed creature who has a habit of getting things wrong as history has shown. This is no exception.

Ice melts, ice reforms, temperatures go up, temperatures go down - funnily enough there is a large ball of hot gas in the universe called the Sun taht affects temperature!! Britain was once so warm the Romans had vineyards and made decent wine!

Forget the Green fascist scaremongers, read the real agenda, the control of the masses by a small political elite, its happening before your very eyes but you can't see it because you're distracted by all the Green nonsense.

[lofter1]

So ^^^ you're not denying that the icecaps are currently melting (in your view a natural cyclical change) -- and that mankind had best figure out a plan to deal with the repurcussions of that in the not too distant future?

[Ninjahedge]

Climate changes, its cyclical, and Man in his inherent belief that he can control everything uses questionable science to try to convince us he can change, nay, control Nature!!!

Nope.

You are mixing and matching incongruous arguments.

Man can change nature, controlling it is an entirely different animal.

We have polluted, killed, and ruined many natural landscapes "But by the power of man".

And your mentioning of cyclical change is another nail in the grave of your argument. They seem to find a correlation between the cyclical changes and the content of CO2 in the atmosphere. The past pattern would suggest that the climate should actually be cooling down, also prompting further absorption of CO2 into the water, but instead we do not see that. We see a warming. This coupled with the expulsion of CO2 from the water due to this is an unbalanced situation that stands to get worse much faster than anything we can do to remedy it.

But just because you cannot stop the truck bearing down on you does not mean they should not apply the breaks and it certainly does not stop you from stepping out of the way...


Our pomposity and arrogance know no bounds but then again Man is in himself a flawed creature who has a habit of getting things wrong as history has shown. This is no exception.

So let me get this strait. Man has polluted the environment and sent the cycle astray, but you claim that man trying to right this is an example of arrogance? Quite the opposite. Man "got this wrong" already, and trying to stop the things that caused it in the first place would definitely not hurt, but you seem to be taking a rather obtuse philosophical argument that takes the polar opposite of everything that the original intent would normally lead and you are proclaiming this philosophical argument refutes all scientific data and evidence.

News flash, the earth orbits the sun there bubbie. :crosseyed:


Ice melts, ice reforms, temperatures go up, temperatures go down - funnily enough there is a large ball of hot gas in the universe called the Sun that affects temperature!! Britain was once so warm the Romans had vineyards and made decent wine!

Um, please state your context on that little piece of abstract reference. What did they grow? What was their growing season? What other reference do you have? England is not hot, but it is more temperate than a good deal of other areas (due to oceanic currents despite its latitude).

Do not mix and match spurious assertions that have little to do with the conversation, and certainly do not do so without something to back up what you are saying!

Oh, and you calling in that "large ball of gas" is another totally irrelevant piece of information.

Please show how increased solar output has contributed to the warming of the planet.


Forget the Green fascist scaremongers,
Who only exist in the minds of those that do not WANT to see what is happening. To everyone else here, they are scientists and climatologists.


read the real agenda,

Proposed by their opponents who do not want to give up, or lose, what they have in life. Very selfish.


the control of the masses by a small political elite,

And here you go bringing in a totally irrelevant political point.

The two have nothing to do with each other and you keep bring it up to try to adhere them so that one becomes synonymous with the other, making your argument easier to stratify.

What's next? Comparisons to WWII?


its happening before your very eyes but you can't see it because you're distracted by all the Green nonsense.

Look in the mirror. Sometimes it is not everyone around you that keeps getting things wrong. Sometimes it is you.

[RandySavage]

^^ But today there is plenty of evidence that human beings, due to their sheer numbers, have become a geologic force of nature.

Take for example the history mass extinctions. Since life began 3.5 billion years ago there have been five Mass Extinction Events, where a huge percentage of the species on earth went extinct (climactic shifts, atmospheric changes, ocean acidity are considered causes). These extinctions took place rapidly on the geologic scale - tens of thousands of years.

Today, on a scale 100 times faster than the 5 previous extinctions, we are in the midst of the sixth extinction, as the farming/grazing conversions required to feed 6 billion of us, consume natural habitats. Today human beings have the ability to level mountain ranges (West Virginia) and suck up entire seas (Aral Sea).

To say that it is "pompous" or "arrogant" to think that human beings have no control over the fate of the planet is irresponsible. You are dodging your responsibility of being a good steward to our home world, either out of ignorance, laziness or cowardice.

[Ninjahedge]

You are dodging your responsibility of being a good steward to our home world, either out of ignorance, laziness or cowardice.

"or"?

[Capn_Birdseye]

So ^^^ you're not denying that the icecaps are currently melting (in your view a natural cyclical change) -- and that mankind had best figure out a plan to deal with the repurcussions of that in the not too distant future?
Man vs Nature - a no-brainer methinks!
Its time Man, particularly when in "scientist" mode, got off his pedestal and realised how puny he is in the face of the forces of Nature. He arrogantly thinks he has the answers to everything, he hasn't. Fact.
We can't stop tsumani's, hurricanes, floods, AID's, malaria, locust swarms, cancer, etc etc, yet we are pretending that we can change the climate of the Earth!! Just stop and think for a moment how preposterous that assumption is! It's time Man realised how little he can actually control.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Zippy I don't think you appreciate just how far down the Orwellian Big Brother road the UK has progressed! I don't think that Americans would have put up with whats been imposed upon us - at least you have a written constitution!

We have more CCTV cameras trained on us per head of population than any other country on Earth.

You've taken two unrelated points, global warming and the loss of political freedom, and joined them as one proposition. Now I'm asked to accept or reject them as one.

I accept the proposition that political freedom has been threatened. In the U.S. much of this deterioration has occurred during the last six years, as the Supreme Court has had to intervene and curtail Bush Administration initiatives.

However, Bush's stance on global warming is at odds with your proposition that it is all one big Orwellian conspiracy.

[RandySavage]

Capn, no one's arguing that humans control the climate like a global air conditioning unit.

What we are arguing is that through our numbers and processes, humans can have a rapid and adverse AFFECT on it by adding much more of one element than was previously there.

Do you know what transpiration is? It is how forests exchange water with the atmosphere (roots draw water from soil, water evaporates through leaves, clouds form, rain returns water to soil). In a great many tropical and subtropical places, where humans have cleared most of the leafy plants, transpiration has ceased, rains have ceased and forest turns to desert. So human being can and do affect the climate. It has happened and is happening all over the world.

[infoshare]

He arrogantly thinks he has the answers to everything, he hasn't. Fact.


So what your are saying is that the 'precautionary principal' is in fact: morally repugnant?. ;)

[Capn_Birdseye]

Whilst we academically debate this subject, China is rushing through a building programme that will bring on stream many hundreds of fossil-fuelled power stations to satisfy its needs for energy - and India isn't too far behind!!

Its reckoned that the pollution from China's power stations alone will soon exceed that of the whole of the EU & US combined!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4330469.stm

So I've got to get rid of my BMW 4X4, fly less, and recycle more??? Tell that to the Chinese and see what answer you get!!

[nick-taylor]

Whilst we academically debate this subject, China is rushing through a building programme that will bring on stream many hundreds of fossil-fuelled power stations to satisfy its needs for energy - and India isn't too far behind!!

Its reckoned that the pollution from China's power stations alone will soon exceed that of the whole of the EU & US combined!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4330469.stm

So I've got to get rid of my BMW 4X4, fly less, and recycle more??? Tell that to the Chinese and see what answer you get!!I have just been reading your posts, and academic is not the term I would use to associate with your argument.

Yet, talking about academic debate, you bring up one of the most flawed sources in the global warming/climate change debate. The Channel 4 documentary that you highlighted has been ripped apart not only by climatologists and those within the scientific community, but the contributors themselves. A few I believe are planning to sue for comments taken out of context, because what the program forgot to mention is that natural feedbacks are started by...yep you guessed it us.

The more we pollute the atmosphere, the higher the chance that nature begins to emit more CO2 and other GHG's. It could even be possible that we have a run-away effect where because so many emissions have been released, that nature starts to counter with its own effects (plants dying, methane firebombs, etc...).

As for the Chinese, I believe that we need to set an example for them to follow, and also work with them to invest in renewable energies. The same goes for the rest of the developing world, because we can't simply sit in our perched position and demand others to stop developing, which is why it is depressing seeing the US falter.

Britain and the Scandinavian countries are however the benchmarks for progress, they are countries which have not only cut emissions, but their economies have grown.




C4’s debate on global warming boils over

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/img/global/tol-logo.gif

Sam Coates and Mark Henderson March 15, 2007


Two eminent British scientists who questioned the accuracy of a Channel 4 programme that claimed global warming was an unfounded conspiracy theory have received an expletive-filled tirade from the programme maker.

In an e-mail exchange leaked to The Times, Martin Durkin, the executive producer of The Great Global Warming Swindle, responded to the concerns of Dr Armand Leroi, from Imperial College, and Simon Singh, the respected scientific author, by telling them to “go and f*** yourself”.

The tirade has caused Dr Leroi to withdraw his cooperation from another Channel 4 project with Mr Durkin on race, The Times has learnt.

The programme, broadcast by Channel 4 last Thursday, featured a number of scientists who disputed the consensus on the causes of global warming.

Dr Leroi was particularly concerned about a segment that featured a correlation between solar activity and global temperatures, which was based on a 1991 paper in the journal Science by Eigil Friis-Chris-tensen. He was surprised that the programme failed to mention that while these findings look convincing superficially, they have been revealed as flawed by subsequent research by Peter Laut.

Dr Leroi e-mailed Mr Durkin about his use of data, concluding: “To put this bluntly: the data that you showed in your programme were . . . wrong in several different ways.” He copied Mr Singh into the exchange.

Mr Durkin replied to both later that morning, saying: “You’re a big daft cock.” Less than an hour later, Mr Singh, who has worked for the BBC, intervened to urge Mr Durkin to engage in serious debate. He wrote: “I suspect that you will have upset many people (if Armand is right), so it would be great if you could engage in the debate rather than just resorting to one-line replies. That way we could figure out what went wrong/ right and how do things better/ even better in the future.” Mr Durkin replied nine minutes later: “The BBC is now a force for bigotry and intolerance . . . Since 1940 we have had four decades of cooling, three of warming, and the last decade when temperature has been doing nothing.

“Why have we not heard this in the hours and hours of shit programming on global warming shoved down our throats by the BBC?

“Never mind an irresponsible bit of film-making. Go and f*** yourself.”

Last night Dr Leroi said that he was amazed at the rudeness of Mr Durkin’s reply.

“It was rather a shocking response,” Dr Leroi said. “It was my intention to make a film with Martin Durkin and [the production company] Wag, but that is something I am seriously reconsidering now. I am no climate scientist, but I was very concerned at the way that flaws in these data were brushed over.”

He said that the global warming film had glossed over flaws in data that it used to make its case, and that it was critical that a documentary about a subject as controversial as race and biology did not make similar mistakes.

“As the subject of our proposed film was race, it is such a sensitive topic that it requires great care and great balance. That he has shown so little respect for scientific consensus and such little nuance is a cause for great concern. I cannot imagine it will go ahead now.”

The film would have addressed Dr Leroi’s thesis that race is a biologically meaning-ful and medically valuable concept, a view that is highly controversial among scientists.

Last night Mr Durkin apologised for his langauge. “As far as I was concerned these were private e-mails. They arrived when I was quite tired having just finished the programme in time for transmission,” he said.

“Needless, to say, I regret the use of intemperate language. It is so unlike me. I am very eager to have all the science properly debated with scientists qualified in the right areas and have asked Channel 4 if they will stage a live debate on this subject.”


Where Channel 4 got it wrong over climate change

Claim: Ice core data shows that carbon dioxide levels rise after temperatures go up, not before
Fact: This is correct, but climate scientists have a good explanation. There is a substantial feedback effect – initial small rises in temperature lead to substantial release of carbon dioxide from natural reservoirs in the oceans, which then produce much steeper warming later on


Claim: Temperatures in the troposphere, the lower part of the atmosphere, have not risen as predicted by the models
Fact: This was once the case, but it has been resolved now that initial measurement errors have been corrected


Claim: Temperatures rose for the first part of the century, then cooled for three decades before warming again. There is no link to carbon dioxide
Fact: Temperatures did follow this pattern, but again there is a good explanation. The mid-century effect fall came about chiefly because of sulphate aerosols – particles that have a cooling effect on the atmosphere. These are no longer produced so heavily by industry because of environmental regulations to combat other problems, such as acid rain

[Ninjahedge]

Amazing!

How a guy is that much of a putz in "private" to the very people he put in his production, but when the warming hits the fan, he apologizes profusely in public.

Well, he can always be a lobbyist!


And CB, as for China and India, you are throwing out more red herrings. Since when, if other countries are posed to start competing for the same resources, is it smart to not look for alternate sources, conserve usage and research more efficient means and methods?

I would think the $2.50-$3.00 pre-summer gas prices would be enough to convince you that there is something fishy going on, but I guess not.

You keep bringing in more and more stuff that has little to do with the debate in hopes that something "evil" Will stick and make your attempted demonization at calls for conservation successful.

Give it up! Each post you make that continues down this path, sidestepping the issues brought up to counter yours and applying more irrelevant data, only makes you look like you are pandering for support.

Support or trouble. Either way it is not very constructive and has no bearing on what is actually happening.

[Capn_Birdseye]

There are none so blind as those who cannot see. Those of you who support the global warming/climate change fraud should read Hans Christian Nadersen's story of "The Emperor's New Suit" - it sums up your group view so perfectly!

Meanwhile lets get on with the show, forget about the Green fascists, and enjoy life doing anything and everything contrary to their agenda - I do and I have to say it adds considerably to my pleasure. Cheers! Martin Durkin is to be congratulated for being such a fine programme maker and I'm looking forward to more of his work in exposing the fraudsters!

If you're a scientist today the only way to get funding is to follow the political orthodoxy of supporting the Great Lie about Global Warming/Climate Change - no wonder they're all holding out their grubby little hands for cash and nod fervently when asked the question: "Are you a true believer in Gloabl Warming/Climate Change?" It's science and scientists corrupted by greed, for political ends.

[lofter1]

In other words: "To hell in a handbasket" :p

[Capn_Birdseye]

In other words: "To hell in a handbasket" :p
Don't worry, be happy, as the song goes ...... :)

http://seoblackhat.com/2007/01/18/globalwarming-awareness2007/

[nick-taylor]

There are none so blind as those who cannot see. Those of you who support the global warming/climate change fraud should read Hans Christian Nadersen's story of "The Emperor's New Suit" - it sums up your group view so perfectly!

Meanwhile lets get on with the show, forget about the Green fascists, and enjoy life doing anything and everything contrary to their agenda - I do and I have to say it adds considerably to my pleasure. Cheers! Martin Durkin is to be congratulated for being such a fine programme maker and I'm looking forward to more of his work in exposing the fraudsters!

If you're a scientist today the only way to get funding is to follow the political orthodoxy of supporting the Great Lie about Global Warming/Climate Change - no wonder they're all holding out their grubby little hands for cash and nod fervently when asked the question: "Are you a true believer in Gloabl Warming/Climate Change?" It's science and scientists corrupted by greed, for political ends.I find it rather ironic that you label others as being 'blind', when you bring up sources that are either corrupted (C4 documentary), bare no scientific relevance to the issue (children's books - perhaps its time for you to move onto more academic-focused reading material), and congratulate a producer who is nothing but a true fraudster who has been scolded by his own sources and clearly made the documentary with a political bias against the BBC (refer to previous post with his outburst over the BBC)!

This isn't the first time though that Mr Dunkin has slapped together edits of what people have said to try and put together a completely different view to fit his highly fraudulent agenda. The Independent Television Commission (the British watchdog for TV affairs) is still investigating reports from a previous programme by Mr Dunkin and even questioned Channel 4 as to whether any checks would be put in place to insure accuracy. The problem for Channel 4 (who I should note are the only state-funded British TV broadcaster; the BBC aren't state funded) is that it was already in trouble over the previous Mr Dunkin film, and this one and various other incidents (call-in cons, uncontrolled racism on Big Brother, etc...) have severely crippled the standing of a broadcaster that was actually becoming quite good.

Now, I don't have a problem with a documentary trying to show the other view, but I do have a problem when someone tries to fabricate and distort facts and figures to try and cobble together a documentary to prove his warped view.

The only fraud here, is yourself.

[Bob]

I'm not giving up my lifestyle or consumption one bit. If I feel like buying a Shelby GT-500 Mustang, with its 500+ horsepower, that's exactly what I'll do. If I feel like driving to the store, a half mile down the street, that's exactly what I'll do. If I care to take a flight to Texas, to drive on I-20 at its (legal) speed limit of 80 MPH, just for fun, that's what I'll do.

I don't buy the whole "global warming" nonsense, not for a second! It's ridiculous!

[Ninjahedge]

I'm not giving up my lifestyle or consumption one bit. If I feel like buying a Shelby GT-500 Mustang, with its 500+ horsepower, that's exactly what I'll do. If I feel like driving to the store, a half mile down the street, that's exactly what I'll do. If I care to take a flight to Texas, to drive on I-20 at its (legal) speed limit of 80 MPH, just for fun, that's what I'll do.

I don't buy the whole "global warming" nonsense, not for a second! It's ridiculous!

Um, that's great.

Just proves that you are an ignorant, greedy, selfish individual that would rather getthe luxuries in life that serve very little purpose.

I hope gas prices go to $8 a gallon and show you what your blind consumerism will get you. Oh, as for Global Warming, being from Texas, your electric bill might go up a tad. Hope you like Arizona.

[lofter1]

But Arizona (http://www.waterinfo.org/march-1-2007-water-shortage-possible-arizona-republic) is going to have a big water shortage problem (http://cals.arizona.edu/AZWATER/awr/dec99/Feature2.htm) in its near future (http://www.doi.gov/news/opeds/arizona.htm) -- so you might want to head elsewhere :cool:

[Ninjahedge]

But Arizona (http://www.waterinfo.org/march-1-2007-water-shortage-possible-arizona-republic) is going to have a big water shortage problem (http://cals.arizona.edu/AZWATER/awr/dec99/Feature2.htm) in its near future (http://www.doi.gov/news/opeds/arizona.htm) -- so you might want to head elsewhere :cool:

Oh, I wasn't referring to moving.

I was referring to the climate! ;)

[Marksix]

Hey – I’m Back! Having survived a period of state imposed “internal exile” and found my place in the sun I feel it’s time again to throw my innate sense of reason on this subject which seems to produce more heat than light ( ha ha).

To begin – I don’t know all or even very many of the answers to this issue but in my last career in the airline industry I was exposed to the “green lobby” as my airline was to become the worlds first “carbon neutral” airline. That it didn’t happen and why needn’t impinge on this thread but I found them to be well meaning individuals with genuine concern for others but also some opportunistic charlatans. I also saw that there was good money to be made here.

Climate change is real and the need to worry will be when it stops changing. Anthropogenic climate change is also a fact; agriculture and large cities undoubtedly affect local climates. Airlines affect the climate; in the three days after 9/11 (when all US commercial aircraft were grounded) temperatures in the United States were observed to rise an average of 1 degree Celsius, contradicting the position of the anti-airline activists who claim they cause temperature rise but data is data. You can make a case for your position by selective use of the data set for your desired position whatever that may be.

Global anthropogenic climate change? Well as the data shows from 1940 onwards global temperatures dropped when the theory predicted their rise. As those affronted by the UK’s Durkin’s C4 film “The Great Global Warming Swindle” liked to point out when confronted by this inconvenient set of data, the answer must be that even our best current models of the atmosphere are incomplete and leave out important features. Only in the last few years have modellers started to include ocean currents, atmospheric aerosol particles and dust into climate models. Most now suspect that clouds are the reason why models and observations do not agree i.e. the rise in temperature over the US for the three days after 9/11. Models still cannot include solar influences properly.

Global warming be good or bad?

Probably both, but warming is definitely better than cooling. Where I’m about to move to in the Italian Alps they have just had their worst ski season ever (almost) but last week we had a metre of snow there! It is certainly better for agriculture and therefore for basic human existence. As a previous poster pointed out, the UK was once a major wine producer with vineyards quite far north. Walk around London and the ancient street names reflect this. All historical evidence shows that during the warm periods of the Middle Ages people were better off than during the hard times of the "Little Ice Age" (1650-1850) when crops failed and people starved so on balance I’d say warm is better than cold - given the choice!

The politicisation of anthropogenic global warming is interesting as students of history will see the parallels with what’s gone before:-

Early last century another scientific theory gained credence. The theory was THE avant-garde notion of its time and attracted the most liberal and progressive minds of a generation. First postulated by the British scientist Francis Galton it’s supporters were such as Winston Churchill, Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt. It was supported in law by the US Supreme Court under Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis. Prominent activists in support of the scientific theory were such as Alexander Graham Bell, Leland Stanford (founder of the university), H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw and many others including Nobel Prize winners. The research was backed and supported by Carnegie & Rockefeller Foundations. Work was done on the theory at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford and Johns Hopkins. The Cold Springs Harbour Institute was built by the US Government to carry out practical research. Legislation to address the “global crisis” was passed around the world and in such US states as California and New York.

All of these efforts were supported by the US National Academy of Sciences (who have just pronounced on global warming), the American Medical Association and the National Research Council.

For fifty years research and legislation moulded public opinion in support of the theory. The crisis was real and presented a clear and present danger to the future of civilisation. Opposes were castigated and described as reactionary, blind to reality or simply ignorant buffoons. It has to be said that opposes were in fact, not very numerous. You had to be brave to contradict the theory publicly.

The scientific theory was Eugenics.

The theory postulated a crisis in the gene pool leading to the deterioration of the human race. Inferior races, the foreigners, the degenerates, the unfit, the feeble minded, the blacks – the Jews…..were breeding faster than ever, something should be done about it and eugenics was born. Science and societal prejudices met and a new doctrine was the result.

In the 1920’s American scientific spending into eugenics was falling behind that of Germany who had by then taken up leadership in the new scientific field. To attain parity the Rockefeller Foundation financed the German researchers, financing which continued up until springtime 1939.

We all now know that eugenics was a “pseudo science”; there was no scientific basis for it at all. We also know that American citizens were institutionalised and forcibly sterilised under eugenics laws. In the 1940’s the Nazi party expanded their research from euthanasing institutes to the camps were six million people were murdered.

Eugenics prospered because the scientists never defined their theories rigorously but used vague terms such as “the best data available” etc… In reality the eugenics movement was a social programme masquerading as a scientific one. It was driven by a confluence of current social concerns. The tragedy was that the scientific establishment did not mount a rigorous, science based protest. After WW2 researchers (whilst overlooking domestic eugenicists) looked through Nazi archives to find how the scientists were co-erced into producing the “desired” science for the Nazis. They in fact found the contrary; Scientist, even non party members got funding for their work because it conformed to current political doctrine.

You may say even if anthropogenic climate change is wrong the precautionary principal is valid and no-one will die as a result. You are wrong. Firstly, the precautionary principal, if properly applied forbids the precautionary principal; it contradicts itself and is therefore invalid. Remember that David Frum said that the precautionary principal was a valid reason for invading Iraq and 600,000 people are now dead. Last year the Stern Report in the UK put a price on climate change. In support of his theory the economist wrote that in 100 years Bangladesh could be subsumed by rising sea levels. In his report he used the annual economic growth rate of ~2&#37;. If Bangladesh’s economy grew at that rate for 100 years they would be wealthier than Holland is now there just as capable of holding back the sea as Holland is now. More so in fact. If the recommendations of the Stern report are implemented Bangladesh will never achieve that potential and millions of future Bangladeshis not yet born will be condemned to a watery death just as surely as eugenics did 200 years before by politicians in alive and comfortable today. That’s just one example of how specious policies are a danger to others. Denying the industrialisation to the third world from the comfort of the west with clean drinking water, electricity to read by and gas to cook your food with is another example.

You may also say that global warming is science and not pseudo science like eugenics was. I found this quote:-

“The fact that climate change is so uncertain and so expensive is exactly why collectivists have swarmed to the cause. The scope of the problem can never be identified, its cost never quantified, and complete solutions will never be found. The perfect issue for people whose primary goal is the expansion of government control."

That could have been written about eugenics a century ago.

Capt Birdseye has been vilified here for linking the loss of political freedom and the Global Warming lobby. Well, I hope my little essay on the eugenics movement shows he is correct to make this important link. The UK has 20% of the worlds surveillance cameras with only 1% of its population, the largest and still growing state controlled DNA database and just this week the government announced they will “interview and fingerprint” all 11 year olds to detect future criminal tendencies. How long will it be before they include political dissenters? It is well known that the West and America in particular will use up everyone else’s oil and gas before they use their own. What they don’t want is the third world and China industrialising and competing for “their” resources. Just a theory but I’m a cynic! Global Warming suits the west true or not. As the quote above illustrates, government seeks to expand and will latch onto any cause it can. It will also use whatever means available to suppress dissent. As H. L. Mencken famously said –

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

Capt Birdseye is right to link the two issues. It’s a pity there weren’t more like him in the 1930’s and less like those of you who shout him down.

And to those who find such anguish in those who enjoy the fruits of industry (Ducatis and fast cars!) H. L. Mencken had this to say –

"Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."


The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a UN-sponsored organization led by government scientists, but also involving several hundred academic scientists and researchers from many nations. Thus far, the IPCC has published four major reports--1990, 1992, 1994, and 1996--reviewing the latest climate science. These reports, however, do not represent the complete spectrum of scientific views; for example, the 1990 report admits that there was a minority--of unspecified size--whose views "could not be accommodated." The number of scientists expressing scepticism on the global warming issue continues to grow, despite efforts to marginalize them. They are also becoming more vocal. More than 4,000 scientists endorsed the Heidelberg Appeal, first circulated at the 1992 "Earth Summit" in Rio de Janeiro. More recently, nearly 100 climate experts have signed on to the Leipzig Declaration. Politics and science have once again combined like they have so many times before.

I am not trying to be hostile to those who sincerely believe in anthropogenic global warming but I am asking you to take a wider view and put the current mania into some historical AND scientific context. As long ago as the 1830’s a book was written here in England entitled “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” which set out even then to debunk such frauds as “Tulip Mania” and “The South Sea Bubble”. You can add “Man Made Global Warming” to the long and growing list of such manias.

Quotes from the author in the quaint language of the period show extremely well that the more things change, the more they stay the same:-

"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one!"

"Of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder's welcome."

NASA scientists have also identified a global warming effect on Mars but so far have not detected any SUV’s there. I agree with the Capt. that we are puny in comparison to this planet we live on (Nick Taylor excepted who lives on one all of his own) and not able to change its climate on a macro scale. And even if we could, a true environmentalist will accept the end of the human race as nature or the GAIA principal in action.

A good book on the subject is: Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media

Meltdown presents the flip side of what most people have heard about global warming, a cogent counterpoint to the view that the introduction of anthropogenic carbon dioxide is pushing the fluid systems of this planet into hyper-overdrive. The book presents a vast body of highly credible and growing knowledge that has been largely ignored. It includes scientific information that does not get reported in the papers or in government reports, because this information threatens to undermine the great doom and gloom establishment. The basic thesis of Meltdown is that, yes, there has been a recent upward trend in the temperature of the atmosphere. But the increase is small and unlikely to mushroom into something truly catastrophic; the public, policy, and scientific distortions that have emerged are way off the mark. The book is steeped in scientific fact, with no fewer than 100 references to journal literature, but Michaels distils, synthesizes, and cuts through the morass like a beacon. His coverage is broad, and the distortions he uncovers are organized into topics dealing with ecosystems, drought and flood, severe storms, diseases, and the cryosphere.

Michaels operates like a pathologist, sifting through the minutiae of datasets, time series, and statistics to construct a convincing argument against the imminent melting of glaciers and hurricanes spinning rapidly out of control. Michaels applies rigorous tests to the data, pointing out where the datasets frequently break down or are stretched beyond the point of credibility. Meltdown provides a badly needed balance, throwing some cold water on those waiting for the planet's thermometer to boil over.


In reading Al Gore’s book on the matter I looked for scientific challenges to his proclamations and came accros the following. Most of this is not new to me and I’msorry of its been posted before but here goes:-



CO2 levels are under half the levels they were in the triasic and jurasic period


1. Carbon Dioxide’s Effect on Temperature. The relationship between global temperature and carbon dioxide (CO2), on which the entire scare is founded, is not linear. Every molecule of CO2 added to the atmosphere contributes less to warming than the previous one. The book’s graph on p. 66-67 is seriously misleading. Moreover, even the historical levels of CO2 shown on the graph are disputed. Evidence from plant fossil-remains suggest that there was as much CO2 in the atmosphere about 11,000 years ago as there is today.

2. Kilimanjaro. The snows of Kilimanjaro are melting not because of global warming but because of a local climate shift that began 100 years ago. The authors of a report in the International Journal of Climatology “develop a new concept for investigating the retreat of Kilimanjaro’s glaciers, based on the physical understanding of glacier–climate interactions.” They note that, “The concept considers the peculiarities of the mountain and implies that climatological processes other than air temperature control the ice recession in a direct manner. A drastic drop in atmospheric moisture at the end of the 19th century and the ensuing drier climatic conditions are likely forcing glacier retreat on Kilimanjaro.”

3. Glaciers. Glaciers around the world have been receding at around the same pace for over 100 years. Research published by the National Academy of Sciences last week indicates that the Peruvian glacier on p. 53-53 probably disappeared a few thousand years ago.

4. The Medieval Warm Period. Al Gore says that the “hockey stick” graph that shows temperatures remarkably steady for the last 1,000 years has been validated, and ridicules the concept of a “medieval warm period.” That’s not the case. Last year, a team of leading paleoclimatologists said, “When matching existing temperature reconstructions…the timeseries display a reasonably coherent picture of major climatic episodes: ‘Medieval Warm Period,’ ‘Little Ice Age’ and ‘Recent Warming.’” They go on to conclude, “So what would it mean, if the reconstructions indicate a larger…or smaller…temperature amplitude? We suggest that the former situation, i.e. enhanced variability during pre-industrial times, would result in a redistribution of weight towards the role of natural factors in forcing temperature changes, thereby relatively devaluing the impact of anthropogenic emissions and affecting future temperature predictions.”

5. The Hottest Year. Satellite temperature measurements say that 2005 wasn't the hottest year on record — 1998 was — and that temperatures have been stable since 2001 (p.73). Here’s the satellite graph:



6. Heat Waves. The summer heat wave that struck Europe in 2003 was caused by an atmospheric pressure anomaly; it had nothing to do with global warming. As the United Nations Environment Program reported in September 2003, “This extreme wheather [sic] was caused by an anti-cyclone firmly anchored over the western European land mass holding back the rain-bearing depressions that usually enter the continent from the Atlantic ocean. This situation was exceptional in the extended length of time (over 20 days) during which it conveyed very hot dry air up from south of the Mediterranean.”

7. Record Temperatures. Record temperatures — hot and cold — are set every day around the world; that’s the nature of records. Statistically, any given place will see four record high temperatures set every year. There is evidence that daytime high temperatures are staying about the same as for the last few decades, but nighttime lows are gradually rising. Global warming might be more properly called, “Global less cooling.” (On this, see Patrick J. Michaels book, Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media.)

8. Hurricanes. There is no overall global trend of hurricane-force storms getting stronger that has anything to do with temperature. A recent study in Geophysical Research Letters found: “The data indicate a large increasing trend in tropical cyclone intensity and longevity for the North Atlantic basin and a considerable decreasing trend for the Northeast Pacific. All other basins showed small trends, and there has been no significant change in global net tropical cyclone activity. There has been a small increase in global Category 4–5 hurricanes from the period 1986–1995 to the period 1996–2005. Most of this increase is likely due to improved observational technology. These findings indicate that other important factors govern intensity and frequency of tropical cyclones besides SSTs [sea surface temperatures].”

9. Tornadoes. Records for numbers of tornadoes are set because we can now record more of the smaller tornadoes (see, for instance, the Tornado FAQ at Weather Underground).

10. European Flooding. European flooding is not new (p. 107). Similar flooding happened in 2003. Research from Michael Mudelsee and colleagues from the University of Leipzig published in Nature (Sept. 11, 2003) looked at data reaching as far back as 1021 (for the Elbe) and 1269 (for the Oder). They concluded that there is no upward trend in the incidence of extreme flooding in this region of central Europe.

11. Shrinking Lakes. Scientists investigating the disappearance of Lake Chad (p.116) found that most of it was due to human overuse of water. “The lake’s decline probably has nothing to do with global warming, report the two scientists, who based their findings on computer models and satellite imagery made available by NASA. They attribute the situation instead to human actions related to climate variation, compounded by the ever increasing demands of an expanding population” (“Shrinking African Lake Offers Lesson on Finite Resources,” National Geographic, April 26, 2001). Lake Chad is also a very shallow lake that has shrunk considerably throughout human history.

12. Polar Bears. Polar bears are not becoming endangered. A leading Canadian polar bear biologist wrote recently, “Climate change is having an effect on the west Hudson population of polar bears, but really, there is no need to panic. Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear (sic) to be affected at present.”

13. The Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream, the ocean conveyor belt, is not at risk of shutting off in the North Atlantic (p. 150). Carl Wunsch of MIT wrote to the journal Nature in 2004 to say, “The only way to produce an ocean circulation without a Gulf Stream is either to turn off the wind system, or to stop the Earth’s rotation, or both”

14. Invasive Species. Gore’s worries about the effect of warming on species ignore evolution. With the new earlier caterpillar season in the Netherlands, an evolutionary advantage is given to birds that can hatch their eggs earlier than the rest. That’s how nature works. Also, “invasive species” naturally extend their range when climate changes. As for the pine beetle given as an example of invasive species, Rob Scagel, a forest microclimate specialist in British Columbia, said, “The MPB (mountain pine beetle) is a species native to this part of North America and is always present. The MPB epidemic started as comparatively small outbreaks and through forest management inaction got completely out of hand.”

15. Species Loss. When it comes to species loss, the figures given on p. 163 are based on extreme guesswork, as the late Julian Simon pointed out. We have documentary evidence of only just over 1,000 extinctions since 1600 (see, for instance, Bj&#248;rn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist, p. 250).

16. Coral Reefs. Coral reefs have been around for over 500 million years. This means that they have survived through long periods with much higher temperatures and atmospheric CO2 concentrations than today.

17. Malaria and other Infectious Diseases. Leading disease scientists contend that climate change plays only a minor role in the spread of emerging infectious diseases. In “Global Warming and Malaria: A Call for Accuracy” (The Lancet, June 2004), nine leading malariologists criticized models linking global warming to increased malaria spread as “misleading” and “display[ing] a lack of knowledge” of the subject.

18. Antarctic Ice. There is controversy over whether the Antarctic ice sheet is thinning or thickening. Recent scientific studies have shown a thickening in the interior at the same time as increased melting along the coastlines. Temperatures in the interior are generally decreasing. The Antarctic Peninsula, where the Larsen-B ice shelf broke up (p. 181) is not representative of what is happening in the rest of Antarctica. Dr. Wibj&#246;rn Karl&#233;n, Professor Emeritus of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology at Stockholm University, acknowledges, “Some small areas in the Antarctic Peninsula have broken up recently, just like it has done back in time. The temperature in this part of Antarctica has increased recently, probably because of a small change in the position of the low pressure systems.” According to a forthcoming report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, climate models based on anthropogenic forcing cannot explain the anomalous warming of the Antarctic Peninsula; thus, something natural is at work.

19. Greenland Climate. Greenland was warmer in the 1920s and 1930s than it is now. A recent study by Dr. Peter Chylek of the University of California, Riverside, addressed the question of whether man is directly responsible for recent warming: “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.” (Petr Chylek et al., Geophysical Research Letters, 13 June 2006.)

20. Sea Level Rise. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change does not forecast sea-level rises of “18 to 20 feet.” Rather, it says, “We project a sea level rise of 0.09 to 0.88 m for 1990 to 2100, with a central value of 0.48 m. The central value gives an average rate of 2.2 to 4.4 times the rate over the 20th century...It is now widely agreed that major loss of grounded ice and accelerated sea level rise are very unlikely during the 21st century.” Al Gore’s suggestions of much more are therefore extremely alarmist.

21. Population. Al Gore worries about population growth; Gore does not suggest a solution. Fertility in the developed world is stable or decreasing. The plain fact is that we are not going to reduce population back down to 2 billion or fewer in the foreseeable future. In the meantime, the population in the developing world requires a significant increase in its standard of living to reduce the threats of premature and infant mortality, disease, and hunger. In The Undercover Economist, Tim Harford writes, “If we are honest, then, the argument that trade leads to economic growth, which leads to climate change, leads us then to a stark conclusion: we should cut our trade links to make sure that the Chinese, Indians and Africans stay poor. The question is whether any environmental catastrophe, even severe climate change, could possibly inflict the same terrible human cost as keeping three or four billion people in poverty. To ask that question is to answer it.”

22. Energy Generation. A specific example of this is Gore’s acknowledgement that 30 percent of global CO2 emissions come from wood fires used for cooking (p. 227). If we introduced affordable, coal-fired power generation into South Asia and Africa we could reduce this considerably and save over 1.6 million lives a year. This is the sort of solution that Gore does not even consider.

23. Carbon-Emissions Trading. The European Carbon Exchange Market, touted as “effective” on p. 252, has crashed.

24. The “Scientific Consensus.” On the supposed “scientific consensus”: Dr. Naomi Oreskes, of the University of California, San Diego, (p. 262) did not examine a “large random sample” of scientific articles. She got her search terms wrong and thought she was looking at all the articles when in fact she was looking at only 928 out of about 12,000 articles on “climate change.” Dr. Benny Peiser, of Liverpool John Moores University in England, was unable to replicate her study. He says, “As I have stressed repeatedly, the whole data set includes only 13 abstracts (~1%) that explicitly endorse what Oreskes has called the ‘consensus view.’ In fact, the vast majority of abstracts does (sic) not mention anthropogenic climate change. Moreover — and despite attempts to deny this fact — a handful of abstracts actually questions the view that human activities are the main driving force of ‘the observed warming over the last 50 years.’” In addition, a recent survey of scientists following the same methodology as one published in 1996 found that about 30 percent of scientists disagreed to some extent or another with the contention that “climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes.” Less than 10 percent “strongly agreed” with the statement. Details of both the survey and the failed attempt to replicate the Oreskes study can be found here.

25. Economic Costs. Even if the study Gore cites is right (p. 280-281), the United States will still emit massive amounts of CO2 after all the measures it outlines have been realized. Getting emissions down to the paltry levels needed to stabilize CO2 in the atmosphere would require, in Gore’s own words, “a wrenching transformation” of our way of life. This cannot be done easily or without significant cost. The Kyoto Protocol, which Gore enthusiastically supports, would avert less than a tenth of a degree of warming in the next fifty years and would cost up to $400 billion a year to the U.S. All of the current proposals in Congress would cost the economy significant amounts, making us all poorer, with all that that entails for human health and welfare, while doing nothing to stop global warming.

Finally, Gore quotes Winston Churchill (p. 100) — but he should read what Churchill said when he was asked what qualities a politician requires: “The ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.”

[RandySavage]

^ This epistle is bursting with factual errors. For example:

"Thus far, the IPCC has published four major reports--1990, 1992, 1994, and 1996--reviewing the latest climate science."

False. There was a major report published in 2001 (the Third Assessment Report). Another is currently underway and the Summary for Policymakers is available here: http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

Read the summary. Take it in. And remember this: no matter how fancy Durkin, Lomborg and the guy who authored the second half of your post, Pat Michaels (who is financed by the fossil fuel industry) get with their dissenting views, when it comes to climate science the IPCC is most knowledgeable, the most respected, the most reliable source of information. The IPCC is the authority.

Look at it another way. The IPCC people don't get any significant pecuniary gain by warning against global warming. The same is not true for the skeptics who get well paid to work at conservative thinktanks and National Review conferences.

Who would you trust?

[Marksix]

^ This epistle is bursting with factual errors. For example:

"Thus far, the IPCC has published four major reports--1990, 1992, 1994, and 1996--reviewing the latest climate science."

False. There was a major report published in 2001 (the Third Assessment Report). Another is currently underway and the Summary for Policymakers is available here: http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

Read the summary. Take it in. And remember this: no matter how fancy Durkin, Lomborg and the guy who authored the second half of your post, Pat Michaels (who is financed by the fossil fuel industry) get with their dissenting views, when it comes to climate science the IPCC is most knowledgeable, the most respected, the most reliable source of information. The IPCC is the authority.

Look at it another way. The IPCC people don't get any significant pecuniary gain by warning against global warming. The same is not true for the skeptics who get well paid to work at conservative thinktanks and National Review conferences.

Who would you trust?

I'm sure there are errors in my posting but is that the best example you can pick out?

It is almost a cliche now to state that anyone who dissents as you put it must be financed by big oil/coal. Maybe Michaels did get money but did the other dissenters? His science is pretty convincing. And how does that compare to the scientists who got their funding from government with a political agenda? I've read more books and reports on this subject than I really want to 'cos I had to for work and there are plausible arguments on either side. Athropogenic global warming is simply not very plausible to me.

As for the IPPC it is not a research organisation, does not conduct any scientific research and has no scientific expertise whatsoever. It is a United Nations body, paid for by governments and with government agendas as well as its own "empire building" mandate and self appointed saviour of the world is as big as they come; it works for religions right? It is, to use your own terminology, in the pay of governments. I would ask you the same question you ask - do you trust big government?

Christopher Landsea, formerly a research meteorologist with Hurricane Research Division of Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory at NOAA, is now the Science and Operations Officer at the National Hurricane Center. He is a member of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society. He earned his doctoral degree in Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. In January 2005 he resigned from work on the IPCC AR4, saying that he viewed the process as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound because of Kevin Trenberth's public contention that global warming was contributing to recent hurricane activity. Roger A. Pielke (a meteorologist with interests in climate variability and climate change, environmental vulnerability, hurricane modeling, land-atmosphere interactions) who published Landsea's letter wrote: "How anyone can deny that political factors were everpresent in the negotiations isn't paying attention." He did note however, that that actual report maintained consistency with the balance of opinion in the community of relevant experts but that's not the same as those experts being correct. This is just one example of two respected scientists who dissent but illustrates my point.

I think the proof that the IPPC is politically biassed lies in the fact that there is an equal body of opinion with evidence saying that if anything, the IPPC is under reporting the evidence of climate change and that they have been influenced by the so called conservative lobby. Whichever position you take the only consistancy is that the IPCC had no credibility. It is a political body.

In conclusion I think you are missing the point of my post; it is not that the climate is changing or that even man could be chaning it or not. The only certainty is that there are no certainties. The aggenda is now driven by politics, extremists and has taken on the characteristics of a psuedo religion. It has happened before and millions have died because of it. And now it is happening again.

[Capn_Birdseye]

I'd like to congratulate Marksix for an excellent posting - so refreshing to hear a voice of reason for a change instead of the mass hysteria generated by others who seem to disengage their critical faculties and any degree of commonsense when discussing the subject.

Congratulations Marksix. Keep posting.

[nick-taylor]

Yes, the government told you to go into exile...

...and you pretty much summed up your entire response in the second paragraph:


I don’t know all or even very many of the answers to this issue




Airlines affect the climate; in the three days after 9/11 (when all US commercial aircraft were grounded) temperatures in the United States were observed to rise an average of 1 degree Celsius, contradicting the position of the anti-airline activists who claim they cause temperature rise but data is data. You can make a case for your position by selective use of the data set for your desired position whatever that may be.Actually this is part of the Global Dimming theory, that the world simply isn't getting warmer, but that climatic patterns are getting more erratic.

This is even more worrying because it suggests that we aren't just experiencing one effect, but two.

We're gonna be in a situation unless we act where the cooling pollutant is dropping off while the warming pollutant is going up, CO2 will be going up and particles will be dropping off and that means we'll get an accelerated warming. We'll get a double whammy, we'll get, we'll get reducing cooling and increased heating at the same time and that's, that's a problem for us. (Peter Cox, Hadley Centre)

Essentially what is being stated is that we need to keep on flying planes to ensure that we aren't screwed over by the centuries of previous expelling of emissions. A double edged sword.



Well as the data shows from 1940 onwards global temperatures dropped when the theory predicted their rise.This is correct....but the reason for this is sulphate aerosols which are no longer pumped out by industry across swathes of the planet. These particulates 'cool' the atmosphere, but they also produce nasty problems like acid rain, etc... hence why they are mostly banned or heavily restricted. Hence if you drew two graphs with three axis (time, temperature and sulphate aerosol emissions), you'd see a pretty clear correlation.



Global warming be good or bad?It (and Global Dimming) are bad full stop. Its like choosing to have a malignant cancer or be shot by a firing squad. This isn't going to be a simple set-up with some places getting colder, and others getting warmer, no its going to be a heavily erratic weather pattern. It was only a few days ago that we had snow, then it was searing heat. Britain could end up eventually having Mediterranean temperatures, but then plummet into tundra-climates because the Gulf Stream is cut off.

It is also most certainly NOT good for human existence because humans while fast to adapt, are unable to adapt that fast. Never mind the socio-economic problems of countries possibly having to accept hundreds of millions, if not billions of people from the equatorial climate zones. It is going to lead to war because people aren't going to like being swamped by refugees, think of Children of Men to see how such a 'good' scenario would turn out.

You also completely forget that if the planet continues to warm in general, then we could end up with acidic oceans, global-wide malaria endemic, the Amazon will just burn away probably taking most future cures for diseases and human ailments, while the planet could be suffocated or blown to pieces by methane and hydrogen sulphide gas fireballs. These things happened in the past and can quite easily happen again if we allow the right variables to align.



More so in fact. If the recommendations of the Stern report are implemented Bangladesh will never achieve that potential and millions of future Bangladeshis not yet born will be condemned to a watery death just as surely as eugenics did 200 years before by politicians in alive and comfortable today. That’s just one example of how specious policies are a danger to others. Denying the industrialisation to the third world from the comfort of the west with clean drinking water, electricity to read by and gas to cook your food with is another example.The Stern report in no way suggested that MEDC's should somehow castrate LEDC development.

Yet you apply the logic that to pollute more would hopefully give the Bangladesh economy, enough money to support itself against rising water levels. Where exactly is the logic in that approach, when in the period in-between, Bangladesh would have to endure several decades of economic and social destruction, and possibly end up with not much of a country because it becomes too hot to grow anything? The real response, is that the world needs to get together and actually put money on the table to lower the 6 main GHG's. If that requires MEDC's to help LEDC's, then so be it - such funding would be far more beneficial in the long term than most aid handouts.



Capt Birdseye has been vilified here for linking the loss of political freedom and the Global Warming lobby. Well, I hope my little essay on the eugenics movement shows he is correct to make this important link. The UK has 20% of the worlds surveillance cameras with only 1% of its population, the largest and still growing state controlled DNA database and just this week the government announced they will “interview and fingerprint” all 11 year olds to detect future criminal tendencies. How long will it be before they include political dissenters?So where exactly is the evidence to prove that the loss of political freedom is linked to the rise of environmental awareness? I don't recall Myanmar or China touting such issues in their policies.

The reality is that if we do nothing about our current climate situation, then we really will face the possibility of loosing political freedoms! How? Well, when the hundreds of millions/billions from the equatorial climates have to migrate, where exactly do you think they will go? You got it, Britain and other warmer areas such as Russia and Canada. Do you think the US is going to like being pulled to pieces while Canada prospers? I'd bet that the US would actually invade Canada if the situation got really bad. Then there is the strong possibility of the Gulf Stream being cut off sometime this century which would leave Britain in a tundra-like existence; where are the 60mn+ Brits and migrants from equatorial countries going to go then?

Personally, I see a lesser of two evils: give up driving, recycle more and consume less OR see the rise of fascist police states to stop the mass-movements of people and to fight to gain the last few resources that will most certainly happen if we don't do something about it.

I also fail to see the connection with security cameras, especially when the police probably operate less than 0.1% of all cameras in use in Britain. The vast majority being used by shops, private uses and the transport network (traffic congestion cameras, speed cameras, etc....). Throwing around the 20% figure is alarmist, when the systems are all seperate from each other. Now if all the cameras were linked to some sort of super-network, then yes you could be alarmed, but there isn't, and never will be. I'd be more concerned with the likes of Myanmar which probably next to no CCTV.



Capt Birdseye is right to link the two issues. It’s a pity there weren’t more like him in the 1930’s and less like those of you who shout him down.I don't see the connection with an individual who has posted facually incorrect sources and stopping the rise of fascism. I do however see a connection between yourself and Capn Birdseye. ;)



NASA scientists have also identified a global warming effect on Mars but so far have not detected any SUV’s there. I agree with the Capt. that we are puny in comparison to this planet we live on (Nick Taylor excepted who lives on one all of his own) and not able to change its climate on a macro scale. And even if we could, a true environmentalist will accept the end of the human race as nature or the GAIA principal in action.Oh deary me, more inaccuracies (I put it down to the same announcement you made in your second paragraph - your ill educated on the topic and just digesting what you want to hear and not what is actually being said), because global warming would be happening on Earth, even if there were no humans: the planet is constantly changing due to various situations.

The big difference though, is the rate of change: its unlike any recorded bar sudden global cataclysmic events (meteorite crash, etc...), Mars like any other planet will go through similar cycles, but the cycle being commented on is going to take several thousand years, maybe tens of thousands. Our poles however are melting at ridiculously fast rates.

Essentially we are speeding up the climatic cycle to a state where we can't adapt quick enough.


What I find more shocking is that you spam the rest of your post from comments made by an isolated climatologist who is funded by the Western Fuels Association. An association I might highlight who has the motto:

Coal is where your power begins





I think the proof that the IPPC is politically biassed lies in the fact that there is an equal body of opinion with evidence saying that if anything, the IPPC is under reporting the evidence of climate change and that they have been influenced by the so called conservative lobby. Whichever position you take the only consistancy is that the IPCC had no credibility. It is a political body.

In conclusion I think you are missing the point of my post; it is not that the climate is changing or that even man could be chaning it or not. The aggenda is now driven by politics, extremists and has taken on the characteristics of a psuedo religion. It has happened before and millions have died becuase of it. And now it is happening again.Can you categorically put the bias on the reports, like I can put on the sources used by yourself and Capn_Birdseye? No, you can't, instead you just tarnish an entire organisation because it suits your own political agenda, despite the vast majority of evidence being completely against what you stand for.

I am also offended by your labelling of politicians, and 'extremists', when for the last few years it has been the GENERAL PUBLIC that has been pushing for this. The political parties have only just clicked on to this as a possible vote winner, while various environmental nut cases are given more say in debates. Your total disregard for the public participation in this issue is down to the fact that you despise the fact that others have power and you have none. I dread to imagine a society run by individuals such as yourself who dictate what should be done.

There is one good piece of news: you said that you're moving to Italy, sounds like an excellent deal to me.

[Marksix]

In the war to prove and disprove anthropogenic climate change as in other wars, the first casulty is truth. Here is just one simple example which I hope shows that whatever your position on this, QUESTION EVERYTHING!

man is destroying the glaciers

two organisations biased for man made global warming
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,782789,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/world/europe/2181463.stm


oh no he isn't

one against the proposition
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/08/17/wglac17.xml


I quite like the quote from Patrick Moore, one of the founder members of Greenpeace:-

"I think one of the most pernicious aspects of the modern environmental movement is the romanticization of peasant life. And the idea that industrial societies are the destroyers of the world. The environmental movement has evolved into the strongest force there is for preventing development in the developing countries. I think it's legitimate for me to call them anti-human."

sadly, global warming has swamped to entire environmental movement, taking up all the oxygen and the rainforrests are still being cut down at an undiminished rate :(

[nick-taylor]

In the war to prove and disprove anthropogenic climate change as in other wars, the first casulty is truth. Here is just one simple example which I hope shows that whatever your position on this, QUESTION EVERYTHING!

man is destroying the glaciers

two organisations biased for man made global warming
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,782789,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/world/europe/2181463.stm


oh no he isn't

one against the proposition
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/08/17/wglac17.xml


I quite like the quote from Patrick Moore, one of the founder members of Greenpeace:-

"I think one of the most pernicious aspects of the modern environmental movement is the romanticization of peasant life. And the idea that industrial societies are the destroyers of the world. The environmental movement has evolved into the strongest force there is for preventing development in the developing countries. I think it's legitimate for me to call them anti-human."

sadly, global warming has swamped to entire environmental movement, taking up all the oxygen and the rainforrests are still being cut down at an undiminished rate :(If truth is a casualty, then you and Capn_Birdseye have practically wiped out your armed forces on a scale that would put Stalin to shame!

How exactly do those two articles prove that The Guardian and BBC are biased? All three put across the view of what Greenpeace had found, and that there was an alternative view to why the glaciers had retreated, but that the general consensus in the scientific community is that humans are having an influence.

The big difference is that you disagree with the first two because they don't align with your retarded knowledge on the issue of climate change, just like politics and practically every other issue you have brought up on this forum.

You're no better than the explosive elements inside of Greenpeace - sort of like a communist or fascist who can't accept other peoples views and accepts and promotes corrupted and tainted sources. You could almost be a politician if you didn't come across as so ignorant.

[Marksix]

Nick-Taylor, with his vicious and highly personal attacks on those who show dissent from received doctrine is the perfect example of the kind of extremists I am trying to warn about.

[Capn_Birdseye]

So right Marksix, in some kind of caring sharing way I feel rather sorry for him and his views, except that he does tend to go OTT with those who disagree with his delusional views. Unfortunately he comes across as the worst kind of Green extremist - unwilling and unable to contemplate or accept contra opinions and facts that don't fit his already neatly formed view of "reality and truth".
Nick, loosen up, get yourself a nice new BMW X5 to drive around in, fly around the world a bit and enjoy yourself, you're far too apocalyptic, you need to get out more!

http://www.bmw.co.uk/bmwuk/index/0,,1156___bs-WA&#37;3D%3D%40bb-R0YwNw%3D%3D,00.html

[Capn_Birdseye]

Global warming or global cooling?

Russian Expert Predicts Global Cooling from 2012

Created: 06.02.2006 17:18 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 15:24 MSK
MosNews

Starting from 2012, the process of global cooling will start on the Earth and by the middle of 21st century the whole planet will be captured by low temperatures, an expert from the Russian Sciences Academy Observatory was quoted by NewsRu.com as saying Monday.

The cause of the expected global cooling is a decrease in the flow of the Sun’s radiation, Khabibulo Absudamatov says.

“We have already witnessed a cooling of the kind in Europe, in North America and Greenland in 1645-1705, with canals freezing in Holland, and people abandoning settlements because of nearing glaciers in Greenland. This is what we are expecting again in some decades,” he said.

Analysis of the Sun’s radiation fluctuations that influence the climate on Earth shows that the planet at the moment is on the peak of the global warming process, Absudamatov said. Now, with the decrease in the Sun’s radiation, global temperatures are going to decrease, too.

“In 20th century, the Sun’s activity could be characterized by a general increase in the amount of radiated energy, and global warming was a result of this process. Global warming is by no means an anomaly, but a normal phenomenon. Global warmings, as well as global coolings, have happened before.”

According to Absudamatov, the global cooling will start in 2012 or 2013. By 2035 the Sun’s radiation will reach its minimum, and 15 years later a deep cooling of the Earth’s climate should be expected.
Source:
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/02/06/globalcold.shtml

[Ninjahedge]

Nick-Taylor, with his vicious and highly personal attacks on those who show dissent from received doctrine is the perfect example of the kind of extremists I am trying to warn about.

No, it shows that when you dump a bunch of truth obscuring pablum down on people (how long was that cut-and-paste you forced on us?) and then continue to sidestep any refutations of individual facts, as in your "Why did you chose only that to comment on" bit up there in response to nick, people get annoyed.

Now turning it back around, without refuting anything he says, you are trying to disqualify all of his previous arguments by somehow discrediting him by his reaction to your ignorance.

He is not screaming at you to sell your house and volunteer in Africa, so I do not gt where you equate him with the "extremists".

His comments are about as extreme as Vanilla in Yogurt. You really need to read up more if you want to be able to express yourself better than a simple set of drive by Ctrl-V's.


Oh, nick? Don't worry about Corporal Green Giant there. He seems to like to cause trouble. Just ignore him whenever he talks political.

[Capn_Birdseye]

We're not Green extremists! Honest, says Ninja and Nicky. But why are they so arrogant and rude when other people express a differing view?

Bob posts:
I don't buy the whole "global warming" nonsense
Ninja responds:
Just proves that you are an ignorant, greedy, selfish individual that would rather get the luxuries in life that serve very little purpose. :confused:

In response to a posting by Marksix, Nicky writes:
You're no better than the explosive elements inside of Greenpeace - sort of like a communist or fascist who can't accept other peoples views and accepts and promotes corrupted and tainted sources. You could almost be a politician if you didn't come across as so ignorant. :confused:

[Capn_Birdseye]

And after all the hot-air talk about climate change what has happened under Britain's Labour government?

Well the fact is that since Labour came to power in 1997 emissions of CO2 are actually soaring with a 3% increase over the past 10 years!

Last year the figure increased from 560.6 million tonnes, which was 6.4 million tonnes more than in 2005!

There is no chance of the government meeting its long-standing target of a 20% cut by 2010.

Am I surprised? Am I dismayed?

No, not in the slightest, in fact I'm inwardly quite pleased! I just wish the whole subject was dropped altogether and the government moved on to far more important issues.

[Marksix]

So right Marksix, in some kind of caring sharing way I feel rather sorry for him and his views, except that he does tend to go OTT with those who disagree with his delusional views. Unfortunately he comes across as the worst kind of Green extremist - unwilling and unable to contemplate or accept contra opinions and facts that don't fit his already neatly formed view of "reality and truth".
Nick, loosen up, get yourself a nice new BMW X5 to drive around in, fly around the world a bit and enjoy yourself, you're far too apocalyptic, you need to get out more!

http://www.bmw.co.uk/bmwuk/index/0,,1156___bs-WA%3D%3D%40bb-R0YwNw%3D%3D,00.html

Every new religion needs its Matawwa.


Nah - not a Bee Em, I think a Hummer would be better. 7 liter engine, 6 miles to the gallon and cyclists just bounce off them - you don't even feel yourself hitting them! :)

[RandySavage]

This gem is worth quoting:

"[The IPCC] has no scientific expertise whatsoever."

Its composition is mainly scientists. Not just random ones, but the top experts in the fields of paleoclimatology, meteorology, oceanography, etc. who in many cases have spent their lives conducting research and developed considerable expertise.

If you continue to make statements like "[the IPCC] has no scientific expertise whatsoever" it's not worth my time to try to have an intellectual debate with you.

Like you, I'm not particularly fond of big government, but our big U.S. government has been extremely resistant to taking action on global warming, and it's been more of a grassroots movement (consumers buying hybrids, giving money to conservation groups, changing to compact flourescent bulbs, etc.).

In the 1970s, when Detroit and its powerful lobby went nuts over mandated higher fuel efficiency or industry yelled "Big Government!" over the clean-air act, you'd probably make a similar argument. Time has proven that sometimes government mandated environmental controls are a good thing. When you got millions of selfish people like the guy who said he'd drive his SUV to the end of the driveway to pick up the paper a few posts back (or some such nonsense), the Tragedy of the Commons kicks in and you've got to have some kind of government, or like Hobbes said, we're all screwed.

[Ninjahedge]

We're not Green extremists! Honest, says Ninja and Nicky. But why are they so arrogant and rude when other people express a differing view?

It is not what you post, but how you post it...


Actually it is both. When you come in and say "everything you say is BS and here is why" and it turns out that that stuff is absolute crap, how are we supposed to respond?

And I still do not see where that makes us "extreme" in the least. You are mixing associations to try to remove credibility from our arguments WITHOUT EVER ADDRESSING THE ARGUMENTS THEMSELVES.

Very political.


Bob posts:
I don't buy the whole "global warming" nonsense
Ninja responds:
Just proves that you are an ignorant, greedy, selfish individual that would rather get the luxuries in life that serve very little purpose. :confused:

Um, you are taking out of context. Bob also stated that he would be speeding down the highway in whatever gas-guzzling powerhouse vehicle he wanted, conservationists be damned. His FULL post was more than "I don't understand" and you know it.


In response to a posting by Marksix, Nicky writes:
You're no better than the explosive elements inside of Greenpeace - sort of like a communist or fascist who can't accept other peoples views and accepts and promotes corrupted and tainted sources. You could almost be a politician if you didn't come across as so ignorant. :confused:

And what response was that? The third? You are somehow confused that people get annoyed when people like yourself keep avoiding the issue, and posting more untruths that are supposed to validate the previous untruths?

Amazing that you equate individuals tired of hearing people spread more lies and rumors just to validate their own greedy existences to "extremists" who go out and risk their lives, many times against the law, to block and interfere with issues they disagree with.

Yeah, our comments can be directly equated to intercepting a whaling vessel in the north sea.

Time for you to get some perspective Mr. McNibblet. :rolleyes:

[Marksix]

No, it shows that when you dump a bunch of truth obscuring pablum down on people (how long was that cut-and-paste you forced on us?) and then continue to sidestep any refutations of individual facts, as in your "Why did you chose only that to comment on" bit up there in response to nick, people get annoyed.

Now turning it back around, without refuting anything he says, you are trying to disqualify all of his previous arguments by somehow discrediting him by his reaction to your ignorance.

He is not screaming at you to sell your house and volunteer in Africa, so I do not gt where you equate him with the "extremists".

His comments are about as extreme as Vanilla in Yogurt. You really need to read up more if you want to be able to express yourself better than a simple set of drive by Ctrl-V's.


Oh, nick? Don't worry about Corporal Green Giant there. He seems to like to cause trouble. Just ignore him whenever he talks political.

My first 19 paragraphs were all my own words, the rest were pure factual, technical refutations of certain tenets postulated by those who promote anthropomorphic climate change, cut & pasted to illustrate that there are legitimate, scientific counters to those proponents of anthropgenic climate change.

I am not a scientist and cannot carry out any scientific research to prove or disprove scientists contentions but I'm sure that is true about everyone posting in this thread. The best I can do is read the date, judge it to the best of my abilities and express my own opinion and cut & paste the data I have found which underpins my own judgment.

I didn't force it upon you, you chose to read it or not read it. The only things that are forced in this context are the environmental taxes levied under the prtext of man made global warming in my country. They are forced upon us.

I would re-iterate that I am not saying it does not exist but that it might not exist. Your hostility however, seems real enough.

The point of my post which either you have missed or chose to miss is the potential dangers of the "man made global warming" lobby. Sorry if you don't get it :(

[Marksix]

This gem is worth quoting:

"[The IPCC] has no scientific expertise whatsoever."

Its composition is mainly scientists. Not just random ones, but the top experts in the fields of paleoclimatology, meteorology, oceanography, etc. who in many cases have spent their lives conducting research and developed considerable expertise.

If you continue to make statements like "[the IPCC] has no scientific expertise whatsoever" it's not worth my time to try to have an intellectual debate with you.



Taken word for word from the IPCC's own web site. And I quote:-

"The IPCC does not carry out research nor does it monitor climate related data or other relevant parameters. It bases its assessment mainly on peer reviewed and published scientific/technical literature. Its role, organisation, participation and general procedures are laid down in the "Principles Governing IPCC Work""

You are correct, it really isn't worth you having an intellectual debate - lol lol.

[RandySavage]

^ Are you kidding? Surely, you noticed that I didn't disagree with your statement about the IPCC not conducting research on it's own time & dime, which is true. But when you say "the IPCC has no scientific expertise whatsoever" you are stating the exact opposite of what is true. Scientists are selected to be on the IPCC by their governments because of their great scientific expertise.

In your argument you try to make it sound like the IPCC could be a group of bakers, used-car salesmen and runway models who opine about the climate.

[Marksix]

^ Are you kidding? Surely, you noticed that I didn't disagree with your statement about the IPCC not conducting research on it's own time & dime, which is true. But when you say "the IPCC has no scientific expertise whatsoever" you are stating the exact opposite of what is true. Scientists are selected to be on the IPCC by their governments because of their great scientific expertise.

In your argument you try to make it sound like the IPCC could be a group of bakers, used-car salesmen and runway models who opine about the climate.

The second "P" in IPCC should give you a clue here. It stands for "Panel" which is what the IPPC is, a panel of United Nations bureacrats established in 1988 by the WMO, another UN entity. The panel is appointed by member governments to collect & collate scientific data. It is the scientists whose data the IPPC disseminate that is reported. Thses scientists are not part of or to my knowledge, employed by the IPCC. The IPCC are in no way, shape or form scientists. They themselves will be the first to say this.

In the UK we have the a higher chamber called the House of Lords. By and large they are a very conservative bunch but also contain lifetimes of wisdom which is why they are there. Last year they said this of the IPCC:-

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/12i.pdf

UK House of Lords Science and Economic Analysis and Report on IPCC for the G-8 Summit, July 2005:

We have some concerns about the objectivity of the IPCC process, with some of its emissions scenarios and summary documentation apparently influenced by political considerations. There are significant doubts about some aspects of the IPCC’s emissions scenario exercise, in particular, the high emissions scenarios. The Government should press the IPCC to change their approach. There are some positive aspects to global warming and these appear to have been played down in the IPCC reports; the Government should press the IPCC to reflect in a more balanced way the costs and benefits of climate change. The Government should press the IPCC for better estimates of the monetary costs of global warming damage and for explicit monetary comparisons between the costs of measures to control warming and their benefits. Since warming will continue, regardless of action now, due to the lengthy time lags.

[Ninjahedge]

Mark, I do get it. I also never said you "forced" it on us, but you did dump it on us. You know damn well what posting like that does, it does not encourage participation.

As for you not being a scientist, guess what. I am. I am also not disposed to doing the research, especially not on my own "time and dime", but I am also not going to willingly look at the three verifiable scientists (the ones that are at least in the proper fields) that are being paid DIRECTLY by the oil industry and say "yeah, what they say must be right".

The problem you are having is the classic problem most people not in the scientific community have. The ability to isolate individual trends based on individual influencing factors. You site one, but then use particulate pollution data to try to refute it. Guess what, more planes = more clouds = more shade. But the slight increase, short term, caused by the restriction of air travel cannot be directly associated, or extrapolated, to a global long term effect if continued.

You keep cherry picking your arguments in order to support a flimsy set of conjectures. Somehow we are supposed to accept these opposing theories when many have been proven false? If you simply acknowledged the areas where their, or your arguments have been in error (as proven by those here) people would be more likely to accept other points you are trying to make. Otherwise you seem to just keep focusing on trying to change peoples opinions, not actually discuss the matter at hand.

[Capn_Birdseye]

This gem is worth quoting:

"[The IPCC] has no scientific expertise whatsoever."

Its composition is mainly scientists. Not just random ones, but the top experts in the fields of paleoclimatology, meteorology, oceanography, etc. who in many cases have spent their lives conducting research and developed considerable expertise.

"Politics, not science, drives the United Nations' work on climate change," warns Dr. Richard Lindzen, one of the world's leading atmospheric physicists, and a lead IPCC author.

Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the world's leading atmospheric scientists, told a standing-room only audience at a briefing sponsored by the Cooler Heads Coalition in the U.S. Senate Environment Committee Room, that the IPCC process is driven by politics rather than science.

What are some of the problems with the IPCC process, according to Lindzen? It uses summaries to misrepresent what scientists say. It uses language that means different things to scientists and laymen. It exploits public ignorance over quantitative matters. It exploits what scientists can agree on, while ignoring disagreements, to support the global warming agenda. And it exaggerates scientific accuracy and certainty and the authority of undistinguished scientists. [pretty damning indictment I'd say! :)]

No consensus here
The "most egregious" problem with the IPCC's forthcoming report, said Lindzen, "is that it is presented as a consensus that involves hundreds, perhaps thousands, of scientists . . . and none of them was asked if they agreed with anything in the report except for the one or two pages they worked on."

.... and this comes from someone who is on the inside of the organisation!!!:)

[Marksix]

Mark, I do get it. I also never said you "forced" it on us, but you did dump it on us. You know damn well what posting like that does, it does not encourage participation.

As for you not being a scientist, guess what. I am. I am also not disposed to doing the research, especially not on my own "time and dime", but I am also not going to willingly look at the three verifiable scientists (the ones that are at least in the proper fields) that are being paid DIRECTLY by the oil industry and say "yeah, what they say must be right".

The problem you are having is the classic problem most people not in the scientific community have. The ability to isolate individual trends based on individual influencing factors. You site one, but then use particulate pollution data to try to refute it. Guess what, more planes = more clouds = more shade. But the slight increase, short term, caused by the restriction of air travel cannot be directly associated, or extrapolated, to a global long term effect if continued.

You keep cherry picking your arguments in order to support a flimsy set of conjectures. Somehow we are supposed to accept these opposing theories when many have been proven false? If you simply acknowledged the areas where their, or your arguments have been in error (as proven by those here) people would be more likely to accept other points you are trying to make. Otherwise you seem to just keep focusing on trying to change peoples opinions, not actually discuss the matter at hand.

Actually you did say "forced" but I'll let that pass. Also, I don't know what posting like this does to participation means. May I not participate? Congrats about getting your Phd. May I ask in what field?

I'm getting really bored about having to repeat myself but many if not most of the climate change scientists are funded by government with governments political aggendas. If a scientist went to government asking for funding to prove a thesis that is counter to anthropmorphic climate change, I have heard many scientist say that they simply will not get funded. Surely that is even more a distortion than the minority (3 did you say?) who you claim are paid by industry. And I say again, this is not the point of my post.

I think the climate change thesis is flimsy and isn't the point of debate to select data in support of a thesis? I don't understand what you are trying to say about contrails there at all. When it was pointed out that the temp. dropped in the 4 decades post WW2 in counter to the theory more data was then contrived to fit the theory. That's bad science.

You may be right, you may be wrong, I don't know. I don't believe you are right. As to changing peoples opinions I am appealing to people not to accept the climate change lobby unquestioningly. Be skeptical, make up you own minds but above all, learn the lessons from history when similar movements such as this have occured and place your judgements in that context. I think anyone who read the part of my post about eugenics should be particulary alarmed by your statment "The problem you are having is the classic problem most people not in the scientific community have." When scientists try to exclude the rest of us from decision making or expressing our concerns becuase we are not scientists things get very, very dangerous for the rest of us.

[RandySavage]

"Thses scientists are not part of or to my knowledge, employed by the IPCC. The IPCC are in no way, shape or form scientists."

Jeez, this exasperating. The problem here is your not doing any fact checking. The IPCC are scientists. These links show the authors and reviewers of the most recent completed Assessment Report:

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/558.htm

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/559.htm

Look at the names and organizations. They're scientists.

[Marksix]

"Thses scientists are not part of or to my knowledge, employed by the IPCC. The IPCC are in no way, shape or form scientists."

Jeez, this exasperating. The problem here is your not doing any fact checking. The IPCC are scientists. These links show the authors and reviewers of the most recent completed Assessment Report:

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/558.htm

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/559.htm

Look at the names and organizations. They're scientists.

Exasperating is right. Follow the link and read back what it says at the top of the page:- "Appendix III - Contributors to the IPCC WGI Third Assessment Report"

Contributors - geddit? jeez...

[Capn_Birdseye]

Look at the names and organizations. They're scientists.

Brings to mind that old tailor's phrase, "never mind the quality feel the width",
Yes the numbers are impressive but none of them was asked if they agreed with anything in the report except for the one or two pages they worked on.

IPCC's emphasis, however, isn't on getting qualified scientists, but on getting representatives from over 100 countries, said Dr Richard Lindzen. The truth is only a handful of countries do quality climate research. Most of the so-called experts served merely to pad the numbers. "It is no small matter," said Lindzen, "that routine weather service functionaries from New Zealand to Tanzania are referred to as 'the world's leading climate scientists.' It should come as no surprise that they will be determinedly supportive of the process."

The IPCC clearly uses the Summary for Policymakers to misrepresent what is in the report he was involved in, said Lindzen. He gave an example from the chapter he worked on, chapter 7, addressing physical processes.
The 35-page chapter, said Lindzen, pointed out many problems with the way climate computer models treat specific physical processes, such as water vapor, clouds, ocean currents, and so on. Clouds and water vapor in clouds, for example, are badly misrepresented in the models. The physics are all wrong, he said. Those things the models do well are irrelevant to the all-important feedback effects.
"The treatment of water vapor in clouds is crucial to models producing a lot of warming," explained Lindzen. "Without them [positive feedbacks], no model would produce much warming."

The IPCC summarizes the 35-page chapter in one sentence: "Understanding of climate processes and their incorporation in climate models have improved, including water vapor, sea dynamics and ocean heat transport."
That, said Lindzen, does not summarize the chapter at all.

[Ninjahedge]

Actually you did say "forced" but I'll let that pass. Also, I don't know what posting like this does to participation. May I not participate? Congrats about getting your Phd. May I ask in what field?

Since when is a PHD qualifications for a scientist?

Try Engineering with thermodynamics and quite a few other technical fields thrown in.


I'm getting really bored about having to repeat myself but many if not most of the climate change scientists are funded by government with governments political aggendas.

Then DON'T.

Please refrain from ignoring the facts that are presented because you do not like the outcome. That is very Bush-like.


If a scientist went to government asking for funding to prove a thesis that is counter to anthropmorphic climate change, I have heard many scientist say that they simply will not get funded.

And which are these "many"? Also, you have to realize going up and asking is not grounds to get funding. Most do not try to prove or disprove global warming, so most that say that that is their goal do not get fundig in the first place.

If you want to STUDY global warming, you are not only more likely to get funding, you are also more of a scientist.


Surely that is even more a distortion than the minority (3 did you say?) who you claim are paid by industry. And I say again, this is not the point of my post.

Mild to say the least. Please do me a favor and site the "experts" that actually are in these fields and have confirmed their participation.


I think the climate change thesis is flimsy and isn't the point of debate to select data in support of a thesis?

Not if that data is proven to be faulty and inconclusive in and of itself. Siting reduced temperatures due to particulate emmination is not a good counter argument to CO2 warming.

When you site data that is questionable in itself, and from sources that are known to have deliberate adgendas (liek you said, they are not looking to study GW, they are looking to disprove GW) it makes it hard to credit what you are bringingto the table.


I don't understand what you are trying to say about contrails there at all.

You said temperature went up (or was it Captain) after 9-11 during the no-fly time. That was teh reference.


When it was pointed out that the temp. dropped in the 4 decades post WW2 in counter to the theory more data was found to fit the theory. That's bad science.

No, it was simply looked at more closely. You do not believe that particulate pollution had anything to do with global cooling? You do not think the coal plants and steel industry had no impact on the planet?

The nature of science is inherently difefrent than politics. Things are found out later that are worked into the model so that all constituent parts fit. If MORE information was found since WWII, I would believe that over the initial studies. Please remember that.


You may be right, you may be wrong, I don't know. I don't believe you are right. As to changing peoples opinions I am appealing to people not to accept the climate change lobby unquestioningly.

Since when do I get the lobby?

I am simply following the scientific reports coupled with my own observations. I am not noe to sit there blindly and accept things as they are told to me, but somehow say "hahaha this is all nonsense, these guys say so (ignore who is paying them!!)" is rediculous.

To ignore a consortium of scientists, not just one little group from east slabovineakistan, and call them out as being uniformly politically biased is a little slanted on your part!


Be skeptical, make up you own minds but above all, learn the lessons from history when similar movements such as this have occured and place your judgements in that context. I think anyone who read the part of my post about eugenics should be particulary alarmed by your statment "The problem you are having is the classic problem most people not in the scientific community have." When scientists try to exclude the rest of us from decision making or expressing our concerns becuase we are not scientists things get very, very dangerous for the rest of us.

Scientists are known to not be inclusive, but that is usually because they themselves have been excluded from life.

So when a group of intelligent people is excluded from all major decision making, indeed mocked because of their profession (when was the last Hero-Professor you saw in the movies?) to ask them to be all generous and inclusive when the tables are turned is rediculous.

I am not looking to scientists for the solution to many of these things. Most of these guys are just the diagnosticians. The policymakers have to look at what they are saying and find a solution rather than find a way to refute their findings. Then the Engineers try to impliment these solutions through actual design.

The way we have been doing it is a consistant chain of finding reasons we don't have to rather than just dealing with it.

[RandySavage]

"but none of them was asked if they agreed with anything in the report except for the one or two pages they worked on."

This is an accussation made by a single contributor, Richard Lindzen (who only worked on 1995 IPCC assessment and makes bucket$ from his speaking engagements casting doubt on anthropogenic global warming, but that's cliche).

If this were the case, why wouldn't the other 99% of contributing authors come forward and say, "whoah, this report does not reflect my scientific opinion." It hasn't happened because a vast majority of the contributing scientific experts (who authored and reviewed the various pages and chapters of the reports) stand by the overall assessment.

[Capn_Birdseye]

"but none of them was asked if they agreed with anything in the report except for the one or two pages they worked on."

If this were the case, why wouldn't the other 99% of contributing authors come forward and say, "whoah, this report does not reflect my scientific opinion."
In a word, MONEY. They want to stay on board the gravy train, no agreement, no further funding, and who wants to miss out on that eh?
They are obviously prepared to contribute to questionable science for Mammon and the continued success of their careers, as many did when the Eugenics was the new religion. There is also probably a sense of security being one of the herd, you know the old addage, "safety in numbers!"

[Marksix]

In a word, MONEY. They want to stay on board the gravy train, no agreement, no further funding, and who wants to miss out on that eh?
They are obviously prepared to contribute to questionable science for Mammon and the continued success of their careers, as many did when the Eugenics was the new religion. There is also probably a sense of security being one of the herd, you know the old addage, "safety in numbers!"

Just one of the trusts doling out million$$$ to scientists. I wonder if the Pew Trust would be as charitable to any scientists whose research contracdicts the stated aim of this and their fellow trusts to:

"working to create a policy environment that leads to the adoption of mandatory federal limits on emissions that contribute to global warming"


The Pew Charitable Trusts serves the public interest by providing information, advancing policy solutions and supporting civic life. The Trusts will invest $248 million in fiscal year 2007 to provide organizations and citizens with fact-based research and practical solutions for challenging issues.
http://www.pewtrusts.org/


Since the Kyoto protocol came into effect on February 16, 2005 - the Kyoto Agreement has cost 80 billion dollars for, supposedly, a prevention of warming by 0.0008 deg C... To prevent a 1 deg C increase it will cost some 100 trillion dollars. Our tax dollars of course.

The cost in human life in the prevention of the industrialisation of the third world if this Kyoto were to be implemented?

[Capn_Birdseye]

So all you over-eating Greenies ......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwkbDubF2qM&mode=related&search=

... and what about Al Gore, my God he's piled the pounds on hasn't he! The fat man seems to love flying around the world, gorging on huge meals, telling us all how we should be reducing our carbon footprint to save the planet! The word hypocrite seems to spring to mind ..... well I suppose a failed presidential candidate has to find another job so he's joined the global warming/climate change gravy train like the other freeloaders!

[nick-taylor]

And after all the hot-air talk about climate change what has happened under Britain's Labour government?

Well the fact is that since Labour came to power in 1997 emissions of CO2 are actually soaring with a 3% increase over the past 10 years!

Last year the figure increased from 560.6 million tonnes, which was 6.4 million tonnes more than in 2005!

There is no chance of the government meeting its long-standing target of a 20% cut by 2010.

Am I surprised? Am I dismayed?

No, not in the slightest, in fact I'm inwardly quite pleased! I just wish the whole subject was dropped altogether and the government moved on to far more important issues.Actually they aren't soaring, they are re-adjusting and taking into the account the shift in emission outputs.

In general, the UK has met its Kyoto target of reducing its 6 GHG emissions by 12.5% of 1990 levels to 2008-12. The UK government set a further target of reducing this by 20% (I believe that would be going back to 1960's levels), of which there is still the chance of being met.

I think the situation is pretty admirable, not only did Britain meet its goal that most of Europe faltered at, but tried to go further. I see it not as a failure, but as winning gold and then trying to beat the world record.

Britain is setting the standard for not only reducing emissions, but harbouring a healthy, competitive and growing economy and society. It could very well be the template needed to tempt other developed countries to follow suit.




I find it despicable that the two forum members who precede my post are allowed to post yet more bile. There is tolerance for hearing others speak, but there can't be tolerance for tarnishing of facts based on mis-information, using corrupted data sources and the crude labelling of an opponent(s) in a debate.

[ZippyTheChimp]

I find it despicable that the two forum members who precede my post are allowed to post yet more bile. There is tolerance for hearing others speak, but there can't be tolerance for tarnishing of facts based on mis-information, using corrupted data sources and the crude labelling of an opponent(s) in a debate.You may have noticed that many of us have just dropped out of this debate. If you expect me to sift through this tedium and research the accuracy of the material, it will cost you money.

You're debating two individuals that only care about this issue because it fits their world view. The New World Order - green nazis, surveillance nazis, blah-blah. The Global Warming Take Over the World Conspiracy.

I gave up on this discourse after this exchange:
1
2
3

George W Bush - Green Nazi. LOL.

I didn't get a response to my last post, but if one were to be made, I suppose it would be that's what they want you to think.

As long as you don't call each other assholes, I won't intervene.

[Capn_Birdseye]

Actually they aren't soaring, they are re-adjusting and taking into the account the shift in emission outputs.
Love it!!! :):) Poor old Nicky boy just cannot accept facts that the Britain's emmissions are soaring and hasn't got a cat in hells chance of meeting its target by 2010 so in true Green extremist fashion uses the phrase "adjusting"!!! :):) Simply love it!!! :):)




Britain is setting the standard for not only reducing emissions, but harbouring a healthy, competitive and growing economy and society. It could very well be the template needed to tempt other developed countries to follow suit.
What, by increasing emmissions?? Nicky boy you obviously are losing the plot!!
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=491952007



I find it despicable that the two forum members who precede my post are allowed to post yet more bile. There is tolerance for hearing others speak, but there can't be tolerance for tarnishing of facts based on mis-information, using corrupted data sources and the crude labelling of an opponent(s) in a debate.
I wondered when Nicky boy would play the censorship card - the unpalatable truths are obviously getting to him, like many of his ilk he doesn't take criticism or disagreement well.:)

[Ninjahedge]

Since the Kyoto protocol came into effect on February 16, 2005 - the Kyoto Agreement has cost 80 billion dollars for, supposedly, a prevention of warming by 0.0008 deg C... To prevent a 1 deg C increase it will cost some 100 trillion dollars. Our tax dollars of course.

Linear interpolation of cost figures is a sure sign of mathematic, and economic ignorance.

GJ!

[nick-taylor]

You may have noticed that many of us have just dropped out of this debate. If you expect me to sift through this tedium and research the accuracy of the material, it will cost you money.

You're debating two individuals that only care about this issue because it fits their world view. The New World Order - green nazis, surveillance nazis, blah-blah. The Global Warming Take Over the World Conspiracy.

I gave up on this discourse after this exchange:
1
2
3

George W Bush - Green Nazi. LOL.

I didn't get a response to my last post, but if one were to be made, I suppose it would be that's what they want you to think.

As long as you don't call each other assholes, I won't intervene.I think tolerance can only go so far, ignorance and stupidity shouldn't be accepted in my opinion.....

....How far does $50 go? Could probably throw GT and Fabrizio in there as well :D

[Capn_Birdseye]

I think tolerance can only go so far, ignorance and stupidity shouldn't be accepted in my opinion.....
Very fascist-like view if I may say so Nicky boy! What are you suggesting, those of us who disagree with your views are quietly put down with a lethal injection? But why am I not surprised! :) As the saying goes, if the jackboot fits, wear it! And you do, with relish.

[Ninjahedge]

Very fascist-like view if I may say so Nicky boy!

You may, but it does not mean anyone here will really listen to you anymore Bean Sprout.


What are you suggesting, those of us who disagree with your views are quietly put down with a lethal injection?

STRAW MAN!!!!

He never suggested that. What kind of twisted mind would even say something like that??!? Do you kill babies in their sleep for fun? (See how nice that is? Please stop doing it yourself.)

All he is saying is that your opinions are very narrow minded. He wants you to open up and have a discussion rather than try to find one small point that may be difficult to refute based on a long chain of contrived references.

But instead, you continue to cherry pick your references to everything and insult those that disagree as if they knew nothing.


But why am I not surprised!

Because you baited him, that's why.


:) As the saying goes, if the jackboot fits, wear it! And you do, with relish.

Since when do Fascists like relish? Do not cross your insulting references there Mr. McNibblet. It says that you are not as wise as you pretend to be.

Stop trying to be Dennis Miller. At least he backs his irritating berating with a bit more fact than you do.

[Punzie]

Justices Rule Against Bush Administration on Emissions

By LINDA GREENHOUSE (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/linda_greenhouse/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
Published: April 2, 2007

WASHINGTON, April 2 — In one of its most important environmental decisions in years, the Supreme Court ruled today that the Environmental Protection Agency (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/e/environmental_protection_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org) has the authority to regulate heat-trapping gases in automobile emissions.

The court further ruled that the agency cannot sidestep its authority to regulate the greenhouse gases that contribute to global climate change (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) unless it can provide a scientific basis for its refusal.

The 5-to-4 decision was a strong rebuke to the Bush administration, which has maintained that it does not have the right to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, and even if it did, it would not use the authority. The ruling does not force the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate auto emissions, but it would almost certainly face further legal action if it fails to do so.

Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/john_paul_stevens/index.html?inline=nyt-per) said that the only way the agency can “avoid taking further action” now is “if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change” or provides a good explanation why it cannot or will not find out whether they do.Beyond the specific context for this case — so-called “tailpipe emissions” from cars and trucks, which account for about one-fourth of the country’s total greenhouse-gas emissions — the decision is highly likely to have a broader impact on the debate over government efforts to address global warming.

Court cases around the country had been placed on hold to await the decision in this case. Among them is a challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency’s refusal to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, now pending in the federal appeals court here. Individual states, led by California, are also moving aggressively into what they have seen as a regulatory vacuum.

Justice Stevens, joined by Justices Anthony M. Kennedy (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/anthony_m_kennedy/index.html?inline=nyt-per), David H. Souter (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/david_h_souter/index.html?inline=nyt-per), Ruth Bader Ginsburg (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/ruth_bader_ginsburg/index.html?inline=nyt-per) and Stephen G. Breyer (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/stephen_g_breyer/index.html?inline=nyt-per), said that by providing nothing more than a “laundry list of reasons not to regulate,” the Environmental Protection Agency had defied the Clean Air Act’s “clear statutory command.” He said that a refusal to regulate can be based only on science and “reasoned justification,” adding that while the statute leaves the central determination to the “judgment” of the agency’s administrator, “the use of the word ‘judgment’ is not a roving license to ignore the statutory text.”

The court decided a second Clean Air Act case today, adopting a broad reading of the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority over factories and power plants that add capacity or make renovations that increase emissions of air pollutants. In doing so, the court reopened a federal enforcement effort against the Duke Energy Corporation under the Clean Air Act’s “new source review” provision. The vote in the second case, Environmental Defense v. Duke Energy Corp., No. 05-848, was 9 to 0.

The two decisions left environmental advocates exultant. Many said they still harbored doubts about the federal agency and predicted that the decision would help push the Democratic-controlled Congress to address the issue. Even in the nine months since the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 05-1120, and accelerating since the elections last November, there has been a growing interest among industry groups in working with environmental organizations on proposals for emissions limits.

Dave McCurdy, president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the main industry trade group, said in response to the E.P.A. decision that the alliance “looks forward to working constructively with both Congress and the administration” in addressing the issue. “This decision says that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will be part of this process,” he said.

If the decision sowed widespread claims of victory, it left behind a prominent loser: Chief Justice John G. Roberts (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/john_g_jr_roberts/index.html?inline=nyt-per) Jr., who argued vigorously in a dissenting opinion that the court never should have reached the merits of the case or addressed the question of the agency’s legal obligations.

His dissent, which Justices Antonin Scalia (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/antonin_scalia/index.html?inline=nyt-per), Clarence Thomas (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/t/clarence_thomas/index.html?inline=nyt-per), and Samuel A. Alito Jr. (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/samuel_a_alito_jr/index.html?inline=nyt-per) also signed, focused solely on the issue of legal standing to sue: whether the broad coalition of states, cities and environmental groups that brought the lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency four years ago should have been accepted as plaintiffs in the first place.

This was the issue on which the coalition’s lawsuit had appeared most vulnerable, given that in recent years the Supreme Court has steadily raised the barrier to standing, especially in environmental cases. Justice Scalia has long been a leader in that effort, and Chief Justice Roberts made clear that, as his statements and actions in his prejudicial career indicated, he is fully on board Justice Scalia’s project.

Chief Justice Roberts said that the court should not have found that Massachusetts or any of the other plaintiffs had standing. The finding “has caused us to transgress the proper — and properly limited — role of the courts in a democratic society,” he said, quoting from a 1984 decision.

And, quoting from a decision Justice Scalia wrote in 1992, he said: “This court’s standing jurisprudence simply recognizes that redress of grievances of the sort at issue here is the function of Congress and the chief executive, not the federal courts.”

Chief Justice Roberts complained that “today’s decision recalls the previous high-water mark of diluted standing requirements,” a 1973 decision known as the SCRAP case. That was an environmental case that the Supreme Court allowed to proceed on a definition of standing so generous as to be all but unthinkable today. “Today’s decision is SCRAP for a new generation,” the chief justice said, not intending the comparison as a compliment.

The majority addressed the standing question by noting that it was only necessary for one of the many plaintiffs to meet the three-part definition of standing: that it had suffered a “concrete and particularized injury,” that the injury was “fairly traceable to the defendant,” and that a favorable decision would be likely to “redress that injury.”

Massachusetts, one of the 12 state plaintiffs, met the test, Justice Stevens said, because it had made a case that global warming was raising the sea level along its coast, presenting the state with a “risk of catastrophic harm” that “would be reduced to some extent” if the government undertook the regulation the state sought.

In addition, Justice Stevens said, Massachusetts was due special deference in its claim to standing because of its status as a sovereign state. This new twist on the court’s standing doctrine may have been an essential tactic in winning the vote of Justice Kennedy, a leader in the court’s federalism revolution of recent years. Justice Stevens, a dissenter from the court’s states-rights rulings and a master of court strategy, in effect managed to use federalism as a sword rather than a shield.

Following its discussion of standing, the majority made short work of the agency’s threshold argument that the Clean Air Act simply did not authorize it to regulate greenhouse gases because carbon dioxide and the other gases were not “air pollutants” within the meaning of the law.

“The statutory text forecloses E.P.A.’s reading,” Justice Stevens said, adding that “greenhouse gases fit well within the Clean Air Act’s capacious definition of air pollutant.”

The justices in the majority also indicated that they were persuaded by the existing evidence of the impact of automobile emissions on the environment.

The agency itself “does not dispute the existence of a causal connection between man-made gas emissions and global warming,” Justice Stevens noted, adding that “judged by any standard, U.S. motor-vehicle emissions make a meaningful contribution to greenhouse gas concentrations.”

Justice Scalia, in his dissenting opinion, disputed the majority’s statutory analysis.

The decision overturned a 2005 ruling by the federal appeals court here.
[/URL]

[URL="http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/06pdf/05-1120.pdf"]Text of the Opinion: Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency (http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/06pdf/05-1120.pdf) (pdf)


Recent Articles on Global Warming:

Gore Warns Congress of ‘Planetary Emergency’ (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/washington/22gore.html?ex=1175659200&en=b63c967babd2df4e&ei=5070) (March 22, 2007)

U.S. Predicting Steady Increase for Emissions (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/03/science/03climate.html?ex=1175659200&en=e1b56cb866d157f0&ei=5070) (March 3, 2007)

On the Climate Change Beat, Doubt Gives Way to Certainty (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/06/science/earth/06clim.html?ex=1175659200&en=0ccc5eb737441bde&ei=5070) (Feb. 6, 2007)

Science Panel Calls Global Warming ‘Unequivocal’ (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/03/science/earth/03climate.html?ex=1175659200&en=092f15d29c55c20a&ei=5070) (Feb. 3, 2007)

A New Middle Stance Emerges in Debate over Climate (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/01/science/01climate.html?ex=1175659200&en=796fcc0869d9b021&ei=5070) (Jan. 1, 2007)

Justices’ First Brush With Global Warming (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/30/washington/30scotus.html?ex=1175659200&en=fc8a835f495cd259&ei=5070) (Nov. 30, 2006)


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/02/washington/02cnd-scotus.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1175565653-FvNBpanfnQLOJJ/OG0uJLA&oref=slogin

[Punzie]

New York Times Editorial
April 3, 2007

The Court Rules on Warming

It would be hard to overstate the importance of yesterday’s ruling by the Supreme Court that the federal government has the authority to regulate the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases produced by motor vehicles. It is a victory for a world whose environment seems increasingly threatened by climate change. It is a vindication for states like California that chose not to wait for the federal government and acted to limit emissions that contribute to global warming. And it should feed the growing momentum on Capitol Hill for mandatory limits on carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas.

The 5-to-4 ruling was a rebuke to the Bush administration and its passive approach to the warming threat. The ruling does not require the government to regulate greenhouse gases. But it instructs the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its refusal to regulate emissions, urges it to pay attention to the scientific evidence and says that if it takes the same stance, it has to come up with better reasons than its current “laundry list” of excuses.

The ruling also demolishes President Bush’s main justification for not acting — his argument that because the Clean Air Act does not specifically mention greenhouse gases, the executive branch has no authority to regulate them. The president has cited other reasons for not acting, including costs. But his narrow reading of the Clean Air Act has always been his ace in the hole.

The court offered a much more “capacious” reading of the act, as Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority. The plaintiffs — 12 states and 13 environmental groups — had argued, and the court agreed, that while the act does not specifically mention greenhouse gases, it gives the federal government clear jurisdiction over “any air pollutant” that may reasonably be anticipated to endanger “public health or welfare.” This interpretation was first set forth by Carol Browner, administrator of the E.P.A. under President Clinton, and remained agency policy until Mr. Bush reversed it in 2001.

The administration had also argued that the states did not have standing to sue on this issue because they could not show that they would be harmed by the government’s failure to regulate greenhouse gases. The court ruled that the states have a strong and legitimate interest in protecting their land and their citizens against the dangers of climate change and thus have standing to sue.

The ruling reinforces state efforts in other ways. California and nearly a dozen other states have adopted their own regulations requiring lower greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks. These rules, however, require federal approval, which seemed unlikely as long as the agency could claim that carbon dioxide was not a pollutant — a claim it can no longer make.

The E.P.A. had also argued that reducing emissions would require it to tighten fuel efficiency standards, a job assigned by law to the Department of Transportation. The automakers have made much the same argument against California’s emissions rules. But the court said that the E.P.A. could not shirk its responsibilities just because another department sets mileage standards. The agency is clearly in for some serious soul-searching.

The decision was unnervingly close, and some of the arguments in the dissent, written by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., were cause for concern — especially his comments about the “complexities” of the science of climate change, which is too close for comfort to the administration’s party line.

Still, the Supreme Court, for the first time, has said that global warming is a real and present danger. This can only encourage those on Capitol Hill and in the states who are growing increasingly impatient for aggressive action.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/opinion/03tues1.html


The decision was unnervingly close
Justice John Paul Stevens turns 87 on April 20. *eek*

[Capn_Birdseye]

Hey Ninja are you trying to be the cut & paste king by any chance? :)

Here's a bit of my own! Its good news! EU Carbon trading scheme fails to curb emissions from big polluters!

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2414741.ece

[nick-taylor]

Hey Ninja are you trying to be the cut & paste king by any chance? :)

Here's a bit of my own! Its good news! EU Carbon trading scheme fails to curb emissions from big polluters!

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2414741.eceIndeed it is good news, Britain, Spain and Italy, 3 of the top 5 largest EU economies, show that the system can work. With modifications and an injection of investment into renewables and more eco-friendly practices, France and Germany are most likely going to be following suit.

The critical point is that the system is in place, there needs to be a bit of ironing to get a few creases out, but the system will evolve and be beneficial to the environment, society and national economies.

Think of it as gradually taking away the addiction to harmful pollutants, as say a smoker to cigarettes. You could be Mr Marlboro.

[Capn_Birdseye]

Indeed it is good news, Britain, Spain and Italy, 3 of the top 5 largest EU economies, show that the system can work. With modifications and an injection of investment into renewables and more eco-friendly practices, France and Germany are most likely going to be following suit.
I notice there is no mention of China and Indai to name but two ..... :)


The critical point is that the system is in place, there needs to be a bit of ironing to get a few creases out, but the system will evolve and be beneficial to the environment, society and national economies.

Think of it as gradually taking away the addiction to harmful pollutants, as say a smoker to cigarettes. You could be Mr Marlboro.
... and it won't make a scrap of difference! The Earth is in cyclical change, it warms, it gets colder, in fact some say we're in for an ice-age! Personally I'd like to see it warmer, in fact just like this Easter, there may be opportunities to bring back vineyards and make decent wine again in Britain! I'd drink to that! Cheers.

[Capn_Birdseye]

Just love Boris Johnson's take on this subject!!

http://www.boris-johnson.com/archives/2007/01/greenhouse_gases.php

[nick-taylor]

I notice there is no mention of China and Indai to name but two ..... :)


... and it won't make a scrap of difference! The Earth is in cyclical change, it warms, it gets colder, in fact some say we're in for an ice-age! Personally I'd like to see it warmer, in fact just like this Easter, there may be opportunities to bring back vineyards and make decent wine again in Britain! I'd drink to that! Cheers.Since when did China and India become part of the EU? Saying that, if Britain and the rest of the developed world can set the example, then it will probably get China and India on-board for the long-haul. The big incentive is to create a renewables sector that is highly profitable, unfortunately, this needs the likes of France and the US to act as well, this isn't something Britain can do by itself.

You are exactly right, the planet does have climatic cycles, no serious scientist who believes in climate change would say otherwise. What they would point out however is the pace of change that is happening, in other words, while the earth will change, we're putting it on fast forward by destabilising the climate system. Much like an individual who smokes: you might like it, but in the long-term, you're life expectancy is being crippled.

Unfortunately by the time vineyards are growing in northern England, the Gulf Stream will probably have shut off, plunging us into a tundra-like existence.

[Capn_Birdseye]

Unfortunately by the time vineyards are growing in northern England, the Gulf Stream will probably have shut off, plunging us into a tundra-like existence.
Only if you believe in your fairy tales .... you don't know nor do the scientists who are preaching the new religion know what might happen in the future. The problem with Man, particularly when dressed as "scientists" is that they truly believe they can second-guess Nature. Sorry to disappoint, but neither you nor they can!
The Green puritans are akin to the Taliban in Afghanistan, fanatical in their beliefs and dismissive of any that disagree!

[nick-taylor]

Only if you believe in your fairy tales .... you don't know nor do the scientists who are preaching the new religion know what might happen in the future. The problem with Man, particularly when dressed as "scientists" is that they truly believe they can second-guess Nature. Sorry to disappoint, but neither you nor they can!
The Green puritans are akin to the Taliban in Afghanistan, fanatical in their beliefs and dismissive of any that disagree!Surely you're contradicting yourself once again, after all how can you criticise what is an established thought based on scientific extrapolations of historical and present events as 'fairy tales' - that would assume that you know what is going to happen over the likes of the Pentagon, the vast majority of major scientific bodies and scientists associated with the field and the educated general public.

I also find it hilarious that you continue this rant of trying to associate 'greens' with being fanatics and/or fascists, and that they are dismissive of an opponents points, yet you are doing exactly that. What is worse, you base your argument on evidence that is tarnished (remember that Channel 4 document where the sources were misquoted) and corrupted meaning your perspective crumbles.

[Capn_Birdseye]

If we wanted to pay our debt to the great green earth-goddess Gaia, and neutralise the ill-effects of travelling by air, then we should slaughter all cattle.

There are 1.3 billion cows on this planet, and every year each cow produces about 90kg of methane, and as greenhouse gases go, methane is about 24 times worse than CO2 in sealing the heat in the air. According to a recent report by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, agriculture produces 18 per cent of the world's greenhouse gases, as measured in CO2 equivalent -- and that is far more than is produced by the entire human transport industry.

Think of it: for every cow killed, we would be ridding the world of 90kg of methane a year -- easily enough, surely, to justify an Easyjet flight. What a thought!

If Nicky boy you really wanted to tackle global CO2 emissions, you would campaign for nuclear energy, since power production is responsible for 24 per cent of global emissions.

Or better still you could help do something to stop Third World countries from burning the forests, which produces 18 per cent of CO2.

But, of course, Nicky boy isn't interested in these kinds of facts. He wants the religion. He wants the sweet moralistic feeling of telling someone to stop doing something. He wants to be able to rage about Chelsea Tractors and the aviation industry, and he wants to give vent to his feelings of disgust at the whole triumph of Western consumerist capitalism; and what worries me is that, in the end, the moralising mumbo-jumbo becomes more important than the scientific reality.

You may not remember the politicising of the eugenics theory in the first half of the twentieth century which postulated a crisis of the gene pool leading to the deterioration of the human race. The superior human beings were not breeding as fast as the inferior ones. ie. the degenerates, the unfit and the feeble minded. It was a respected British scientist who first speculated this but his ideas where taken far beyond anything he intended by the worlds politicians including Churchill and Roosevelt and eventually Hitler and hence the second world war.

Politicising climate change is unlikely to result in the same dire consequences but it does amaze me that politicians, journalists and even some so called scientists express surprise that our climate is changing! It has been doing so continually since the earth was formed 4500 million years ago. In fact since its existance as a continent Europe has been covered in ice north of the Alps for 80&#37; of the time.

I am however totally opposed to the imposition of taxes in whatever form justified on the basis of hypothetical science.

It appears that justification for action to combat climate change starts from the hypothesis that the worlds climate would be in equilibrium if it were not for the intevention of mankind. The idea that carbon dioxide emmissions from the burning of fossil fuels are solely responsible for climate change is frankly naive particularly since predictions are invariably based on so called computer modelling.

As an example of the falibility of computer modelling climate changes, last year (2006) was predicted to be another damaging year for hurricane activity in the Gulf of Mexico. The prediction, based on so-called computer modelling at the University of Colorado Department of Atmospheric Science was for 17 storms, 5 of them with the intencity of Katrina in 2005.

This prediction did not come to pass, in fact there were no hurricanes of any force hitting the gulf coast in 2006 which emphasises that if all the variables and their relative influence are not known computer models are liable to dramatic failure. The confidence placed on this particular computer prediction was a significant contributer to the rise in crude oil prices suffered during the second half of 2006.

It has been shown that carbon dioxide has only a marginal influence on global warming approximately 1% that of water vapor in the form of clouds.

Furthermore carbon dioxide cannot be classed as a pollutant when it is an essential component of the earth's atmosphere and all forms of life on earth depend on it.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Just a few more examples of why this thread has been abandoned:


If we wanted to pay our debt to the great green earth-goddess Gaia,Bombastic bullshit.


The Green puritans are akin to the Taliban in Afghanistan, fanatical in their beliefs and dismissive of any that disagree!You're the one that sounds like a fanatic in the pulpit, railing about imagined conspiracies, and illogical comparisons.


As an example of the falibility of computer modelling climate changes, last year (2006) was predicted to be another damaging year for hurricane activity in the Gulf of Mexico. The prediction, based on so-called computer modelling at the University of Colorado Department of Atmospheric Science was for 17 storms, 5 of them with the intencity of Katrina in 2005.

This prediction did not come to pass, in fact there were no hurricanes of any force hitting the gulf coast in 2006 which emphasises that if all the variables and their relative influence are not known computer models are liable to dramatic failure.After complaining in numerous posts that there is not enough data, you suddenly switch to talking about weather, when the issue is climate.


Furthermore carbon dioxide cannot be classed as a pollutant when it is an essential component of the earth's atmosphere and all forms of life on earth depend on it.I'm sure few here will object if you lock yourself in a room filled with the non-pollutant.

Give it a rest; you are so boring.

[Capn_Birdseye]

I'm sure few here will object if you lock yourself in a room filled with the non-pollutant.

Give it a rest; you are so boring.
Zippy, do I take that as a "I want you to leave the forum"?

[ZippyTheChimp]

No, I want you to stop making this thread unreadable with your repetitive ranting.

[Ninjahedge]

IOW, either get some solid information on the subject and be willing to discuss it, or just stop posting.

Very simple.

I have stopped reading all of your tripe. The only time I see any of it is when someone quotes you. You have no actual reliable factual basis in any of your arguments on any thread and you always phrase them in a manner than insults all those that disagree with you.

You are not a member of this community. You are a rabble rouser looking for a good fight to rail on people about subjects that your real world compatriots probably do not want to hear any more about (or do not disagree with you, making it less fun when you do not get a reaction from them).

Please do us all a favor and refrain from this kind of belligerent unsubstantiated ranting.


Oh, BTW, don't even bother responding to me. Like I said, I stopped reading your stuff shortly after you started posting here. I think you set a record for fastest addition to the Ignore List!!!

[Capn_Birdseye]

You are not a member of this community.
In which case I will get my coat and leave, I won't stay where I'm not wanted .... I would like to thank those who have refrained from attacking me personally, and to those who have, I forgive you.

[WebErr]

Hi from Russia, Yaroslavl!
Today we have snow and sunshine! :eek:
It is third time in April, when we can see snowflakes...
It's a miracle!!!
Thanks for Global Warming! :D

[Punzie]

For the Environment, Rallies Great and Small (and Unusual Attire)

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/14/nyregion/15warming.xlarge1.jpg
Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Daniel Wapner in Battery Park before taking part in a demonstration that warned of climate changes that could raise sea levels.



By MANNY FERNANDEZ (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/manny_fernandez/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
The New York Times
Published: April 15, 2007

Hundreds of people formed a human shoreline at the rim of Lower Manhattan yesterday, warning of the dangers of rising sea levels from global warming (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) as part of a national day of environmental demonstrations.

The roughly U-shaped line, a few blocks inland, was a sometimes-comical, sometimes-serious attempt to show what the tip of the island might look like if the sea level rose several feet from the melting of Greenland’s ice sheets.

Throughout the line, packed in some stretches and spread thin in others, were men, women and children dressed more for a maritime adventure than a windy spring day in New York City. They wore wet suits, scuba-diving flippers and blue sheets with hand-painted waves. Some tossed around beach balls. One man tried to make his way through the narrow streets with a long canoe hitched to his bicycle.

“It’s about human survival, and we all have to act now before it gets out of hand,” said Eric Rodriguez, 17, a junior at Tottenville High School on Staten Island. He formed part of the imaginary water’s edge outside a Starbucks cafe on Pearl Street as a fellow student, Raina Bedford, 18, held a sign reading: “Hold your breath we’re going under.”

The event was one of roughly 1,400 rallies across the country. The campaign, called Step It Up, was described by organizers as the largest environmental demonstration in the country since Earth Day 1970, a gathering that helped start the modern environmental movement. Yet the many scattered Step It Up events seemed far smaller in comparison. Some drew a few hundred, others a few dozen. In Manhattan, organizers estimated a crowd of 1,200.

Step It Up’s lead organizer, Bill McKibben, a resident scholar at Middlebury College in Vermont and the author of “The End of Nature,” a 1989 book about global warming, said the widespread, do-it-yourself activities fit the campaign’s unifying theme: urging Congress to cut carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050.

He also explained one of the main reasons organizers did not call for a mass march in one location. “We didn’t want people spewing carbon behind them as they crossed the continent to come to Washington,” said Mr. McKibben, 46, who, along with Representative Anthony D. Weiner (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/anthony_d_weiner/index.html?inline=nyt-per) of Queens, spoke at a rally at Battery Park in Manhattan.

The day’s events were as varied as national weather patterns. There were film screenings and poetry readings, bicycle rides and hiking expeditions, drum circles and tree plantings. People dived underwater to wave a sign reading “It’s Getting Hot Down Here!!” at a coral reef off Key West, Fla. In Jacksonville, Fla., demonstrators used an unusual visual aid to illustrate rising sea levels: Alltel Stadium, home of professional football’s Jacksonville Jaguars, where they hoisted a boat 20 feet in the air outside an entrance.

At a rally that drew about 400 people to Boston Common, dozens of schoolchildren and their parents carried “recycling rope,” blue twine decorated with milk cartons, egg cartons and aluminum cans. In the San Francisco Bay Area, thousands turned out in the rain at a series of demonstrations and town hall meetings. At the Presidio near the Golden Gate Bridge, Felicity Crush, 43, and other members of the group Main Street Moms Organize or Bust, or Mmob, attended a gathering promoting electric cars and other alternative fuel vehicles. They later joined a demonstration outside a Hummer dealership in San Rafael.

Ms. Crush said she had become more involved in such rallies out of concern for her 9-year-old daughter. “We’re just leaving this dreadful mess for them,” she said. “They will have to pick up the pieces.”

Many rallygoers said yesterday’s actions reflected a widespread resurgence of the environmental movement, boosted in part by former Vice President Al Gore (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/al_gore/index.html?inline=nyt-per)’s documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” which was shown at many of the gatherings.

In some places the demonstrators seemed concerned as much with the means as with the ends. In California, Matthew Lundin, 22, a college student, dreamed up a demonstration in which ice cubes would be tossed into the Pacific Ocean at a beach in Santa Barbara County. His idea prompted a debate over whether it was wise to waste ice cubes, which take refrigeration, and therefore energy, to produce.

Yesterday, about 20 people met at Goleta Beach and tossed away nevertheless.

“I’m glad that people understood the symbolism,” Mr. Lundin said.

Carolyn Marshall contributed reporting from San Francisco and Katie Zezima contributed from Boston.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/nyregion/15warming.html


Multimedia
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/14/nyregion/15warming.1261.jpg (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:pop_me_up2%28%27http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/04/14/nyregion/20070415_WARMING_SLIDESHOW_index.html%27,%20%27750 _700%27,%20%27width=750,height=700,location=no,scr ollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes%27%29)
Slide Show (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:pop_me_up2%28%27http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/04/14/nyregion/20070415_WARMING_SLIDESHOW_index.html%27,%20%27750 _700%27,%20%27width=750,height=700,location=no,scr ollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes%27%29) Rallies Around the Country (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:pop_me_up2%28%27http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/04/14/nyregion/20070415_WARMING_SLIDESHOW_index.html%27,%20%27750 _700%27,%20%27width=750,height=700,location=no,scr ollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes%27%29)

[BenL]

Britain has tabled a motion to the UN Security Council on global warming to be discussed tomorrow:



British push on CO2 at security council


· Diplomats seek to put climate change on agenda
· Foreign Office argues it is a matter of global stability

Ed Pilkington in New York and David Adam
Thursday March 8, 2007
The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/)

The British government is considering putting climate change on to the agenda of the UN security council for the first time to underline the urgency of the issue.

UK officials are holding talks with the other 14 member states ahead of Britain taking over the council presidency for the month of April. Early soundings have met resistance from countries such as the US and South Africa. Britain would only propose bringing climate change into security council business if it had unanimous support.


Global warming has thus far been considered outside the remit of the council, which is mandated under the UN charter to maintain "international peace and security".


But the British government - led by key figures including Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Miliband - has come to the view that it is a matter of international security as it will cause mass migrations and aggravate disputes over borders, water and other resources.


The foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, raised what she called climate security in her speech to the UN general assembly in September. "Our climate presents us with an ever-growing threat to international security. Dealing with climate change is no longer a choice, it is an imperative," she said.


A report commissioned by the US government warned at the weekend that the US must prepare to intervene in a growing number of major crises across the world brought on by climate change, such as water shortages, collapses in civil order and "the implosion of one or more major cities".
Unrestrained greenhouse gas emissions and the expected temperature rise over the coming decades could provoke social unrest in vulnerable places from Delhi and Mexico City to Lima, said the report by Global Business Network (GBN), a consultancy group in San Francisco.


It said action may be needed soon to "forestall the worst effects of collapsing ecosystems, water systems, or radical restructuring of the global insurance industry" and warned that US policies on global warming could threaten its strategic interests abroad and weaken its bargaining power on key issues such as trade and security.


The initial reaction to bringing climate change into the security council has been less than enthusiastic on the part of the US government, one of the council's five permanent members along with the UK, which has consistently favoured voluntary measures to deal with emissions and has refused to sign the Kyoto protocol.


Other member states have been hesitant because they are suspicious of land grabs by the big developed powers of the security council on the territory of the UN's general assembly, which tends to represent the interests of developing nations. South Africa, which holds a temporary seat on the council, has expressed such a doubt despite being in favour of more robust action on global warming.


Foreign Office officials point to the example of Richard Holbrooke, the US ambassador to the UN between 1999 and 2001, who put Aids on to the security council agenda with beneficial results.




U.N. Security Council To Debate Climate Change


April 05, 2007 — By Daniel Trotta, Reuters

UNITED NATIONS -- The U.N. Security Council will debate climate change for the first time on April 17, the result of a British campaign to force it onto the agenda of a body that deals with matters of war and peace.


"The traditional triggers of conflict are likely to be exacerbated by the effects of climate change," Britain's U.N. ambassador Emyr Jones Parry told a news conference Wednesday at which he outlined Security Council business for April, when Britain holds the rotating presidency.
Britain considers the topic so important to global security that Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett will preside over the debate.


Countries on the 15-member Security Council normally have their ambassadors take part in debates but reserve the right to have foreign ministers or heads of state or government address the council on issues of greater importance.


Britain invited other countries to send foreign ministers as well, Jones Parry said.


In March Britain announced its intention to bring climate change to the Security Council, but it had to be agreed by the council's 15 members including the five permanent members who have veto authority.


Permanent members China and Russia expressed some opposition to the holding the debate, diplomatic sources from two countries said. Meanwhile, the United States, which has declined to adhere to the Kyoto Protocol, had no opposition.


Behind Prime Minister Tony Blair and Beckett, a former secretary of state for environment, Britain has taken a leading role in urgent action against global warming in other international forums such as the European Union, which last month agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions at least 20 percent by 2020.


Anticipating that some U.N. member states will argue that climate change should remain a matter for the General Assembly or agencies dealing with environment, Britain circulated a so-called concept paper arguing that climate change could provoke new wars, change borders, disrupt energy supplies and force mass migration.


It outlines six areas where climate change could affect global security: border disputes, migration, energy supplies, other resource shortages, societal stress and humanitarian crises.


Melting ice and rising sea levels could alter the world's physical landmass, leading to potential changes in political or maritime borders, and mass migration could also result, with some estimates that up to 200 million people could be displaced by the middle of the century, the paper says.

[BrooklynRider]

U.S. Media Blows Coverage Of Bush’s Climate Speech, Needs Tutorial From International Press

After President Bush gave a speech yesterday outlining his energy and climate change strategy, the U.S. media quickly heralded Bush’s “new” policy as a “shift” from his previously dismal environmental record:

Washington Post: President Bush sought yesterday to take the initiative on global warming talks…signal[ing] a shift in the administration’s often-criticized approach.

New York Times: Bush, fending off international accusations that he was ignoring climate change, proposed for the first time on Thursday to set “a long-term global goal” for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. … It would be a major shift for Mr. Bush, who has resisted such absolute goals.

Los Angeles Times: Bush offers to take climate lead. The U.S. and other big emitters would set goals under his plan.

The reaction to Bush’s speech from the international community — whose ambitous proposal to reduce global warming Bush recently tried to gut — was “far from positive”:

The Guardian (UK): George Bush yesterday threw international efforts to control climate change into confusion with a proposal to create a “new global framework” to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Der Spiegel (Germany): US President George W. Bush seems confident that his climate change initiative will find broad support. But the first reactions out of Europe have been far from positive.

Deutsche Welle (Germany): European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has sharply criticized plans outlined by US President George W Bush to cut greenhouse gas emissions, saying the United States needs to set more ambitious goals.

The international press got it right. Bush did not mention the words “global warming” once yesterday, yet the U.S. media reported as if he did. Furthermore, Bush’s plan “listed no concrete targets or dates, no enforcement mechanism and no penalties for noncompliance. It also wouldn’t take effect until four years after Bush leaves office.”

Instead, Bush’s policy would continue the ineffective policy of voluntary caps on emissions. White House science adviser Jim Connaughton, who oversaw the elimination of references to global warming in White House documents, summed it up: “In this instance, you have a long-term, aspirational goal.”

More at Gristmill and Climate Progress.

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/06/01/us-v-international-press-on-climate/

[pianoman11686]

Bush's Climate Plan Alters Showdown With Europe

By MARK LANDLER
Published: June 1, 2007

FRANKFURT, June 1 — For six years, Europeans have pleaded with President Bush to seize the initiative in the campaign against global warming. Now that he has, many here are even more frustrated.

Mr. Bush’s unexpected announcement Thursday that the United States would gather together the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases to seek a long-term global reduction in emissions has thrown Washington’s European allies, particularly Germany, off balance.

Chancellor Angela Merkel will convene a meeting of the leaders of the world’s richest nations here next week, at which she plans to push for much the same goal as Mr. Bush, albeit using very different means.

On the eve of the Group of Eight summit, Mr. Bush’s vaguely worded proposal has muddied what had been shaping up as a black-and-white showdown between Europe and the United States.

Mrs. Merkel’s environment minister, Sigmar Gabriel, warned that Mr. Bush’s plan might prove to be a “Trojan horse,” impeding her efforts to get an agreement on deep reduction targets in Germany, while defusing criticism that the United States is a hurdle to the broader climate effort.

“Bush torpedoes Merkel’s climate plans,” said a typically skeptical headline in the German financial paper Handelsblatt.

But for Mrs. Merkel’s chief climate advisor, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Mr. Bush’s plan is a welcome sign that the United States has reengaged in the debate, even if he disagrees with its approach. It is also, he said, recognition of the vital role China and India must play in curbing emissions.

“It’s clearly an indication that the Bush administration wants to contribute to solving the problem,” Mr. Schellnhuber said in an interview. “It’s a steep learning curve, and when you are on a learning curve, you may not come up with the right solution the first time.”

Mr. Schellnhuber, a respected authority on climate change who played a role in developing the Kyoto Protocol, said he presented a proposal not unlike Mr. Bush’s to Mrs. Merkel several months ago as a “Plan B,” if she was not able to rally support for a more ambitious “Plan A.”

“I said to the chancellor, ‘If we cannot get a concrete, top-down approach, the second-best solution is a bottom-up approach, with mid-term commitments by countries,’” he said. “But you need a system for adding this up, and orienting it to a larger goal that makes sense.”

This is where Europe parts company with the United States, Mr. Schellnhuber said. The Bush administration favors a piecemeal approach, in which countries would set their own targets for cutting emissions, based on their economic circumstances. But it continues to oppose mandatory caps on emissions, or a carbon trading regime, like that operating in Europe.

Mrs. Merkel, supported by Prime Minister Tony Blair and other European leaders, wants to set a global target to cut emissions by 50 percent, from 1990 levels, by 2050. In a draft communiqué for the meeting, German negotiators also propose increasing energy efficiency 20 percent by 2020.

Negotiators for the White House wrote last week that the German draft proposal “crosses multiple ‘red lines’ of what we simply cannot agree to,” adding, “we have tried to ‘tread lightly,’ but there is only so far we can go, given our fundamental opposition to the German position.”

That bluntly worded rebuff angered German diplomats, stiffening their resolve to push for concrete emissions reductions, regardless of whether they provoked a clash with the United States or spoiled the mood at Heiligendamm, the Baltic Sea resort where the meeting is to be held.

“The U.S. and Europe were like two cars racing toward each other in a game of chicken,” Mr. Schellnhuber said.

Now, he said, there might be room for compromise, though he acknowledged the gulf was still wide. Mrs. Merkel, who welcomed Mr. Bush’s speech as an “important statement,” nevertheless gave no indication she was willing to yield on her goal of a 50 percent cut in emissions.

A spokesman for Mrs. Merkel, Ulrich Wilhelm, said, “I think we can say at this stage that it’s going to be tough, that we face very intense negotiations.” Other German officials, including the government’s chief negotiator, Bernd Pfaffenbach, said the talks could collapse altogether.

That would be a rare setback for Mrs. Merkel, who has made climate change the centerpiece of Germany’s dual presidency of the Group of 8 and the European Union. In March, she won a landmark agreement that sets a binding target for use of renewable energy in Europe.

Still, a deadlock would suit critics of the Bush administration, who say their greatest fear is that Europe will water down its targets or accept bland diplomatic language as a substitute.

“The G-8 text is the litmus text,” said Stephan Singer, head of climate policy at the World Wildlife Fund in Brussels. “We’ll see if the Bush administration restores any of its ridiculous deletions.”

Critics also contend that Mr. Bush’s proposal to seek a global deal by the end of 2008 would undermine the role of the United Nations as the main forum for climate negotiations. Convening the largest emitters in the United States would create a parallel round of talks, they said.

“Our first point is that this must happen within the context of the U.N.,” said Michael Muller, the German deputy environment minister. “Our second point is that to wait until 2008 is too long.”

“We have to see why Bush did this,” Mr. Muller added. “Did he just do it because of pressure from outside?”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[Eugenious]

24,009 Priuses sold in May, 2007


http://www.toyota.com/images/vehicles/2007/prius/gallery/exterior/large/photo_1.jpg


an increase of 184.9&#37;




:):)

[ablarc]

Only if you believe in your fairy tales .... you don't know nor do the scientists who are preaching the new religion know what might happen in the future. The problem with Man, particularly when dressed as "scientists" is that they truly believe they can second-guess Nature. Sorry to disappoint, but neither you nor they can!
Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

[Alonzo-ny]

I watched a very convincing documentary here in the UK on channel 4 quite recently which basically proved that global warming is a natural process. This happens because the sun fluctuates giving out more energy sometimes than others. at the moment its heating up the earth. The biggest producer of CO2 on the planet by far is the oceans, producing 95% of CO2. If you look back over time at co2 levels and temperature correlate. co2 actually lags behind increased sun activity as it takes a few hundred years for the oceans to heat up and produce increased co2. There have been quite a few scientists have left the UN commitee, i forget its proper name, but have had there names printed without consent on papers produced by this commitee to give them more credibility. The docu also said how global warming is used by the media to control us with scaremongering. We always get reports of massive ice sheets breaking off but they dont mention this happens over the course of the year with summer heating them up and they then reform in winter.

My opinion is that i believe the docu but i dont think there is anything wrong with making these changes to pollute the earth less it would be better if we were doing it because we wanted to not because we are terrified of the seas rising up and swallowing us.

[Deimos]

Alonzo-ny, I agree with most of what you have to say, and am also not 100% convinced of the "crisis", however Al Gore did have one slide in his presentation that got me thinking... it's where he shows the CO2 and temperature for the past 650,000 years in antarctica, and you can see without any shadow of a doubt that the current CO2 levels are significantly higher than at any period shown. Granted 650,000 years is still a microscopic amount of time geologically speaking.

I'm also not a believer in hybrid technology... that's an assload of lead-acid batteries which are going to be in landfills in the near future. I'm waiting on the new low-sulfur diesel cars to come to the market offering the same fuel economy as a modern hybrid without any of the downsides.

[nick-taylor]

I watched a very convincing documentary here in the UK on channel 4 quite recently which basically proved that global warming is a natural process. This happens because the sun fluctuates giving out more energy sometimes than others. at the moment its heating up the earth. The biggest producer of CO2 on the planet by far is the oceans, producing 95% of CO2. If you look back over time at co2 levels and temperature correlate. co2 actually lags behind increased sun activity as it takes a few hundred years for the oceans to heat up and produce increased co2. There have been quite a few scientists have left the UN commitee, i forget its proper name, but have had there names printed without consent on papers produced by this commitee to give them more credibility. The docu also said how global warming is used by the media to control us with scaremongering. We always get reports of massive ice sheets breaking off but they dont mention this happens over the course of the year with summer heating them up and they then reform in winter.

My opinion is that i believe the docu but i dont think there is anything wrong with making these changes to pollute the earth less it would be better if we were doing it because we wanted to not because we are terrified of the seas rising up and swallowing us.That programme was debunked not only by the majority of academics, but even by those who contributed to the programme when their statements were edited/manipulated to the

Lord Putttnam (the deputy chairman of Channel 4) even admitted today (in The Times) that the programme was one that "It’s the kind of slightly juvenile thing that happens when you take your eye off the ball". I've been over this programme before, but a good article to read is this one: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article1517515.ece . As you can see, its easy to put forward examples, but its an entirely different scenario in proving the cycle.

Now instead of that documentary, what was needed was common sense. Polluting the atmosphere is just like smoking, its bad.

[Alonzo-ny]

I agree, its not good and alternatives should be used. Nuclear power should be widespread in my opinion. Once electricity is produced well things like cars can be designed to run electronically. I read somewhere a college in the US designed and built a car than runs on electricity at 200mph. Even if that show was debunked i believed the heat increase was a result of sun activity, sun spots, before i saw the show. I hate all the hype putting fear into everyones minds that everywhere will be flooded in twenty years. I also rememebr a few years back maybe even 10 years ago, that the ozone hole got smaller! i think global warming has become an industry and alot of people make money off it now so the media continues hyping it up. But if we get new sustainable energy production out of it then there is somethin positive to take from it. Does anyone know the estimated dates when oil/coal/gas is expected to run out?

edit: just read the article. It says a small temperature rise cause a much larger release of co2 cause steeper rises in temperature later. If this were true wouldnt this continue to happen in cycles until the earth got hotter and hotter and hotter exponentially until the seas boiled.

[nick-taylor]

I agree, its not good and alternatives should be used. Nuclear power should be widespread in my opinion. Once electricity is produced well things like cars can be designed to run electronically. I read somewhere a college in the US designed and built a car than runs on electricity at 200mph. Even if that show was debunked i believed the heat increase was a result of sun activity, sun spots, before i saw the show. I hate all the hype putting fear into everyones minds that everywhere will be flooded in twenty years. I also rememebr a few years back maybe even 10 years ago, that the ozone hole got smaller! i think global warming has become an industry and alot of people make money off it now so the media continues hyping it up. But if we get new sustainable energy production out of it then there is somethin positive to take from it. Does anyone know the estimated dates when oil/coal/gas is expected to run out?

edit: just read the article. It says a small temperature rise cause a much larger release of co2 cause steeper rises in temperature later. If this were true wouldnt this continue to happen in cycles until the earth got hotter and hotter and hotter exponentially until the seas boiled.You are partially right, the climate of the planet is in a constant state of flux going through cycles....the big difference is the rapid shift that in the past has only been attributed to extreme scenarios such as asteroid impacts and other disastrous situations.

The situation is that humans are having a similar effect to the environment as a smoker does to their health.

The problem with having increasing temperatures is that other knock-on effects kick in. The biggest of these is not famine, changes in the sea level or wars over habitable land...no the biggest problem is methane that would eventually be expelled (I believe the temperature would have to rise by 6-8 degrees on a global basis) which would essentially create a quite literal explosive atmosphere that would ignite at the first lightning bolt. Humanity wouldn't be around to see the seas boil because we'd have been vaporised long before then.

[Alonzo-ny]

You paint a nice future, i look forward to it

edit:actually i dont

[BrooklynRider]

Whether it is natural or not, human's are contributing to its acceleration. It also seems fair to conclude that, natural or not, global warming is a danger to human existence.

[Alonzo-ny]

i think it has a very long way to go before our actual existance is threatened and im confident we will stop the trend before too long. I have noticed the changes, for example it used to snow here in scotland every year guarenteed in december, now it seems to snow once a year if im lucky(i talk about my region in the central belt, obviously the north and mountains get snow alot more) but am i certain its us or is it natural and outwith our control i dont know. i lean toward the latter though.

[nick-taylor]

i think it has a very long way to go before our actual existance is threatened and im confident we will stop the trend before too long. I have noticed the changes, for example it used to snow here in scotland every year guarenteed in december, now it seems to snow once a year if im lucky(i talk about my region in the central belt, obviously the north and mountains get snow alot more) but am i certain its us or is it natural and outwith our control i dont know. i lean toward the latter though.Well it depends how you define "long". If emissions continue to spiral out of control then within a few decades this planet won't be able to sustain life.

Also it could very well end up getting a lot colder in Scotland, because if the Gulf Stream is cut off, Britain will be plunged into a tundra-like existence. You only have to look at a map of where Britain is and where some of the coldest places on the planet are. Glasgow and Edinburgh are both closer to the north pole than Moscow....Moscow regularly dips below -12 degrees celcius. Even London is several hundred miles closer to the north pole than Vancouver. Without the gulf stream, Britain would quite literally become a frozen wasteland.

[ablarc]

Whether it is natural or not, human's are contributing to its acceleration. It also seems fair to conclude that, natural or not, global warming is a danger to human existence.
...and therefore we need to do something about it ... whether it's natural or not.

[Alonzo-ny]

Well it depends how you define "long". If emissions continue to spiral out of control then within a few decades this planet won't be able to sustain life.


Thats an exaggeration, considering life exists next to underwater volcanic vents and under antartic seas at extremes it would have to be really extreme to stop life. as i said i think we'll get it under control before too long, i say in a century developed countries will have their emissions under control.

[pianoman11686]

Also it could very well end up getting a lot colder in Scotland, because if the Gulf Stream is cut off, Britain will be plunged into a tundra-like existence.

I thought that this theory (also known as "The Day After Tomorrow" doomsday scenario) was recently disproven with a new scientific study. I don't remember if it was part of IPCC's new annual report, but I think it was fairly reliable and scientifically accurate.

Before this report came out, I was myself skeptical of the possibility of such a shutdown of the Gulf Stream. The theory rested on a substantial change (lessening) of the salinity level. Evidence shows that, over the entire history of the Earth (which includes some truly extreme climate changes), oceanic salinity has remained nearly constant at 3.4%. No reason to think it would change now.

[ablarc]

Evidence shows that, over the entire history of the Earth (which includes some truly extreme climate changes), oceanic salinity has remained nearly constant at 3.4%. No reason to think it would change now.
All that fresh water melting off the poles?

[pianoman11686]

Here's the article:

Scientists back off theory of a colder Europe in a warming world

By Walter Gibbs
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
International Herald Tribune (http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/16/healthscience/sncold.php)

OSLO, Norway: Mainstream climatologists who have feared that global warming could have the paradoxical effect of cooling northwestern Europe or even plunging it into a small ice age have stopped worrying about that particular disaster, although it retains a vivid hold on the public imagination.

The idea, which held climate theorists in its icy grip for years, was that the North Atlantic Current, an extension of the Gulf Stream that cuts northeast across the Atlantic Ocean to bathe the high latitudes of Europe with warmish equatorial water, could shut down in a greenhouse world.

Without that warm-water current, Americans on the Eastern Seaboard would most likely feel a chill, but the suffering would be greater in Europe, where major cities lie far to the north. Britain, northern France, the Low Countries, Denmark and Norway could in theory take on Arctic aspects that only a Greenlander could love, even as the rest of the world sweltered.

All that has now been removed from the forecast. Not only is northern Europe warming, but every major climate model produced by scientists worldwide in recent years has also shown that the warming will almost certainly continue.

"The concern had previously been that we were close to a threshold where the Atlantic circulation system would stop," said Susan Solomon, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "We now believe we are much farther from that threshold, thanks to improved modeling and ocean measurements. The Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic Current are more stable than previously thought."

After consulting 23 climate models, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in February it was "very unlikely" that the crucial flow of warm water to Europe would stall in this century.

The panel did say that the gradual melting of the Greenland ice sheet along with increased precipitation in the far north were likely to weaken the North Atlantic Current by 25 percent through 2100. But the panel added that any cooling effect in Europe would be overwhelmed by a general warming of the atmosphere, a warming that the panel said was under way as a result of rising concentrations of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases.

"The bottom line is that the atmosphere is warming up so much that a slowdown of the North Atlantic Current will never be able to cool Europe," said Helge Drange, a professor at the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center in Bergen, Norway.

Temperate Europe is vulnerable because of its northern perch. The latitude of Britain equals that of frigid Newfoundland. Norway corresponds to the southern half of Greenland. The annual mean temperature difference of 10 to 20 degrees across the North Atlantic (all temperature units shown here are in Fahrenheit) is often entirely attributed to the North Atlantic Current.

But in recent years, climatologists have said prevailing winds and other factors independent of the current are responsible for at least half of the temperature anomaly.

For the European warm-water current to stop altogether, the Greenland ice sheet would have to melt fast enough to create a vast freshwater pool in the North Atlantic. Freshwater dilution on that scale would make the current less dense, preventing its two main strands from sinking south of Iceland and west of Norway as they must before they can double back toward the Equator on the underside of what is often called the Atlantic conveyor belt.

"The ocean circulation is a robust feature, and you really need to hit it hard to make it stop," said Eystein Jansen, a paleoclimatologist who directs the Bjerknes Center for Climate Research, also in Bergen. "The Greenland ice sheet would not only have to melt, but to dynamically disintegrate on a huge scale across the entire sheet."

The worst imaginable collapse would likely take centuries to play out, he said. Any disruption to the North Atlantic Current - whose volume is 30 times greater than all the rivers in the world combined - would thus occur beyond the time horizon of the U.N. climate panel.

The last big freshwater dilution is thought to have occurred 8,200 years ago, when a huge lake atop the retreating North American ice sheet burst through to the Atlantic. For about 160 years, Jansen said, Europe experienced a severe chill that today would "stress society quite a lot."

If the North Atlantic Current weakened 25 percent this century, fractionally offsetting the effect of global warming, Britain in 2100 would still be about 4 degrees warmer than today, the U.N. panel estimated. In France, the net warming would be 5 degrees and here in Norway a bit more, depending on latitude.

When climate modelers simulate a 50 percent slackening of the North Atlantic Current, they still see a net warming in those countries. It is when they completely switch off the current, as they say nature is disinclined to do, that the European climate cools to a level below that of today.

Scientists at the Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research near London found that a shutdown of the North Atlantic Current in 2049 would cause temperatures in most of Britain and Norway to fall from a level several degrees warmer than today to a level 4 or 5 degrees chillier than today. That would be enough to curtail agriculture sharply. France, though, would still be slightly warmer than it is now.

In a 1998 cover article for The Atlantic Monthly titled "The Great Climate Flip-flop," William H. Calvin spelled out a worst-case scenario for Atlantic Ocean dynamics and concluded, "I hope never to see a failure of the northernmost loop of the North Atlantic Current, because the result would be a population crash that would take much of civilization with it, all within a decade."

In 2004, the makers of the Hollywood blockbuster "The Day After Tomorrow" imagined the sudden icing over of Manhattan after a disruption in North Atlantic currents. Europe's fate was alluded to by the implied flash-freezing of the British royal family in Balmoral Castle.

Preparing for a cold future has never been high on the political agenda.

Perhaps understandably, European leaders have been more preoccupied with responding to the 2003 summer heat wave that killed 15,000 people across France and the need for new dike technology to keep the Netherlands from being inundated by rising seas associated with melting ice caps.

Richard Seager, a senior research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University in Palisades, N.Y., said Europeans should trust what they feel in the air.

"Britain and western Europe have had one heat wave after another so far this century," Seager said. "It's phenomenal. The idea that anyone is worried about a new ice age I find rather odd."

Copyright &#169; 2007 the International Herald Tribune All rights reserved.

Nota bene: I tried getting the NY Times version of the article (same author), but now the Times requires a paying membership or hefty one-time fees to view old articles. Here's the original version for anyone who has Times Select: http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30C13F639550C768DDDAC0894DF4044 82

[ablarc]

^ OK, fair enough.

[nick-taylor]

Thats an exaggeration, considering life exists next to underwater volcanic vents and under antartic seas at extremes it would have to be really extreme to stop life. as i said i think we'll get it under control before too long, i say in a century developed countries will have their emissions under control.When I refer to life - I mean human life. We don't have the technology to terraform other planets, so jumping boat isn't an option and going back to caves wouldn't be sustainable for the human population.

And what exactly is the definition of 'under control'? Even though Britain and the Scandinavian countries have excelled at reducing emissions, they are still a long way from a sustainable level. The US, well the US is unlikely to begin reducing emissions any time soon on a national scale, and even if it did, it would have serious catch-up to even meet Kyoto.

The other issue is that we might not have a century, within a few decades we could have out-of-control climatic imbalance that is the result of not present or future emissions but what we pumped out years ago.

I only wish that the US administration looks at Britain as the template for a emission-reducing and healthy economy: the greatest achievement of Blair.




pianoman11686 - This highlights the other problem - we can't be exact on what could happen, but the probability of it occurring is greatly increased. That is what is disconcerting, it could be decades or it could be centuries, nobody can say when or where, but I'd prefer to play on the cautious side which will be gambling with safety in mind. I hope it doesn't happen, but it probably will.

[pianoman11686]

The US, well the US is unlikely to begin reducing emissions any time soon on a national scale, and even if it did, it would have serious catch-up to even meet Kyoto.

Depends on who our next President is.


pianoman11686 - This highlights the other problem - we can't be exact on what could happen, but the probability of it occurring is greatly increased. That is what is disconcerting, it could be decades or it could be centuries, nobody can say when or where, but I'd prefer to play on the cautious side which will be gambling with safety in mind. I hope it doesn't happen, but it probably will.

Don't get me wrong, Nick. I think global warming is just as real as any other person out there. I may differ with some about how serious and imminent a problem it is, but at this point, I see little reason to not try to do more to address it. We've seen that reducing emissions and the like won't be the economic disaster that Bush and others have made it out to be; there are financial incentives aplenty, not to mention geopolitical ones for the USA.

My point about the Gulf Stream theory was: it's overblown fearmongering. The science behind it was never fully established, and is not regarded as a highly unlikely event. Oceanic salinity has shown to be incredibly stable historically, and even with all that ice melt, the amount of fresh water entering the current each year is still a small enough fraction to be pretty much harmless. The Earth has ways to balance gradual disruptions like this. It would take a truly massive amount of freshwater, unleashed during a brief period of time, to cause a shutdown of the current.

That being said, I can't say it's a negative thing when Hollywood puts out a film like "The Day After." Despite its misguided science, it raises the public's awareness about the overall problem of global warming, and to the extent that it encourages more responsible environmental policy, that's a good thing.

Plus, it did make for a good summer action movie with some incredible special effects. ;)

[pianoman11686]

Bush Defends Climate and Missile Plans

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/06/07/world/07g8.600.jpg
Leaders at the Group of 8 meeting today in Heiligendamm, Germany. From left: President Nicolas Sarkozy
of France, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, President Bush and Prime
Minister Tony Blair of Britain.

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: June 7, 2007

ROSTOCK, Germany, June 7 — As leaders of the world’s wealthiest democracies began their annual summit meeting today, President Bush defended his plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and tried yet again to dismiss Russian concerns over a missile defense plan, saying it is “not something we ought to be hyperventilating about.”

Mr. Bush made the remarks after a private meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who has made addressing global warming a signature issue. Mr. Blair and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, the meeting’s host, are backing a plan for the so-called Group of 8 nations to adopt concrete long-term goals for reducing emissions — a plan the United States has rejected.

“I told Tony that we’re deadly earnest in getting something done; this is serious business,” Mr. Bush said.

The Bush-Blair meeting was the pair’s last with Mr. Blair as prime minister; he retires this month. As they stood together with the Baltic Sea at their backs, standing outside the luxury resort hotel at Heiligendamm, about 10 miles from here, where the summit is being held, the president proclaimed it “a nostalgic moment for me.”

But climate change and United States relations with Russia — not nostalgia — will dominate the summit today. Mr. Bush is set to meet later today with President Vladimir Putin, and the president said he will again try to reassure Mr. Putin that the proposed network of radar and missile defenses the United States wants to build in Eastern Europe is not a threat to Russia.

“It is important for Russia and Russians to understand that I believe the Cold War ended, that Russia is not an enemy of the United States, that there’s a lot of areas where we can work together,” the president said.

The meeting got off to a tense beginning Wednesday, as several thousand protesters blocked roads and rail lines to Heiligendamm. Demonstrators in clown makeup and pink and yellow wigs danced outside a steel fence surrounding the meeting site, clashing with the police, who used tear gas to disperse them.

The Group of 8 meeting is always one part substance and one part political theater, and Wednesday was no exception. The rock star Bono and the concert organizer Bob Geldof turned up, along with a Senegalese musician, to lobby heads of state, including Mr. Bush, to spend more money combating global poverty and AIDS in Africa.

On climate change, the White House has said it would hold firm against concrete long-term targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, a major priority for Mrs. Merkel. After lunch with Mr. Bush on Wednesday, Mrs. Merkel seemed to concede — without explicitly saying so — that her climate change plan was off the table.

“There are a few areas here and there we will continue to work on,” she said, standing side by side with the president outside an elegant white castle on the grounds of the Kempinski Grand Hotel. When Mr. Bush turned to her and said he has “a strong desire to work with you” on the issue, the chancellor pursed her lips.

Specifically, Mrs. Merkel is pressing the Group of 8 to adopt a plan to cut emissions in half by 2050 and to limit the rise in global temperature to two degrees Celsius — terms the president’s chief environmental adviser, James L. Connaughton, said Wednesday the United States was not prepared to accept.

Instead, he said, the final communiqu&#233; approved by the Group of 8 nations — the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and Japan — would probably reflect a merging of Mrs. Merkel’s plan with a proposal by Mr. Bush. In a major speech on climate change last week, the president said he intended to convene major polluting nations, including China and India, in a series of meetings aimed at setting long-term goals by the end of 2008.

“Here’s a way to get China and India at the table,” Mr. Bush said Wednesday, in a roundtable with reporters before his lunch with Mrs. Merkel.

He said the United States “can serve as a bridge between some nations who believe that now is the time to come up with a set goal” and “those who are reluctant to participate in the dialogue.” The climate change issue, though, is a delicate one for Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Bush, who have forged a strong bond since she took office in November 2005. With Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain planning to leave office later this month, and the new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, an unknown quantity to Mr. Bush, Mrs. Merkel may be the president’s best friend in Europe, and he can ill afford to cause strain to the relationship.

Mrs. Merkel, a former physicist who has made global warming her signature issue, has staked her reputation on making real and significant progress on the problem during this year’s meeting. Experts agree that she has more at stake than Mr. Bush; if she appears to be caving in to the president’s demands, she risks a backlash at home. But neither does she want a public dispute with Mr. Bush.

“She does not want to make this a public spat,” said Julianne Smith, director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “But she was elected in part because she’s a scientist, she has a very strong position on this, and Germans are huge fans of any effort to cope with climate change. So for her own public, she has to show that she’s being a bit forceful with the United States and she’s putting her foot down.”

Mrs. Merkel’s chief adviser on climate issues, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, said he expected no agreement on long-term targets for reducing emissions. But he said he was even more worried that the leaders would not agree to another part of the German proposal: a pledge to increase energy efficiency 20 percent by 2020.

“It would be very disappointing if the energy efficiency issue is marginalized,” Mr. Schellnhuber said in a telephone interview. “It’s a huge, low-hanging apple, which can be plucked now.” But Mr. Connaughton said the White House believes efficiency goals should be set by individual nations. He sought to play down the notion of a rift between the United States and Germany, saying that in fact there was more agreement than disagreement, and any assertion to the contrary would be a “gross distortion.”

One question is what role Russia will play; a spokesman for Mr. Putin, Dmitri Peskov, said Wednesday that Mr. Putin found “positive and pragmatic aspects” in both the Bush and Merkel plans. Another question is how hard Mrs. Merkel will push Mr. Bush behind closed doors, and what kind of concessions — if any — she will be able to extract in the language of the final communiqu&#233;, to be issued Friday.

“They may try to work out language in the final communiqu&#233; that might mention, for example, some targets and some numbers, but leaves it to individual states to decide whether or not to adhere to them,” said Charles Kupchan, an expert on Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“I would think she’s going to push Bush hard for it, and she will have the backing of her European comrades, but I doubt it’s going to be enough to turn Bush on the issue.”

Mark Landler contributed reporting.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/world/europe/07cnd-prexy.html?hp)

[Bob]

This "global warming" thing is the biggest crock of baloney ever to come down the pike! And our braniac President decides to suddenly drink the Flavor-Aid...oh man. This is bad. Real bad. Looks like we're all going to be forced -- by threat of law -- to reduce our standard of living. Some of us aren't going to swallow that very easily. And others will fight it. This is environmental fascism, plain and simple. The greens are out of their mindless heads.

[nick-taylor]

pianoman - Naturally it may never happen, but the biggest problem with climate change is how erratic weather patterns are becoming and I believe it would be better safe than risk the possibility, even if it is decades away from happening.




This "global warming" thing is the biggest crock of baloney ever to come down the pike! And our braniac President decides to suddenly drink the Flavor-Aid...oh man. This is bad. Real bad. Looks like we're all going to be forced -- by threat of law -- to reduce our standard of living. Some of us aren't going to swallow that very easily. And others will fight it. This is environmental fascism, plain and simple. The greens are out of their mindless heads.Well there is already one G8 example that proves that you're wrong: Britain. It not only managed to reduce its 6GHG emissions to below those of 1990 in line with Kyoto, but is continuing to reduce these pollutants.

Yet the standard of living in Britain has never been better, our economy is growing at a healthy rate, unemployment is low, crime is falling, freedoms continue to expand, our cities are growing and reinventing themselves, while at the same time Britain has increased its influence in the world; Britain has become the global leader in tackling climate change and reducing poverty in Africa. That and London has overtaken New York to become the premier city. ;)

[ZippyTheChimp]

Looks like we're all going to be forced -- by threat of law -- to reduce our standard of living.Such statements were made in the 60s by those who opposed groundbreaking environmental laws.

[ablarc]

^ Anyway, "standard of living" itself is a crock. It just measures how much stuff you can buy to try to fill the void in an unfulfilling life. A concept that's a whole lot less of a crock is "quality of life." That one might include actually getting to see a glacier when you visit Glacier Park.


This "global warming" thing is the biggest crock of baloney ever to come down the pike! And our braniac President decides to suddenly drink the Flavor-Aid...oh man. This is bad. Real bad. Looks like we're all going to be forced -- by threat of law -- to reduce our standard of living. Some of us aren't going to swallow that very easily. And others will fight it. This is environmental fascism, plain and simple. The greens are out of their mindless heads.
Bet you voted for the brainiac, Bob.

[WebErr]

I sure biggest American companies use whole their influence to Bush for block any constructive solution in "Global warming" direction. They don't need any limits in their production/sell/profit. It is not depended from president. Each new president will be under same influence.
Just remember recently happened shooting... and what?
One of biggest American association just move by one finger and scandal is slow down. It is power of biggest companies. That's wrong, but it is too late to change everything. Press will not help - it is just another biggest company.:(

[Capn_Birdseye]

I only wish that the US administration looks at Britain as the template for a emission-reducing and healthy economy: the greatest achievement of Blair.
:):):)
Bliar's greatest achievement was destroying cabinet-style government in Britain and managing to cling on to power for as long as did, conning the great British public along the way with his lies, spin, and sleaze!!
How much for a peerage Mr Bliar?

[Meerkat]

:):):)
Bliar's greatest achievement was destroying cabinet-style government in Britain and managing to cling on to power for as long as did, conning the great British public along the way with his lies, spin, and sleaze!!
How much for a peerage Mr Bliar?

Hey i thought you'd taken your coat and hat and left!!

you know there is a very good saying Mr.Blair obviously hasn't heard of: you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. I don't really think anyone is taken in by him at all. Anyway, two more weeks and he'll be history - mention him not!

[ZippyTheChimp]

Many have announced with a flourish that they are leaving (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showpost.php?p=159731&postcount=413), only to quietly return when they can't find a place to hang their hat.

http://www.homevisions.com/hvprod/assets/product_images/35809_x.jpg

[Meerkat]

Many have announced with a flourish that they are leaving (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showpost.php?p=159731&postcount=413), only to quietly return when they can't find a place to hang their hat.

http://www.homevisions.com/hvprod/assets/product_images/35809_x.jpg


Does this mean that when Mr.Tenenbaum has finally got over his tantrum, he will also be gracing us with his presence sometime soon ?

[Capn_Birdseye]

Just for the record I'd like to state that I've got many homes where I hang my hat but I thought it was time I graced this forum for a quick visit - really just to see what you're all up to! :) And I see nothing much changes ...... pity .... but then again its reassuring in a humble kind of way.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Does this mean that when Mr.Tenenbaum has finally got over his tantrum, he will also be gracing us with his presence sometime soon ?That's up to him.

But he'll have to contend with The Bitches.

[ablarc]

Just for the record I'd like to state that I've got many homes where I hang my hat but I thought it was time I graced this forum for a quick visit - really just to see what you're all up to! :)
...plus three more posts and you're a senior member!







(Don't let opportunity pass you by.)

[Meerkat]

[quote=ablarc;169438]...plus three more posts and you're a senior member!


Ah, so thats how you become a senior member - 200 posts - I was wondering.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Some sailors provide their own wind.

[Punzie]

And I see nothing much changes ...... pity .... but then again its reassuring in a humble kind of way.
Two weeks ago, I became a moderator...
Notice all the changes I made?

BTW, good to have you back. I don't always agree with your opinions, but your posts have flair. Looking forward to more... flairing.:D

P.S. When you're about to do your 200th post, you can Celebrate on this topic when you become a Senior Member! (http://wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11313)

[pianoman11686]

^ Anyway, "standard of living" itself is a crock. It just measures how much stuff you can buy to try to fill the void in an unfulfilling life. A concept that's a whole lot less of a crock is "quality of life." That one might include actually getting to see a glacier when you visit Glacier Park.

That's sort of the classic argument against the culture of consumerism. But I ask you, ablarc, aren't the two often interrelated, one directly enhancing the other?

Consider a few examples from being able to afford the latest consumer electronics. Is having the money to buy an HDTV (with the crystal-clear programming package) just another way to fill a void? Or does it raise your quality of life, when - come March - you can watch your alma mater in every tournament game, with the sound and image quality that make you feel like you're there in person? Or, maybe you're not a sports fan, and you can watch Discovery Channel specials (perhaps of Glacier Park itself) that make you feel you can touch the wildlife?

What about being able to talk to any of your loved ones or friends, at any time or place, for the cost of a cell phone and a calling plan?

What about being able to share your photos with whomever you want, and viewing others' whenever you want? What about being able to see photos of a faraway place, taken by an anonymous forumer, and returning the favor in a few months? What about keeping up with the latest developments in NY architecture, no matter how far away you are and how long you've been away?

The products that make all of these things possible - products that you may consider just more "stuff that I don't need" - all result from a higher standard of living. And, I'd argue, they all contribute to a higher quality of life.

[Capn_Birdseye]

Some sailors provide their own wind.
Some are also know to break wind, but thats another story! I'm feeling three sheets to the wind at the moment, so be a good chap and pass the rum ...... :)

[MidtownGuy]

Pianoman, ablarc hit the nail right on the head. I'd rather see a real glacier just once than see one every week on the HDTV, no matter how big it is. Maybe we shouldn't be concerned that glaciers are disappearing, we can just wait for the wrap-around virtual reality projectors to go on sale at BestBuy. You also seemed to list some of the more benign examples of consumerism rather than give a balanced portrayal of the things we buy.

Your examples of the wonders of consumerism are really quite touching, but you've missed the larger point. Do all of the toys you listed, and the many others, really make us happier inside? I mean happier than people in some previous generation? I enjoy all of the things you mentioned, but I want to understand the bad consequences some things can have and make reasoned decisions; trying to strike a balance between consumerism and concern for the planet I'm standing on and the nature around me.

It just isn't balanced to list all of those things the way you did and suggest they all contribute to a higher quality of life without acknowledging something; as human beings we struggle to behave in ways that really are good for us, not just ways that feel good at the moment.

Sometimes we have to realize when to turn off the cell phone, TV, and internet and go out to a lovely beach or a pristine forest. The ideal is to have the option of course, and that's what a truly intelligent race of beings would work toward preserving. This world is in delicate balance. Keep the present culture of mindless consumerism that is rampant and you'll see where it gets us. You can rhapsodize about products and consumerism all you want, while some of us work toward making sure that people who think like Bob are prevented from despoiling this planet for future generations.

[Capn_Birdseye]

Global cooling - press reports from the 1970s (http://blogs.salon.com/0001561/2006/09/12.html#a9641)
I have earlier posted about the now quite famous Newsweek article from April 1975 (http://blogs.salon.com/0001561/2005/04/24.html#a7223) titled "The Cooling World." Climate alarmists allege that the "global cooling" scare of the 1970s was really minuscule. Well, with new technology comes new opportunities. Google News Archive, while still only indexing a fraction of newspaper articles in the pre-electronic era, actually finds quite a few articles on global cooling (http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=%22global+cooling%22&sa=N&sugg=d&as_hdate=1989) from the 1970s. Here are quotations from a few of them:
"Is The Ice Coming? Apropos of the weather we have been having, scientists claim a new Ice Age is in the making. A record-setting winter season which has upset plans and people with its degree of severity has touched off speculation based on present data. SCIENTISTS KNOW that over the last 30 years the temperature of the world has dropped by one-third to one-half a degree Centigrade. Such a 'small dip doesn't seem like any- thing to get overly excited about except when it is noted that a temperature drop of only four or five degrees years ago brought on the Ice Age. Some scientists contend the global cooling trend is directly related to air pollution. If pollution is allowed to continue at its present pace, an Ice Age climate is predicted in 240 years." (The Daily Times, January 29, 1970 (http://www.newspaperarchive.com/LandingItems/GLP/LP8.aspx?search=%22global%20cooling%22&img=WIIwbfg7DKmKID/6NLMW2kQk086ZwnEhaJtmvH7gFxxyKUDeLdcfJA==&site=google&fileType=jpg))
"Some say this may already be happening. It could come from any of these causes, or some of them, or none. Scientific opinions differ and solid information is scarce. But whatever its cause, many of the scientists who concern themselves with studying the earth's climate balance and the glaciers that once covered much of the Northern Hemisphere are no longer asking whether another great glaciation is on the way; they are asking rather: When? And why? What, if anything, we ought to be doing about it. And what signals from the past we ought to be learning to read so we can at least anticipate what is to come. The threat, according to scientists from a score of institutions who gathered at Brown University in Providence, R.I., recently to share information on "The End of the Present is not that miles-thick ice sheets are about to come sweeping down out of the north, returning us instantaneously to an ice-age climate. It is rather that there are already signs the earth is cooling in a cycle similar to those that heralded earlier great glaciations." (The Iowa City Press-Citizen on Saturday, April 14, 1973 (http://www.newspaperarchive.com/LandingItems/GLP/LP8.aspx?search=%22global%20cooling%22&img=Ga2xMtpV76yKID/6NLMW2m0SJGYCtW8TlbyxtkZh1LHBjZ/6aDBA8Q==&site=google&fileType=jpg))
"Climate specialists said a global cooling trend has lowered the earth's temperature 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit since 1945 and may spread drought conditions through the semi arid regions'of Asia and South America. The warning flags of inevitable crisis are up." (The Lethbridge Herald on Thursday, June 13, 1974 (http://www.newspaperarchive.com/LandingItems/GLP/LP8.aspx?search=%22global%20cooling%22&img=oNSOVK9EnG6KID/6NLMW2orOT46L8Ai0IL838xXAYRYX6XS+RtWW5Q==&site=google&fileType=jpg))
"As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age. [...] Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin's Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth." ("Another Ice Age?" in Time Magazine, Jun 24, 1974 (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html))
"Their sophistcated technique showed that the sulfur in the SST exhausts would double the dust layer in the stratosphere and block enough sunlight to reduce the average global temperature by 0.5 degrees centigrade. This would take the world back to the colder climates of the late 19th or even colder if a global cooling process is already occurring naturally, as some climatologists believe." (The Oakland Tribune, May 12, 1975 (http://www.newspaperarchive.com/LandingItems/GLP/LP8.aspx?search=global-cooling&img=j91JOupTOn+KID/6NLMW2pYpX1ovK/AB1tZYgUF64v97oWGjEZ5UNg==&site=google&fileType=jpg))
"Some scientists theorize that the freakish weather of recent years is the product of a global cooling trend that began in the 1940s. Advocates of this theory predict that the worldwide temperature drop could usher in a "Little Ice Age" similar to the one that lasted roughly from 1600 to 1850. A CIA report supporting the global-cooling thesis was released last month." (The Kennebec Journal on Friday, June 18, 1976 (http://www.newspaperarchive.com/LandingItems/GLP/LP8.aspx?search=%22global%20cooling%22&img=j91JOupTOn+KID/6NLMW2i7a3Q089kP0o8Vb23zaFCCqQk8JPe0OkQ==&site=google&fileType=jpg))
"Ice Age doomsayers note evidence that average temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere dropped 1° Celsius during the 1950s and 1960s. Kukla found that the average snow and ice cover in the Northern Hemisphere increased sharply in 1971 compared with the years between 1967 and '70. It reached a peak in '72 and '73 and then retreated about halfway back to what it had been in the late '60s. Now, says Kukla, satellite studies indicate that the snow and ice cover last fall increased again to about the level of '71. German Oceanographer Martin Rodewald has noticed a slow, general cooling of the waters of the North Atlantic and North Pacific and an air-temperature drop in the Arctic regions over Canada and Russia." (Time Magazine, Jan. 31, 1977 (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,918621-2,00.html))
Naturally climatologists being wrong then doesn't prove they are wrong now. In fact, neither are wrong on some basic details. They were certainly experiencing cooling in the decades up to the 1970s, and we are experiencing the opposite today. The causes and mechanisms, on the other hand, were not well understood by the climate experts then, and I am not entirely convinced (http://blogs.salon.com/0001561/2006/04/08.html#a9110) it is understood today either. Whether those who extrapolate current trends to extremes today are more correct than their colleagues back in the 70s remains to be seen. As I've said before, so far in human history betting against doomsayers (http://blogs.salon.com/0001561/stories/2003/06/27/apocalypseThenApocalypseRealSoonNow.html) has been safe every time.

[MidtownGuy]

As I've said before, so far in human history betting against doomsayers has been safe every time.

I wouldn't exactly put this in the same category with the Jehovah's Witnesses or The End Time Ministries, would you?:rolleyes:

[MidtownGuy]

Now let's have something that's actually scientific. It even mentions the Newsweek drivel. What a rag that magazine is, then and now.
This article, while a bit more technical and a longer read, is probably a better point of reference about the 70's global cooling speculations than the references cherrypicked by the good Capn'.


From http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/category/climate-science/greenhouse-gases/
14 Jan 2005
The global cooling myth

Every now and again, the myth that "we shouldn't believe global warming predictions now, because in the 1970's they were predicting an ice age and/or cooling" surfaces. Recently, George Will mentioned it in his column (see Will-full ignorance) and the egregious Crichton manages to say "in the 1970's all the climate scientists believed an ice age was coming" (see Michael Crichton’s State of Confusion ). You can find it in various other places too [here, mildly here, etc]. But its not an argument used by respectable and knowledgeable skeptics, because it crumbles under analysis. That doesn't stop it repeatedly cropping up in newsgroups though.

I should clarify that I'm talking about predictions in the scientific press. There were some regrettable things published in the popular press (e.g. Newsweek; though National Geographic did better). But we're only responsible for the scientific press. If you want to look at an analysis of various papers that mention the subject, then try http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/.
Where does the myth come from? Naturally enough, there is a kernel of truth behind it all. Firstly, there was a trend of cooling from the 40's to the 70's (although that needs to be qualified, as hemispheric or global temperature datasets were only just beginning to be assembled then). But people were well aware that extrapolating such a short trend was a mistake (Mason, 1976) . Secondly, it was becoming clear that ice ages followed a regular pattern and that interglacials (such as we are now in) were much shorter that the full glacial periods in between. Somehow this seems to have morphed (perhaps more in the popular mind than elsewhere) into the idea that the next ice age was predicatable and imminent. Thirdly, there were concerns about the relative magnitudes of aerosol forcing (cooling) and CO2 forcing (warming), although this latter strand seems to have been short lived.
The state of the science at the time (say, the mid 1970's), based on reading the papers is, in summary: "...we do not have a good quantitative understanding of our climate machine and what determines its course. Without the fundamental understanding, it does not seem possible to predict climate..." (which is taken directly from NAS, 1975). In a bit more detail, people were aware of various forcing mechanisms - the ice age cycle; CO2 warming; aerosol cooling - but didn't know which would be dominant in the near future. By the end of the 1970's, though, it had become clear that CO2 warming would probably be dominant; that conclusion has subsequently strengthened.
George Will asserts that Science magazine (Dec. 10, 1976) warned about "extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation.". The quote is from Hays et al. But the quote is taken grossly out of context. Here, in full, is the small section dealing with prediction:
Future climate. Having presented evidence that major changes in past climate were associated with variations in the geometry of the earth's orbit, we should be able to predict the trend of future climate. Such forecasts must be qualified in two ways. First, they apply only to the natural component of future climatic trends - and not to anthropogenic effects such as those due to the burning of fossil fuels. Second, they describe only the long-term trends, because they are linked to orbital variations with periods of 20,000 years and longer. Climatic oscillations at higher frequencies are not predicted.
One approach to forecasting the natural long-term climate trend is to estimate the time constants of response necessary to explain the observed phase relationships between orbital variation and climatic change, and then to use those time constants in the exponential-response model. When such a model is applied to Vernekar's (39) astronomical projections, the results indicate that the long-term trend over the next 20,000 years is towards extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation and cooler climate (80).
The point about timescales is worth noticing: predicting an ice age (even in the absence of human forcing) is almost impossible within a timescale that you could call "imminent" (perhaps a century: comparable to the scales typically used in global warming projections) because ice ages are slow, when caused by orbital forcing type mechanisms.
Will also quotes "a full-blown 10,000-year ice age" (Science, March 1, 1975). The quote is accurate, but the source isn't. The piece isn't from "Science"; it's from "Science News". There is a major difference: Science is (jointly with Nature) the most prestigous journal for natural science; Science News is not a peer-reviewed journal at all, though it is still respectable. In this case, its process went a bit wrong: the desire for a good story overwhelmed its reading of the NAS report which was presumably too boring to present directly.
The Hays paper above is the most notable example of the "ice age" strand. Indeed, its a very important paper in the history of climate, linking observed cycles in ocean sediment cores to orbital forcing periodicities. Of the other strand, aerosol cooling, Rasool and Schneider, Science, July 1971, p 138, "Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate" is the best exemplar. This contains the quote that quadrupling aerosols could decrease the mean surface temperature (of Earth) by as much as 3.5 degrees K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease could be sufficient to trigger an ice age!. But even this paper qualifies its predictions (whether or not aerosols would so increase was unknown) and speculates that nuclear power may have largely replaced fossil fuels as a means of energy production (thereby, presumably, removing the aerosol problem). There are, incidentally, other scientific problems with the paper: notably that the model used was only suitable for small perturbations but the results are for rather large perturbations; and that the estimate of CO2 sensitivity was too low by a factor of about 3.
Probably the best summary of the time was the 1975 NAS/NRC report. This is a serious sober assessment of what was known at the time, and their conclusion was that they didn't know enough to make predictions. From the "Summary of principal conclusions and recommendations", we find that they said we should:
1. Establish National climatic research program
2. Establish Climatic data analysis program, and new facilities, and studies of impact of climate on man
3. Develope Climatic index monitoring program
4. Establish Climatic modelling and applications program, and exploration of possible future climates using coupled GCMs
5. Adoption and development of International climatic research program
6. Development of International Palaeoclimatic data network
Which is to say, they recommended more research, not action. Which was entirely appropriate to the state of the science at the time. In the last 30 years, of course, enormous progress has been made in the field of climate science.
Most of this post has been about the science of 30 years ago. From the point of view of todays science, and with extra data available:
1. The cooling trend from the 40's to the 70's now looks more like a slight interruption of an upward trend (e.g. here). It turns out that the northern hemisphere cooling was larger than the southern (consistent with the nowadays accepted interpreation that the cooling was largely caused by sulphate aerosols); at first, only NH records were available.
2. Sulphate aerosols have not increased as much as once feared (partly through efforts to combat acid rain); CO2 forcing is greater. Indeed IPCC projections of future temperature inceases went up from the 1995 SAR to the 2001 TAR because estimates of future sulphate aerosol levels were lowered (SPM).
3. Interpretations of future changes in the Earth's orbit have changed somewhat. It now seems likely (Loutre and Berger, Climatic Change, 46: (1-2) 61-90 2000) that the current interglacial, based purely on natural forcing, would last for an exceptionally long time: perhaps 50,000 years.
Finally, its clear that there were concerns, perhaps quite strong, in the minds of a number of scientists of the time. And yet, the papers of the time present a clear consensus that future climate change could not be predicted with the knowledge then available. Apparently, the peer review and editing process involved in scientific publication was sufficient to provide a sober view. This episode shows the scientific press in a very good light; and a clear contrast to the lack of any such process in the popular press, then and now.
Further Reading:
Imbrie & Imbrie "Ice Ages: solving the mystery" (1979) is an interesting general book on the discovery of the ice ages and their mechanisms; chapter 16 deals with "The coming ice age".
Spencer Weart's History of Global Warming has a chapter on Past Cycles: Ice Age Speculations.
An analysis of various papers that mention the subject is at www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/.

[pianoman11686]

Pianoman, ablarc hit the nail right on the head. I'd rather see a real glacier just once than see one every week on the HDTV, no matter how big it is. Maybe we shouldn't be concerned that glaciers are disappearing, we can just wait for the wrap-around virtual reality projectors to go on sale at BestBuy. You also seemed to list some of the more benign examples of consumerism rather than give a balanced portrayal of the things we buy.

Your examples of the wonders of consumerism are really quite touching, but you've missed the larger point. Do all of the toys you listed, and the many others, really make us happier inside? I mean happier than people in some previous generation? I enjoy all of the things you mentioned, but I want to understand the bad consequences some things can have and make reasoned decisions; trying to strike a balance between consumerism and concern for the planet I'm standing on and the nature around me.

It just isn't balanced to list all of those things the way you did and suggest they all contribute to a higher quality of life without acknowledging something; as human beings we struggle to behave in ways that really are good for us, not just ways that feel good at the moment.

Sometimes we have to realize when to turn off the cell phone, TV, and internet and go out to a lovely beach or a pristine forest. The ideal is to have the option of course, and that's what a truly intelligent race of beings would work toward preserving. This world is in delicate balance. Keep the present culture of mindless consumerism that is rampant and you'll see where it gets us. You can rhapsodize about products and consumerism all you want, while some of us work toward making sure that people who think like Bob are prevented from despoiling this planet for future generations.

Midtown: Thank you for a well-reasoned, intelligent response. I actually enjoyed reading that.

Please note: It wasn't my intention to provide a skewed account of consumerism. I am aware of environmental harms taking place, and I've repeatedly stated my concerns about global warming in this and other threads. I do my part to recycle, conserve energy when I can, and learn more about what needs to be done. You may not believe it, but I even spent a summer working as a street canvasser for Environmental Action in association with the NY PIRG.

My main point was to address what I consider an overly simplified understanding of two loaded terms: standard of living and quality of life. For some, they're easily separable. For me, they're often interrelated. Naturally, I provided some examples that I think would best illustrate my view. Doubtless you'll find others that disprove it.

I like the outdoors just as much as the next person. While the beach may not be my favorite (I'm sort of sensitive to the sun), I enjoy river rafting, kayaking, hiking, and skiing. I love the mountains, and I've visited my fair share of national parks and natural wonders.

On the flip side, I'd argue something as simple as sharing vacation photos with friends and fellow forumers (something you do quite often, and which I still enjoy) gives an added sense of quality of life, not standard of living. Thing is, you can't partake in it without either side possessing the necessary tools: digicam, computer, internet connection, all of which are associated with a higher standard of living. I think we take such small miracles (by historic measures, at least) for granted, and there's something to be said about that. To the extent that some people get too wrapped up in their reckless spending, and may come to stop caring about something as precious as the environment, I'll take the other, better side of consumerism as counterbalance. After all, what are we all doing at this forum, if not enriching the quality of our lives?

[Capn_Birdseye]

To all you doomsayers that believe all that global warming stuff, take heart, those melting icebergs may be good news!

"While the melting of Antarctic ice shelves is contributing to rising sea levels and other climate change dynamics in complex ways, this additional role of removing carbon from the atmosphere may have implications for global climate models that need to be further studied," Dr Smith said.

In other words there's a hell of a lot our "scientific community" don't know, they're only speculating, trying to frighten us, (and control us), with their horror stories based on experience over a miniscule time scale compared to the cyclical changes that have occurred to the planet Earth over many millions of years.

As the song says, "don't worry, be happy ......"
http://environment.independent.co.uk/wildlife/article2692494.ece

[Ninjahedge]

Sorry Captain, Bobby McFarin is not going to be the person that determines the course of my life or what I concern myself about.

[Ninjahedge]

PS. The increase in life in Antarctica due to melting ice is not something I am celebrating as the polar bears drown and water levels rise around the world.

Sorry, an increase in plankton and Krill does not make me want to burn more oil.

[MidtownGuy]

In other words there's a hell of a lot our "scientific community" don't know, they're only speculating, trying to frighten us, (and control us), with their horror stories based on experience over a miniscule time scale compared to the cyclical changes that have occurred to the planet Earth over many millions of years.

You are wrong wrong wrong. The cycles have been factored into the analysis
already.
I think they need new members over at the Flat Earth Society, you should ring them up.

[Capn_Birdseye]

I think they need new members over at the Flat Earth Society, you should ring them up.
I'm not the flat earther, its all those who accept the hysteria generated by dubious scientific opinion and certain vested interests.

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=ae9b984d-4a1c-45c0-af24-031a1380121a&k=0

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=63ab844f-8c55-4059-9ad8-89de085af353&k=0

[MidtownGuy]

Certain vested interests are the ones trying to hush it up and downplay the situation, not the other way around.

[Capn_Birdseye]

Certain vested interests are the ones trying to hush it up and downplay the situation, not the other way around.
Sorry, but totally disagree, its the reverse. Fear is a powerful weapon and those cleverly using it do so in a very sophisticated manner as part of their plan to enslave us all. I for one don't underestimate their subtlety and dedication.

Quote:
JOHANNESBURG - Johannesburg residents woke up to a winter wonderland for the first time in over 20 years Wednesday as snowfall blanketed vast tracts of South Africa.


http://tinyurl.com/32llut

We are frequently treated by the British media to images of breaking icebergs and crumbling glaciers as supposed proof of motor car induced global warming. I may have missed it, but I haven’t noticed the TV screen being saturated with images of snowfall in South Africa this week. Is it my imagination, or is there also a similar reluctance to bombard us with reports of lower than average temperatures for May and June in Britain this year? Selective reporting or what? It doesn't fit the politically correct agenda I guess!

[dtolman]

Just because the press is hysterical about something, doesn't mean it isn't real. The press gets hysterical about everything. Everyone could wake up tomorrow with a million dollars in their pockets, and the headlines would scream about the end of the world!

Global warming does not mean the end of winter, or that the entire world will turn into a jungle. It doesn't even mean that the seasons will be that much different, or that you won't get the occasional cold month (or even year) in parts of the world.

But it does mean that the oceans could rise inches or feet, and that there will be more energy injected into weather systems. The result? More floods, more intense typhoons and hurricanes, and even more blizzards (raising the average temperature in January from 15 F to 20 F still means it snows - it just snows more!).

But honestly, why do you even care? Raising the global thermostat isn't good or evil - its just different. There will be winners and losers; unless you understand whats going to happen, you don't know which group you'll be in. My bet for the 3 groups of people who will be stuck in the loser group?
-people who live in areas that are already flood prone
-people who live in the paths of frequent extreme storm events (tornado alley, caribbean, typhoon prone parts of India, etc)
-farmers, who will find that growing seasons will change, and crops may no longer suited to the new rainfall/temperature patterns.

[Ninjahedge]

Except for one thing.

Our modern society, as a whole, was build apon a trade economy that had its formative years in naval transportation and shipping. Why is this important? It means that most of the WORLDS largest cities were all built at or close to the ocean, at or close to sea levels.

Raising the water level a few inches is a PITA, but a few FEET would be catestrophic. Even if water is kept out, it is pervasive, and weakens foundations that were not designed for it.

Imagine 80% of the worlds largest city centers being compromised, and then realize also how "understanding" people can be when they have nothing left and are forced to get what they need to survive however they can.

You displace millions of people in a short span of time, what do YOU think will happen?

A parade?

[JCMAN320]

NJ signs on to curb greenhouse gasses

by Kitta MacPherson
Friday July 06, 2007, 5:35 PM

http://blog.nj.com/ledgerupdates/2007/07/large_corgoreL.jpg
Mitsu Yasukawa/The Star-Ledger
Former Vice President Al Gore waves his hand as Gov. Jon Corzine welcomes him onto the stage today.

Former Vice President Al Gore praised New Jersey today for landmark legislation that will reduce the threat of global warming.

"New Jersey will be in my slide show," Gore said, referring to the presentation he has been giving throughout the world that was shown in the Academy Award-winning movie "An Inconvenient Truth."

Gore made the remarks on the eve of the Live Earth Concerts for a Climate in Crisis, standing with Gov. Jon Corzine just before he signed an ambitious law curbing greenhouse gases.

Gore, Corzine, environment and business leaders and legislators gathered at the side of Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, one of eight sites to host a concert that will be staged tomorrow.

The Global Warming Response Act mandates a state-wide reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and an 80 percent reduction by 2050, making it by far the most stringent environmental legislation of any state in the nation.

It also includes an Emissions Portfolio Standard, which will block dirty power from being imported into New Jersey from other states and an Efficiency Portfolio Standard, which will save New Jersey both energy and money, officials said.

"In the absence of leadership on the federal level, a burden of reducing greenhouse gases has now fallen upon the state," Corzine said. "I'm proud that New Jersey is one of the first among a handful of states that are leading the nation."

Business leaders, while initially apprehensive of the legislation, have signed on. Ralph Izzo, chairman, president and CEO of Public Service Enterprise Group, Inc. spoke at the bill signing ceremony and praised the legislation.

"Today through this landmark global warming legislation, New Jersey demonstrates its commitment by providing a blueprint for achieving measurable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that threaten our health and livelihoods," Izzo said.

A physicist, he said his company is "determined to do everything we can to help realize this vision of a lower carbon economy and greener future."

Environmental leaders also invited to the event were smiling. "Skeptics say we cannot act by ourselves," said Jeff Tittel, director of New Jersey Sierra Club. "We say that it's important for New Jersey to do all it can do, to lead, to set an example, because this sends a clear message to other states and to the fossil fools in Washington that we can make a difference and we can take on this global warming crisis."

[JCMAN320]

JERSEY SETS THE STAGE
With Live Earth ready to rock Giants Stadium, governor signs strict new law aimed at slowing global warming

Saturday, July 07, 2007
BY KITTA MacPHERSON
Star-Ledger Staff

Challenging generations of naysayers who have painted the state as a toxic backwater, New Jersey yesterday adopted the country's toughest anti-global warming law, which could, over decades, reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to safe levels.

In doing so, the contingent of government, business and environmental leaders won instant accolades from former Vice President Al Gore, one of the world's best known environment advocates, who was on hand in East Rutherford to kick off the Live Earth concert series. The event, which starts today, will be staged at venues on seven continents and raise funds to combat global warming worldwide.

Standing in the shadow of Giants Stadium, one of nine concert sites worldwide, Gov. Jon Corzine signed the state's Global Warming Response Act, bringing praise from Gore.

"New Jersey will be in my slideshow," he said, referring to a PowerPoint presentation depicted in his Academy Award-winning movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," which makes the scientific case for climate change and man's role in inducing it.

He said he often is asked during visits abroad why the U.S. doesn't do more to counteract global warming. Now, he said, New Jerseyans will be prime examples of Americans who take the environment seriously.

"In order to inspire hope and build the enthusiasm necessary to get this crisis solved, it's great to be able to tell them in every country that state governments are beginning to take the lead, cities are beginning to take the lead and citizens of this country are beginning to take the lead," Gore said.

Corzine beamed at the remark.

"We are making a long-lived commitment today that will impact not just our generation but future generations," he said.

He also criticized the lack of action on climate measures by the Bush administration as a vacuum of leadership that has prompted states to assume the role of trailblazers.

"I'm proud that New Jersey is one of the first among a handful of states that are leading the nation to combat global warming and I hope more states will follow in our model," Corzine said.

The legislation calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, a 20 percent reduction, and goes beyond the California standard by mandating an 80 percent reduction by 2050. It also includes a so-called "emissions portfolio standard," which will block dirty power from being imported into New Jersey from other states, and an "efficiency portfolio standard," which will save the state's consumers both energy and money, officials said.

The United States emits more greenhouse gases than any other nation on Earth. Scientists say that a small window exists over the next few decades to address the problem.

"People from across the globe will come together through the common language of music -- with thousands right here in the Meadowlands -- to demonstrate a commitment to overcome climate change," said Ralph Izzo, chairman, president and CEO of Public Service Enterprise Group Inc. "Through this landmark global warming legislation, New Jersey demonstrates its commitment by providing a blueprint for achieving measurable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that threaten our health and livelihoods."

Izzo, a physicist, pledged that the staff of the state's largest utility is "determined to do everything we can to help realize this vision of a lower carbon economy and greener future."

As a coastal state, New Jersey is especially vulnerable to the effects of global warming, including rising sea levels that threaten the multibillion-dollar coastal tourism industry. Also, a warmer climate in the Northeast will bring on increasingly severe floods in the metropolitan area, including the Meadowlands, port areas, sections of the New Jersey Turnpike and train and car tunnels under the Hudson River, as well as large swaths of Newark Liberty International Airport.

"Skeptics say we cannot act by ourselves," said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. "We say that it's important for New Jersey to do all it can do to lead, to set an example, because this sends a clear message to other states and to the fossil fools in Washington that we can make a difference and we can take on this global warming crisis."

Several other states -- including Washington, Maryland, Oregon, New Mexico, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts -- are considering legislation similar to New Jersey's, according to Suzanne Leta Lious, a leader of Environment New Jersey. By enacting the law, she said, "New Jersey is providing a recipe for success for elected officials across the nation."



Kitta MacPherson may be reached at kmacpherson@starledger.com or (973) 392-5836.

-----------------------

This is why New Jersey is the best!!! This is why we rock!!!:)

[MidtownGuy]

oh my God this is wonderful news. Bravo, New Jersey!
This could spread from state to state.:)

[Ninjahedge]

I always find it ironic that we need to throw concerts and hold events in order to promote conservation.

We will get thousands of people out to "walk" to support something when they probably could have done more just doing some work for the same amount of time.


It is like "Buy these cookies to support blah blah". Just give the kid a dollar and that is that. Why are we so willing to do more to get less so long as "more" is not actually work?

[Bob]

I have a better idea. Why don't we just ask all the greenies, lefties, Volvo drivers, Birkenstock wearers, new agers, leftover hippies, anti-everything protest groups, pot smokers, and socialist democrats to all move to Vermont? That way, they could adopt an agrarian lifestyle, populate their state with solar panels and windmills, and revert to the 18th century. Save the planet, indeed. It would save the rest of us from their ranting, raving, and moral superiority BS. Of course, since they'd all be "saving energy" and "saving water" by showering less frequently, Vermont is one place you might want to avoid. : )

[lofter1]

Bob: Are you sure your name isn't JOE (http://perival.com/blog/?p=8) :confused: :cool: :confused:

[Ninjahedge]

populate their state with solar panels and windmills, and revert to the 18th century

Was it just me, or was that a colossally stupid statement?

Bob, could you please show me an 18th century solar panel?

[Capn_Birdseye]

Not only is there so much bulls**t surrounding the whole subject of global warming/climate change, but its also being weighed down with the sheer hypocrisy of "concerned" rock stars, those with fading careers or albums to promote, who don't really give a monkeys toss about Planet Earth!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=466775&in_page_id=1879

[MidtownGuy]

Let's not get hung up on the rock concerts. Now that the naysayers have been overwhelmingly outweighed by scientific evidence, the next resort will be ridiculing Live Earth and trying to discredit the messengers, since the message is no longer credibly refutable. So typical.

[Capn_Birdseye]

Let's not get hung up on the rock concerts. Now that the naysayers have been overwhelmingly outweighed by scientific evidence, the next resort will be ridiculing Live Earth and trying to discredit the messengers, since the message is no longer credibly refutable. So typical.
MidtownGuy, there is a credible body of scientists out there that do not believe in the concept of global warming/climate change (the new religion of the 21st century! - is Al Gore a messiah?), so its not a given.
Planet Earth warms up, it cools down, over periods of time, thats all you need to know!
I'd tell you to "chill out" but perhaps that's not the right expression to use!

[Ninjahedge]

Captian, please show us these scientists.

And please refrain from:

Giving us "scientists" such as Dentists or others that have little if any actual experience in climatology

Giving us individuals that appeard in that list that later said that they either did not sign it, or did not knowingly sign it.

Giving us scientists that work for, or are under grants from the Petroleum industry.


The only refuters I have seen with any credibility are the noes that do not refute warming, but the root cause in and of itself. And those are also willing to say that it is something we should try to do something about, even if it is not 100% our doing.

Hell, even the very few that say that it is not our fault and it is nature do not say we should do nothing about it. They also do not say that reducing emmisions would be a bad idea, so just stop resorting to namecalling to refute the possibility of GW.

Ironic it might be (using electricity to throw a concert to foster conservation), but it does not refute the base message.

[MidtownGuy]

there is a credible body of scientists out there that do not believe in the concept of global warming/climate change

I don't believe this is true, the crucial word being "credible". That means, above other things, not being on the payroll of corporations that benefit from pollution.

[Punzie]

Posted elsewhere on this website by Lofter:
Study Paints Dire Picture of Warmer Northeast (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?p=176268#post176268)

[sfenn1117]

That article is laughable liberal hysteria. Just like this past "heat wave." Temperatures 7-10 degrees above the average is nothing unheard of. The idea that average temperatures will be 10 degrees warmer in less than 100 years is absurd.

Less snowfall? Prior to this past winter Central Park saw 4 seasons in a row with 40"+ per season. The climatological average? 22.4"

00/01 - 35.0"
01/02 - 3.5"
02/03 - 49.3"
03/04 - 42.6"
04/05 - 41.0"
05/06 - 40.0"
06/07 - 12.4"

The weather is one of those things that has no "normal." It bugs me when TV weathermen say "Oh we're 5 degrees above normal today." It's an average. If the average high is 85, rarely will it be exactly 85. It will be 80, 90, 75, 95, etc.

Global warming hypists are all over the place anyway. Some say we're headed for hotter temperatures, others a new ice age due to a gulf stream shutdown. The weather fluctuates naturally, and seeing as a forecast 7 days from now is uncertain, why is everyone buying what scientists predict 100 years from now?

[Ninjahedge]

sfen, you are just saying that everything is false, but yet you do not have anything to explain the radical shiifts in weather patterns we have seen in the past few years.

You do not address the caps melting (more than they have in millenea), the increase in frequency and potency of storms, or the general change in overall patterns.


Now whether or not man was the primary cause of this is something a few will keep fighting until they are blue in the face. But why the hell, when you areheading downhill into a tree, do you keep shouting "No, don't put on the brakes! It will ruin our gas mileage!!!!"

We ARE warming up. We ARE putting more pollutants in the air than ever. They DO have an effect. Siting the fact that every spot in the world is not simultaneously rising X degrees in temperature at the same time and claiming that as absolute proof that nothing is happening is ludicrous.


Something is happening. How can we stop it/moderate it so it causes the least amount of damage?

[sfenn1117]

Increase in frequency and potency of storms? Examples? Sure the 2005 hurricane season was unbelievably active and intense, but 2006 was as mellow as they come. Name some specific examples.

You also say the past few years. Weather does not change that rapidly. Perhaps there has been some small climate changes in the past century, which is nothing out of the ordinary. Did you know there was a "little ice age" during the Middle Ages? How did that happen? Human intervention?

[NYatKNIGHT]

I agree that every little heat wave isn't proof of global warming and that hysteria is often backed up with false information. At the same time, years of increased extreme weather across the globe isn't offset by one or two rather quiet years in the Atlantic.

I'll take the assessment of the overwhelming majority of scientists who have studied climate change for years and have taken ice core samples going back hundreds of thousands of years that indicate today's dramatic climate change over naysayers like yourself who merely laugh it off as "liberal hysteria".

By the way, the ice age or warming trend is not a contradiction. One causes the other. But you don't have to worry about it, it's not your problem. Typical conservative stance.

[MidtownGuy]

It is painfully obvious that sfenn1117 has read very little about global warming. The issues he raises, such as the brief cooling during the Middle Ages, have all been addressed. It's very difficult to try to convince people who are determined to keep their heads in the sand.

[Ninjahedge]

It is painfully obvious that sfenn1117 has read very little about global warming. The issues he raises, such as the brief cooling during the Middle Ages, have all been addressed. It's very difficult to try to convince people who are determined to keep their heads in the sand.

It might be easier to convince the ones that are trying to keep their heads in the snow though.....

[RandySavage]

The media, political talking heads, publishing firms, etc. require controversy to make money. That's why even though the VAST majority of the world's most respected climatologists, geologists, paleonclimatologists, etc. are waving their arms, warning us about catastrophic, anthropogenic climate change, it only takes one dissenting scientific voice to make the evening news and place a seed of doubt in Joe Schmo's head, keeping him indifferent and inert.

Increased solar output, natural historic climatic cycles, atmospheric water vapor, and all the other non-anthropogenic theories make up 5&#37; of what professional scientists are ascribing to. 95% of the professionals say humans are the major factor. To me the logic of it makes inherent sense:
6.5 billion people
+ 600 million autos
+all our modern technologies and industries
= physical changes to earth's land, seas and atmosphere.

We can see the planetary-scale changes to the land (eg, desertification of tens of thousands of square miles due to agriculture/over-grazing) and seas (eg, the drying up of the Aral Sea, massive oxygenated "dead zones" ) with our eyes. Why should we believe that the atmosphere is immune.

Those who subscribe to the "Global Warming is a Hoax" argument are not only too lazy and careless to do any extensive research/reading on the subject, but also possess the cowardly "it-wasn't-me, it's-not-my-fault" psychological disposition of a spoiled child. Climate Change, which is inextricably linked to population growth and resource over-consumption, is the Tragedy of the Commons on a planetary scale… and the Commons in this parable isn’t a sheep pasture, but the only known home to life in the universe. It comes down to responsibility. People need to dig up some courage and motivation and tap into their inherent sense of right and wrong in order to effect change.

[Edward]

It is hard to argue global change in climate, however the evidence that it was caused by humans is less overwhelming. It also not obvious whether it is possible to manipulate climate.

[Edward]

... it only takes one dissenting scientific voice to make the evening news and place a seed of doubt in Joe Schmo's head, keeping him indifferent and inert.

You are assigning grasp of facts and use of logic to Joe Schomo - why would you do that? Besides any activist with an online degree call himself a scientist nowdays.

[RandySavage]

It is hard to argue global change in climate, however the evidence that it was caused by humans is less overwhelming. It also not obvious whether it is possible to manipulate climate.

I believe the science behind "greatly increasing/decreasing the CO2 in a planetary atmosphere will have an effect on that planet's climate" is pretty well-established.

[sfenn1117]

It is painfully obvious that sfenn1117 has read very little about global warming. The issues he raises, such as the brief cooling during the Middle Ages, have all been addressed. It's very difficult to try to convince people who are determined to keep their heads in the sand.

I have taken 2 years of meteorology courses...and been bombarded persistently with the hype. I think I'm well read on the subject. In fact, if you want me to get all scientific and break it all down, I will. If not, I won't waste my time.

[Edward]

What I find amusing is that even if every scientist agreed that humans cause global warming, that still would not change the current situation.

Look at what is happening with power generation. It is a common knowledge that coal plants are the most damaging to the environment (even regardless of the global warming) and to the people's health, and still they are being built at at rate of one per week (see http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/16/business/16solar.html ) and production is expanding.

The sad fact is - the general public and politicians do not listen to scientific opinion.

[kliq6]

MidtownGuy, there is a credible body of scientists out there that do not believe in the concept of global warming/climate change (the new religion of the 21st century! - is Al Gore a messiah?), so its not a given.
Planet Earth warms up, it cools down, over periods of time, thats all you need to know!
I'd tell you to "chill out" but perhaps that's not the right expression to use!

If you do a little research outside of Al Gores official homepage you will find a great deal of people with counter beliefs. Myself I believe in the idea the Earth is warming and that we can do our part to try and stop it, but to say without a shadow of a doubt the Earth is warming, cant truly be proven.

But what i do find stupid is when Al Gore claims that only in the last few years has NY had temps in the upper 90's in July, as he did at the NJ show. That is just plain false

[Capn_Birdseye]

That Man is so pompous and self-deluding as to believe he can actually change Nature ..... oh how otherwise intelligent persons are taken in by this hysteria-driven drivel ....

[MidtownGuy]

sfenn wrote
I have taken 2 years of meteorology courses.

Woo-pee-do.
I wonder how much of those 2 years was devoted to climate change. Probably very little. I bet I know more about it than you do, so I don't need you to explain anything. What you might want to do is update whatever old textbook you were using.

kliq6- I'd like an actual quote as to what Gore said about NY temps in July. Somehow I think it's getting twisted and was not as you paraphrased it.

[sfenn1117]

Yes, you know more than me but I have 2 years of college classes (including 2 classes specifically devoted to the topic at hand) to back me up. Fair enough.

If you want to believe that the weather is going to change so radically to a point where ski resorts are pushed out of Vermont, Wall Street will be under water, and snow will become a rare occurence in NYC, all by the end of this century, knock yourself out.

[Capn_Birdseye]

It's been 80c in London for the last 5 minutes therefore we'll in for the hottest summer on record with temperatures possibly reaching 120c?
Discuss.

[Ninjahedge]

Yes, you know more than me but I have 2 years of college classes (including 2 classes specifically devoted to the topic at hand) to back me up. Fair enough.

If you want to believe that the weather is going to change so radically to a point where ski resorts are pushed out of Vermont, Wall Street will be under water, and snow will become a rare occurence in NYC, all by the end of this century, knock yourself out.

radically?

Probably. It has been happening slowly for years. Each ski season getting less and less snow.

I just remember getting much more snow in the winter when I was a kid than now.

As for "radical change", it will still take some time. The radical change in other parts of the globe, such as ice shelves and glaciers milennia old that are melting in a matter of decades, that IS pretty radical to begin with. Something is happening and we are definitely not helping it.

teh thing is, we are only halfway down the hill (if that), but picknig up steam. If we put the brakes on now, we will still continue down the hill, but hopefully at a slower pace.

The slower this change happens, the more time we have to address it. SO if reducing emmissions gives us 100 years instead of 50 years to fortify NYC for rising water levels, I think that would be well worth it.


Does that mean stopping driving? Elimination of all coal plants in the next 3 years? No. It does mean that we need to start addressing all of these things as adults rather than worrying if these fiscal requirements will make it harder for us to get our plasma screen TV for the living room.


HDTV be damned, lets try to keep our shorelines above water, k?

[Capn_Birdseye]

Man vs Nature. I know who'll win, its a pity others don't seem to! So much wasted effort and resources .... and for what?

[Ninjahedge]

Man vs Nature.

Who said it was a battle?

If a man were to fight a bull, the bull would probably win (hand to hand). But a man befriends it, trains it, the bull does more work for him than a dozen men could do.


I know who'll win, its a pity others don't seem to! So much wasted effort and resources .... and for what?

That's the key point. this is not a "War on Nature", it is trying to play the darned fiddle with something a bit more appropriate than a masonry hammer.