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Certainly we need to take better care of the environment. Specifically.....stop driving our cars so much!
But my main 'fear' is that this is another 'political tool' that will be used by the Liberals to increase their 'control' of people.
We need more government, eh??
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseActi...
Media Hype on ‘Melting’ Antarctic Ignores Record Ice Growth
The media is once again hyping an allegedly dire consequence of man-made global warming. This time the media is promoting the ice loss of one tiny fraction of the giant ice-covered continent and completely ignoring the current record ice growth on Antarctica. Contrary to media hype, the vast majority of Antarctica has cooled over the past 50 years and ice coverage has grown to record levels since satellite monitoring began in the 1979, according to peer-reviewed studies and scientists who study the area. (LINK)
Former Weather Channel Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo rejected the hype surrounding the recent Wilkins Ice Shelf collapse in Western Antarctica. “The shattered part of the Wilkins ice sheet was 160 square miles in area, which is just 0.01% of the total current Antarctic ice cover, like an icicle falling from a snow and ice covered roof,” D’Aleo wrote on March 25. (LINK) “We are very likely going to exceed last year’s record [for Southern Hemisphere ice extent]. Yet the world is left with the false impression Antarctica’s ice sheet is also starting to disappear,” D’Aleo added.
Climate scientist Dr. Ben Herman, past director of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics and former Head of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Arizona, stated, “It is interesting that all of the AGW (anthropogenic global warming) stories concerning Antarctica are always about what's happening around the [western] peninsula, which seems to be the only place on Antarctica that has shown warming. How about the net ‘no change’ or ‘cooling’ over the rest of the continent, which is probably about 95% of the land mass, not to mention the record sea ice coverage recently.”
Former Colorado State Climatologist Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr., presently senior scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder, chastised the media’s Antarctic reporting as “typical of the bias that many journalists have.” Pielke wrote on March 25, “The media has ignored in their reporting the increase in Antarctic sea ice cover in recent years, with, at present, a coverage that is well one million square kilometers above average.” Pielke added, “Unfortunately, it appears that most journalists just parrot the perspective of the first news release on these climate issues, without doing any further investigation. If this is inadvertent, they need to be educated in climate science. If deliberate bias, they are clearly advocates and the reporters should be clearly and publicly identified as having such a bias. In either case, the public is being misinformed!” (LINK)
To continue reading this inconvenient report go here:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseActi...
- How can Gore (who is no scientist) say the oceans will rise 20 feet when weather forecasts are not even accurate within a few days?
- How would the first ice age have ended without humans?
- What is causing the temperature on Mars to rise without humans?
- Global-warming is much better for agriculture than global-cooling.
- Many more deaths occur each year from the cold than the heat.
- Why doesn't Gore reduce his own damn carbon footprints if he believes so strongly.
- Gore will be more than happy to sell you all the carbon offsets you can buy. And he'll hum a happy tune all the way to the bank.
And the facts of the matter are: if you consider the last 10 years of global temperature data, or the last 8 years of global temperature data or the 5 year rolling average of the satellite temperature data back to when measurements were first made in 1979 ... global warming has stalled.
And this is not what you would expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature. Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have continued to increase, but temperature hasn't.
It doesn't tell us much about what the future climate might look like - whether temperatures will continue to increase again or start to cool - but it is perhaps reason to relook at the climate models and the greenhouse theory that underpins them.
Because it looks like factors other than/additional to carbon dioxide are having a significant influence on global temperatures.
NASA Backtracks On 1998 Warmest Year Claim
NASA Corrects 120 Years Worth of Bad Data, Notes NCPA Expert
DALLAS (August 14, 2007) - The warmest year on record is no longer 1998 and not because it has been overtaken by a recent heat wave. NASA scientist James Hansen's famous claims about 1998 being the warmest year on record in the U.S. was the result of a serious math error, according to H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA). NASA has now corrected the error, anointing 1934 as the warmest year and 1921 as the third warmest year, not 2006 as previously claimed.
"Hansen's conclusions that the majority of the 10 hottest years occurred since 1990 are false," Burnett said. "While Hansen's original declaration made headlines, NASA's correction has been ignored."
According to NASA's newly published data:
The hottest year on record is 1934, not 1998;
The third hottest year on record was 1921, not 2006;
Three of the five hottest years on record occurred before 1940; and
Six of the top 10 hottest years occurred before 90 percent of the growth in greenhouse gas emissions during the last century occurred.
NASA Backtracks On 1998 Warmest Year Claim
NASA Corrects 120 Years Worth of Bad Data, Notes NCPA Expert
DALLAS (August 14, 2007) - The warmest year on record is no longer 1998 and not because it has been overtaken by a recent heat wave. NASA scientist James Hansen's famous claims about 1998 being the warmest year on record in the U.S. was the result of a serious math error, according to H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA). NASA has now corrected the error, anointing 1934 as the warmest year and 1921 as the third warmest year, not 2006 as previously claimed.
"Hansen's conclusions that the majority of the 10 hottest years occurred since 1990 are false," Burnett said. "While Hansen's original declaration made headlines, NASA's correction has been ignored."
According to NASA's newly published data:
The hottest year on record is 1934, not 1998;
The third hottest year on record was 1921, not 2006;
Three of the five hottest years on record occurred before 1940; and
Six of the top 10 hottest years occurred before 90 percent of the growth in greenhouse gas emissions during the last century occurred.
The corrrelation of global temperatures with CO2 which has continued to rise is 0.00 for the last decade. Correlations with ocean temperatures is near 0.9 and the sun 0.7. These are the real climate drivers not man made CO2.
New peer review research showing the CO2 warming is greatly overstated and that climate models have water vapor and clouds assumptions all wrong which explains their dismal failure in predicting the total and regional climates. The alarmists and their friends media are trying to divert attention by focusing on natural variations in the arctic region and greatly overexagerating the changes going on in Antarctica. There has been warming, likely volcanically induced, near the antarctic peninsula and breaking of the ice sheets near there but the vast continent has been cooling http://icecap.us/images/uploads/antarctic_temps... and despite the tiny breakups of the ice sheet near the peninsula (Wilkins breakup now frozen in place was just 0.01% of the total ice extent on the continent) and the total Antarctic ice extent is running 60% ahead of last year at this time. Last year it went on to set a recoprd for greatest extent on record. The media and alarmists would have you believe it is vanishing.
See the current levels 4 million square km is 60% more than last year when we had 2.5 million square km and running nearly 2 million square km ahead of normal.
See the CO2 correlation story here. http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Correlation_Las...
"He quotes the author of a global-warming skeptics’ blog in Australia, Jennifer Marohasy, as the last word on climate change to suggest that the planet is actually cooling. This contradicts data from NASA that show the five hottest years on record since the 1890s have been since 1998."
You have misinterpreted the remarks by the Australian Biologist who has said based on both NASA and NOAA global temperature tracking, warming has been "flat" since 1998. This is important because the "Concensus" committee of scientists who are predicting doom and gloom cannot explain why this is happening in direct contradiction to all their climate models. If you are going to base all of your predictions on a computer model, it probably needs to be, well, *accurate*.
The information showing warming has plateaued for the past decade in contradiction to all the IPCC models is readily available on the NOAA.org website. I'm sure you will have a "pat" explanation why the models are still valid.
It's stupid to put pollution into the air. It is equally stupid to put absolute trust into computer models that are merely hypothetical and continually have to be revised because scientists can't forecast the weather.
The mind control paradigm depends on the people allowing the government to solve some problem via reaction and solution.
The climate change fearmongers ignore the increase in solar heat radiation. A logical step, if the sun is hotter, the earth will absorb more heat. Puny humans give themselves too much credit to believe they can "save" the earth. One pimple pop in the South Pacific wiped out massive stretches of coast, how many will die when the earth actually sneezes?
We are lucky to live on Gaia, our benevolent home. No amount of carbon offsets, and dark hours will save us humans from whatever the earth decides to do. We should concentrate on making ours and the less fortunate's lives better while we recognize our fortune in having Gaia as our home.
Pointing to a single event to make your point on either side of this discussion is not scientific and actually just muddies the waters of the discussion. I could just as easily point out that many cities in the United States have just come out of the snowiest, coldest winters in 30 years. Does this mean we are in "global cooling"? No, that is a single event.
But I personally am tired of global warming doomsayers cherry-picking warming events to support their case.
Again, this is pretty simple. Polluting air bad. Predicting weather not really done well. End of World due to C02 is a "guess" based on computer models.
This helps explain why the Antarctic ice cap is growing in some places while thinning in others. But strangely, the shrieking alarmists do not reference the fact that the ice sheet is inexplicably growing (surprise!!) in much of Antarctica because it does not promote fear. But every time a piece of ice calves-off, as has been happening for eons, they wail and gnash their teeth and fret about the penguins.
With the continued defection of IPCC scientists from the IPCC , it is time for an honest, balanced discussion on climate change, with respected scientists from both sides being fairly represented. So far, the mainstream media has declined to permit that debate. Al Knight hit the nail squarely on the head, and it is a good start.
FYI he is a past director of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics and former Head of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Arizona, is a member of both the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth´s Executive Committee and the Committee on Global Change. Herman commented on March 25
I would point out to Bill Becker that 1998 remains the instrumentally measured global near surface temperature record and there are warm years from earlier in the 20th century in the top 10, when atmospheric CO2 levels were much lower. We have no instrumental temperature measurements from previous warm periods, such as the Medieval Warm Period, but there is evidence that it was just as warm as today 1000 years ago. The IPCC have abandoned decadal sea level rise projections in AR4, following previous inaccurate projections, and has gone for an unverifiable 90-year projection instead.
As for ethanol, I'd like to believe it is the magic bullet for replacing the oil on which world economies are built, but it still has a very long way to go.
Just one question: If polar ice is melting and most of it is already under water (displacing the water, as I recall from science class), how can the oceans "rise"?
It rises due to three components:
- The unsubmerged ice melting
- The melting of ice that was on land (Antarctica is a continent)
- The expansion of the water due to the rise in temperature
http://pacificgatepost.blogspot.com/2008/03/arg...
GLOBAL WARMING isn't.
New evidence suggests the earth may even be cooling.
Mr. Sandor needs to stop swallowing unthinkingly the CO2 cultist vomit - he's not, after all, a gooney bird chick. The Antarctic Peninsula accounts for only 2 per cent of the continental landmass. The rest of it has been accumulating ice at a prodigious rate. The Wilkins ice shelf itself is no great shakes in the context of the whole. The Peninsula is marked by several localised factors which can and do give rise to ice melt. None has a relationship to global warming, now spun to climate change. And the penguins are not dying out per WWF propaganda.
If he seriously supposes that the economic consequences of pursuing CO2 cultist policies will not be gravely damaging, then he cannot have been paying attention to the warnings of economists all over the world. As for an obscure Australian scientist, Dr. Marohassy is in fact quite a distinguished Australian scientist. She is joined in her scepticism by hundreds of others again all over the world. Simultaneously, the high priest of CO2 cult science, James Hansen, is an exposed fraudster. And Messrs Sandor, Becker and Sanders think it odd that some people at least should be asking questions. Well, well!
Moreover, Mr. Sanders vested interest is plain to see. Even though I've come upon this website by chance and am unlikely to return to it, let me put to him a simple question: If the combustion equation for ethanol shows that every one molcule of C2H5OH that is burned releases two of CO2 and three of H2O, a ghg far more potent than CO2, how precisely does it help the atmosphere and bring about a diminution of putative global warming?
I shall probably not see Mr. Sanders' answer (if there is one), but the real one is already apparent. Others, however, may like to see how he gets on with it, and draw their own conclusions.
Rupert Wyndham, Cornwall, UK
Inhofe has also offered the opinion that global warming can't exist because god wouldn't allow people to destroy his creation:http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/12/29/125741/46
Which is at least an admission that global warming is real and has an anthropogenic factor included. Inhofe's intelligence notwithstanding it does give one pause to wonder about the analytical capacity of those who'd cite any of his contributions to support their contentions.
Regarding the contention that global warming ceased in 1998
At the time, 1998 was a record high year in both the CRU and the NASA GISS analyses. In fact, it blew away the previous record by .2 degrees C. (That previous record went all the way back to 1997, by the way!)
According to NASA, it was elevated far above the trend line because 1998 was the year of the strongest El Nino of the century. Choosing that year as a starting point is a classic cherry pick and demonstrates why it is necessary to remove chaotic year-to year-variability (aka: weather) by smoothing out the data. Looking at CRU's graph below, you can see the result of that smoothing in black.http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/4/175028/329
One very small example - 1934 was slightly hotter than 1998 in the US only. 1934 did not come within a bull's roar of 1998 globally.
The more positive the science becomes about what's causing global warming the louder the dessenting cries that come from most of the familiar names on this post.
They constantly ridicule the findings of thousands of scientists after decades of research but readily accept propositions that on close examination have little factual accuracy.
So goes the planet.
It's the "skeptics" stand in a nutshell.