BS: Global warming - the myth

Subject: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Andy Jackson
Date: 08 Mar 07 - 08:20 PM

Well at last the truth is out. BBC4 tonight exposed the whole rubbish argument. Check the figures and the history for yourself. The SUN governs our weather and the CO2 changes with the temperature , not the other way around. Just a case of man's inflated ego thinking we can actually have control over nature.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: folk1e
Date: 08 Mar 07 - 08:33 PM

Oh bugger!
Does this mean my vineyard in Scotland is doomed?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 08 Mar 07 - 09:20 PM

Not if you put a strong roof over it and build some fires inside - they might still survive under a mile of ice....

Did you know that Prof Singer, the once instant expert on rubbish the dangers of smoking is now (SURPRISE!!!!) also an instant expert on debunking global warming. But he hasn't had any peer reviewed papers published in this field for ages....

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Little Hawk
Date: 08 Mar 07 - 09:26 PM

Ah. So I guess this means we can go back to polluting the air all we want, we can cut down the remaining forests, burn all the fuel, and all that sort of thing. Excellent! I always love to hear an argument that helps rich corporations get even richer. ;-) Just think, if anything goes wrong, blame it all on the sun! What a brilliant notion.

Thanks for relieving my worries about the global warming nonsense, Miskin Man.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Dickey
Date: 08 Mar 07 - 09:30 PM

I believe that Global warming exists but I don;t know if it is man made or not.

Never the less we should do what ever we can to reduce it in case it is man made. Even if we have to nuke China. (;~>)

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Little Hawk
Date: 08 Mar 07 - 09:37 PM

Well, it's probably partly man-made. The question is, how large a part? Even if it's a minor part, it would seem like a good idea to do a few things to help reduce it, as you say, Dickey.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: pdq
Date: 08 Mar 07 - 09:55 PM

But Al Gore got an Oscar for his movie about Global Warming, that means it must be true, doesn't It?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 08 Mar 07 - 10:09 PM

That would mean that Ben Hur is a true historical figure. Can't wait for James Cameron to find his sarcophagus.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Rapparee
Date: 08 Mar 07 - 10:15 PM

It really doesn't matter who or what is causing it -- it exists and we have to deal with it. Whether it's manmade or not, it's too late to do anything to stop it; we can (hopefully) mitigate for our great-great grandchildren.

I doubt that we will do much of anything, since as a species we're far too self-centered to worry about something 50, 60, 75 years off.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Dickey
Date: 08 Mar 07 - 10:16 PM

Yeah and that means every movie that got an oscar is true, Right?

And Davis Guggenheim won the Oscar not Al.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Anonny Mouse
Date: 08 Mar 07 - 10:18 PM

Anyone got some anti-carbon footprint paraphernalia? Solar panels? Heat Pumps? Plant 1000 trees? Buy a Prius? Coldest Feb here in 30 years. Go figger.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Little Hawk
Date: 08 Mar 07 - 11:17 PM

You need to read up on global warming some, Mouse. It does not make everything everywhere on the planet get evenly and steadily warmer all at the same time. It cause extreme weather fluctuations in both directions. This is for a great many reasons involving ocean currents, weather patterns, and other such large patterns in nature.

So every time it gets colder where you are, that doesn't prove or disprove global warming theories. And every time it gets warmer where you are, ditto. You have to look at things like average temperatures around the globe, and the average temperatures of large bodies of water.

It was damn cold here in February too. Mind you, it usually is.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Dickey
Date: 08 Mar 07 - 11:20 PM

We are all definately headed for hell in a handbasket.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Little Hawk
Date: 08 Mar 07 - 11:23 PM

You're right. The solution is simple, elegant, and obvious! I can't figure why no one else has realized it.

All we have to do is put a worldwide ban on handbaskets!

And if that doesn't work, a pre-emptive attack on hell should do it. Rejime change in hell. That must be our next priority.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Dickey
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 01:04 AM

It's too late for that. Just make sure we are wearing sun glasses and asbestos drawers.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 02:59 AM

I found the evidence that the earth had for long periods of time been considerably warmer than today to be interesting. If that is so I am puzzled how the Greeland icecap could have survived until today. What was also noticeably missing was any indication of how ocean levels had varied over time. There were references to the effect of the oceans as stores of energy, but maybe I missed a plot of ocean temeperature against other global temperatures (or solar output) over time, showing the hysteresis.

However, the program was short on hard numbers regarding the scales of the graphs it showed, which would make a major difference, and the tone was so shrill that it invited the conclusion that the programme was propaganda not information.

AFAIK about 85% of relevant scientists are about 85% clear that global warming is a man-made phenomenon. (Radio 3, about 8.45 am 8th March)

There were major misrepresentations of other positions, and omissions of data.

It implied that the sole focus of green beliefs is global warming. It isn't. Other pollution and extinctions are also of great concern.

It implied that the concern of green campaigners is to stop development in undeveloped countries. It isn't. It is to stop pollution by them - and by developed countries.

Did we get any figures on the energy output of the sun and how it varied with sunspots? We did not.

Did we get any explanation of how "cosmic rays" affected cloud formation in the earth's atmosphere? We did not.

Did we get any recognition of the importance of droplet size in cloud formation? We did not.

Did we get any explanation of the effect of solar radiation or "the solar wind" on "cosmic radiation"? We did not.


There were some interesting ideas - but the presentation was very shallow. And I don't think it was on BBC4.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Dazbo
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 03:18 AM

No, it was on Channel 4. And no one claimed that global warming is a myth, just that it's not man-made but part of the natural cycles of warming and cooling that go on.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 03:26 AM

The correct title referred to a swindle, not a myth.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 03:59 AM

Has anyone read James Lovelock's, 'The Revenge of Gaia' - scary stuff!

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bagpuss
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 05:02 AM

Can I just point out that the documentary maker Mark Durkin has previously made a programme about global warming being a myth and that he was reprimanded by the ITC for it. Channel 4 had to broadcast a primetime apology. Which makes me somewhat suspect that he might have used some of these tricks in this one too.

The Independent Television Commission ruled: "Comparison of the unedited and edited transcripts confirmed that the editing of the interviews with [the environmentalists who contributed] had indeed distorted or misrepresented their known views. It was also found that the production company had misled them… as to the format, subject matter and purpose of these programs."

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bagpuss
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 05:03 AM

Sorry, Martin Durkin

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 05:43 AM

This is working from the channels web-site on the programme, as I didn't have a chance to see it, but the general approach seems to be ' Science hasn't explained every little change in climate for the last 13,000 years, and they weren't anthropogenic, so the current changes in climate isn't anthropogenic either.
There is a distinct absence of data, and there isn't even a mention of the Milankovitch Hypothesis, which has successfully explain the pattern of ice ages for the last few million years.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Scrump
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 06:22 AM

I doubt that we will do much of anything, since as a species we're far too self-centered to worry about something 50, 60, 75 years off.

This is the fundamental problem with persuading people to stop using their cars, etc. Whatever they may say, most people don't care what happens to the world after they die. They don't really care about their children's children's children's children, because they will never know them (and these hypothetical descendants may never exist anyway).

Here in the UK, young people have more to lose than us older folk, but they seem to care even less (on average) about the future. I see a lot of young people driving around at high speed in cars, throwing litter in the street, etc.

I don't have any ideas as to how to overcome this selfishness (I suppose that's what it is), but I think this is the reason any attempts to get people to cut down on doing things that cause pollution, are basically doomed to failure.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: skipy
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 06:25 AM

A BLAMING GROWL
is an annagram of global warming!
Skipy

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 07:14 AM

1. Global warming is real.
2. The probable cause is flutuation in the solar output- Or do you think that the CO2 here on earth is what is changing the Red Spott on Jupiter?
3. This change happens on a repeated basis.


The only real solution that we, as humans, have for this is to balance it with a Nuclear Winter. As long as we do nothing about Iran's nuclear program, this should not be a problem- I estimate we will have a global Thermonuclear war within 12 years, given the present lack of action.

That takes care of the overpopulation problem, as well.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 07:19 AM

Story on Jupiter

And what about the warming on Mars and Venus?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Dazbo
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 07:24 AM

One of the main points against the CO2 and other greenhouse gases being the cause of global warming was that all the models predict that the troposphere would heat up faster than the air lowere down. The programme stated that this was not what was happening: the air lower down was heating up faster than the troposphere so the greenhouse gases were not warming up the planet.

Although I've always been sceptical of the causes of global warming (in my opinion you can make a mathematical model fit any argument you want it to) I'd much rather live on a planet without man-made pollution whether it causes global warming or not.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: kendall
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 07:30 AM

Global warming is a natural phase of climate. We all know that. What the polluters don't want to know is that they are helping it along. Look around you...tens of thousands of smokestacks pouring crap into the upper atmosphere day and night. Anyone with more than a teaspoon full of brains can see what is happening. Maybe if my job depended on continuing this crime I might be more inclined to support the pollutors.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 07:30 AM

Reducing pollution, of all types, is a good and worthwhile thing-

Just don't think it will stop global warming.

What we SHOULD be doing is dealing with the effects, not debating the cause. When will we start to relocate those in areas likely to be flooded? When do we take steps to preserve the species threatened? As long as the belief that we can stop global warming persists, humans will take none of the steps needed to DEAL with it.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 07:52 AM

"It does not make everything everywhere on the planet get evenly and steadily warmer all at the same time. It cause extreme weather fluctuations in both directions. This is for a great many reasons involving ocean currents, weather patterns, and other such large patterns in nature."

"Global Warming"refers to the total increased energy in the whole system - in no small percentage as heat. As the total energy of a dynamic system increases, then the 'turbulence' i.e. peaks and troughs, and teh difference between them, increases.


"it's not man-made but part of the natural cycles of warming and cooling that go on. "


Yep but we ARE influencing it...

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 07:56 AM

"What we SHOULD be doing is dealing with the effects, not debating the cause. When will we start to relocate those in areas likely to be flooded? When do we take steps to preserve the species threatened? As long as the belief that we can stop global warming persists, humans will take none of the steps needed to DEAL with it. "

Doh!

So we can stop the serious effects of it, just so long as we believe we can't stop it?!!!!!!


Doh!


My head hurts...

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 07:59 AM

"So we can stop the serious effects of it, just so long as we believe we can't stop it?!!!!!!"

Straw man argument- NOT WHAT I SAID!

We can DEAL with the effects, by moving people and species. We CANNOT PREVENT them!

Or are YOU going to act like Canute, and command the tides to stop?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 08:02 AM

If this is beyond your understanding, no wonder your head hurts! PLEASE get medical help SOON.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Scrump
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 08:06 AM

If we want people to cut down on pollution, we should make it easier for them to do that.

Don't just improve public transport to encourage people to use their cars less (not that the UK government is doing that anyway), but encourage local industry instead of 'globalisation'. The latter is a major cause of pollution, as it requires goods and food to be shipped around the world instead of being locally sourced.

Bring back local industries, jobs, shops, farms, etc., and people won't need to travel as much, so they won't.

"Localisation not globalisation!"

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bee
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 08:45 AM

Some exerpts from different Northern people's perspectives regarding global warming:

http://www.lilithgallery.com/articles/environmental/Climate-Change-Economy.html

Extreme weather shifts in the Arctic bring in their wake swarms of insects, treacherously thin ice floes and fast-spoiling food supplies...

"Many nations think of vulnerability and adaptation to climate change in the abstract -- we experience it," said Kusugak, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami.
"Unusual animals are appearing where I hunt. I'd rather not have these species in my hunting grounds,'' Naalak Nappaluk, 84, a Nunavik community elder who attended the UN conference to voice his concerns about climate change, said through an Inuktitut translator, citing lynx and a new variety of seal pups. "They are not good for the health of the existing animals, and disrupt the balance of nature."
Muctar Akumalik, 73, is perplexed by weather changes around his home in Arctic Bay, Nunavut.
"I used to be able to predict the weather, but now I often get it wrong," Akumalik said, through his translator.
Arctic travel is also more difficult because increasingly strong winds blow snow cover from the trails used by dog teams and snowmobiles, Akumalik added.
Not that climate change has been all bad, said Kusugak, who enjoys more occasions to go out on his boat and to fish during prolonged warm spells.
But the downside -- rotting meat, unexpected ice cracks under foot, homes shifting in the softened permafrost -- is more worrisome, he said.

http://dl1.yukoncollege.yk.ca/agraham/

Reindeer keepers in Norway as well as in Sweden have severe problems in feeding their animals. It is impossible for the deers to dig through layers of snow and ice natural to find fodder. Climate changes and milder weather will lead to heavy snowing winters in coming years.
Northern Canada's tundra is disappearing at a rapid rate, with forests of spruce trees and shrubs taking over the once frozen landscape, new research finds.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Folk Form # 1
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 08:58 AM

The trouble with this debate (on a subject that does worry me) is that you need to understand the science behind global warming. I don't. I'm completely stupid when it come to science. Therefore, as a result, I come under the sway of the last TV programme I've watched. I saw this programme last night. It was very interesting; but whether or not they were right, I am just not in the position to comment. However, they made no mention of the hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica. Is that a natural phenomenon?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 09:02 AM

The ozone hole has been shrinking, slowly, as a result of the change in flurocarbon usage. No guarantee that it will not increase or decrease more due to the increase in solar radiation, though.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Rapparee
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 09:09 AM

You're wasting time, energy, and resources. Stop trying to fix blame and start dealing with the problem that exists.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 09:10 AM

Didn't I say that?

8-{E

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Dazbo
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 09:10 AM

What always puzzled me about the ozone layer hole was, assuming that the vast majority of CFCs were in the developed countries of the northern hemisphere, why the hole in the ozone layer was way down south.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bee
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 09:13 AM

Penguin Egg, the hole in the ozone is a direct result of a specific kind of pollution, CFCs, and the hole is slowly recovering. It isn't directly linked to global warming. The short article linked below is easy to understand.


http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/12/1208_051208_ozone_layer.html

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 09:36 AM

OK

Here's the science.

The GREENHOUSE EFFECT ios an essential part of our living environment.

Heat from the SUN is trapped by CO2 and as a result life can exist on Earth.

In oher words, The CO2 that exists on our planet helps create a CLIMATE that sustains us.

This trapping of heat is called GLOBAL WARMING

It is natural and necessary and simple scientific reality and has always been and will always be as long as there is CO2 in the atmosphere.


The issue faced by us these days is that of "ENHANCED GLOBAL WARMING"

ok?

In other words, producing more CO2 ENHANCES the GREENOUSE EFFECT.

ok?

It's not rocket science, it's BASIC CHEMISTRY.



When scientists make discoveries and develop new technologies that make life easier for us, no one questions their wisdom.

But the moment they discover something that means we have to moderate our behaviour and stop being so bloody self centred and lazy, we suddenly start denouncing them as selfrighteous, lefty scaremongers.

I cannot vocalise how angry this kind of self excusing irresponsible crap makes me.

There are none so deaf as will not hear!

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Wolfgang
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 09:42 AM

Earth temperatures in the past

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 09:53 AM

Here's a thought for the conspiracy theorists among you:

The current debate on Global Warming is a result of factionalism within the Oil Industry. One faction believes that oil is running out so that we have to be weaned off oil in order to make way for the alternative(s) that they will be selling to us in the future. Another faction thinks that there is enough oil for the forseeable future so wants 'business as usual'. These two factions have 'bought' various scientists to push the 'Global Warming is Real' and 'Global Warming is a Myth' points of view respectively.

I don't actually believe any of this (although given the nature of the 'Corpratocracy' that we live in there's just a hint of credibility there). I suspect that releasing lots of fossil carbon into the atmosphere is a really BAD idea (but I don't think that it's going to stop anytime soon).

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 09:58 AM

If I was an oil company, I'd put your conspiracy idea out there to waste peoples time and distract them even further from the truth.

That would be the only credible conspiracy in this case.

Bunkum and humbug!

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 09:58 AM

Thanks, Wolfgang.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Dazbo
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 10:02 AM

"In other words, producing more CO2 ENHANCES the GREENOUSE EFFECT.

ok?"

Exactly the opposite of what the numerous professors on the programme stated. The CO2 follows the warming not causes it.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Scrump
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 10:04 AM

It's not rocket science, it's BASIC CHEMISTRY.

Maybe if they pulled all those rocket scientists we keep hearing about, off designing and building rockets, and put them to work to solve the problems of global warming, the greenhouse effect, etc., they would be able to sort it out really easily, as it would seem like a piece of cake after all that rocket science.

Then once they'd sorted it all out, we could let them go back to their rockets.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 10:13 AM

As a rocket scientist, I have already offered a "solution". Not MY fault if you don't like it...


"The only real solution that we, as humans, have for this is to balance it with a Nuclear Winter. As long as we do nothing about Iran's nuclear program, this should not be a problem- I estimate we will have a global Thermonuclear war within 12 years, given the present lack of action.

That takes care of the overpopulation problem, as well. "

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Scrump
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 10:17 AM

Wel done Bruce - solved. You may return to your rockets now.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 10:33 AM

Scrump - you've actually hit the nail squarely on the head.

Scientists can only do research when they have money.

The people who give scientists money for research generally have one or both of two ulterior motives -

... can you guess what those are? ... right! ... more money and military power!

Most civil technology is based on civilian applications of military technology.

And most civil technology is designed for profit.

Most civil technology is designed to last for a finite time after which it must be replaced - it's true - they don't make 'em like they used to and that was when they built 'em to last.

This is to ensure the fluid continuity and growth of the consumer economy. (people don't need to buy washing machines if they already have them, until they become unserviceable)

Back to the point,

Scientists are not the objective open minded free thinkers that they once were.

Their need to put bread on the table requires them to do specific research for specific purposes - those of the company they work for.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Wolfgang
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 10:47 AM

Scientists are not the objective open minded free thinkers that they once were. (Lox)

But in your 09 Mar 07 - 09:36 AM post you said we should trust them, Lox.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 10:50 AM

You can trust the ones who get their funding from the "right" sources.

"Scientists can only do research when they have money.

The people who give scientists money for research generally have one or both of two ulterior motives "

If they have the ulterior motive that you do, then it is ok...

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bill D
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 11:46 AM

I saw the BBC report somewhere....and I saw replies to it. That theory was put forward by ONE man...(from Russia, I believe)...and there are already many, many experts disagreeing with him and saying that his analysis is flawed.

Now, it seems to me that BELIEVING one guy who just happens to fit your views is just wishful thinking....

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 11:48 AM

Sorry, passion led to hasty choice of words.

The point remains intact though.

There is no money for ethical investment.

The knowledge exists to build green technology, but the resources to build it aren't there.

CO2 retains heat!!!!!

Should have said "science is not the objective field of study it once was"

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bill D
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 11:49 AM

And, it is almost irrelevant whether the sun...or cow farts....is partially respobsible. The fact remains that WE are contributing way too much to the problem and need to change out habits.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 11:58 AM

Bill,

My statement was


"Date: 09 Mar 07 - 07:14 AM

1. Global warming is real.
2. The probable cause is fluctuation in the solar output- Or do you think that the CO2 here on earth is what is changing the Red Spot on Jupiter?
3. This change happens on a repeated basis."

For supporting arguments I submit Wolfgang's charts, the article on Jupiter,
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html

,
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_ice-age_031208.html

,
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/msss/camera/images/CO2_Science_rel/index.html

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 12:01 PM

I also pointed out

"Reducing pollution, of all types, is a good and worthwhile thing-

Just don't think it will stop global warming.

What we SHOULD be doing is dealing with the effects, not debating the cause. When will we start to relocate those in areas likely to be flooded? When do we take steps to preserve the species threatened? As long as the belief that we can stop global warming persists, humans will take none of the steps needed to DEAL with it. "

"We can DEAL with the effects, by moving people and species. We CANNOT PREVENT them!

Or are YOU going to act like Canute, and command the tides to stop? "

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bill D
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 12:21 PM

And as you may have noted in more than one thread in the last 2-3 years, *I* have never claimed that we can 'stop' any huge, planet-wide process. What we can do is limit our contribution to some of the worse ones. In the process we can ease other problems.

In the meantime, we need to study as carefully as possible what the actual causes are, so that we may both plan and prevent as much as possible.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 12:28 PM

From the April 2007 Atlantic, Greg Easterbrook states the following...
"Why, ultimately, should nations act to control greenhouse gases? One reason is that the cost of control is likely to be much lower than the cost of rebuilding the World. Coastal cities could be abandoned and rebuilt inland, for instance, but improving energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions in order to stave off rising sea levels should be far more cost effective."

Makes sense to me. The National Academy of Sciences, hardly a liberal think-tank, has come down on the side of the fact of Global Warming, and of human-produced greenhouse gases having a significant impact on the phenomenon. Forgive me if I give more credibility to their findings than the posts of beardedbruce and a BBC science/opinion documentary.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 12:32 PM

Bill,

The reduction of CO2 is being presented as a CURE for global warming- After it fails to stop it, how many people will say "You lied about CO2, why should we believe you about ( insert attempt to DEAL with the effects of GW)?"

IF there were ANY plans being proposed about DEALING with the known effects, instead of just pretending that the Kyoto Accords will make the issue go away, THEN I might agree with you. Yes, we should do what we can to reduce the human contribution- BUT NOT AT THE COST of dealing with the real problem. And that is what the people presently crying wolf are doing. They ignore the human costs and effect, and talk only about the contribution of industry to what would STILL be happening with no industry at all. Just look at the Viking colony in Greenland, for what happens when you ignore climactic change.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 12:37 PM

"One reason is that the cost of control is likely to be much lower than the cost of rebuilding the World. Coastal cities could be abandoned and rebuilt inland, for instance, but improving energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions in order to stave off rising sea levels should be far more cost effective."

Please note - the claim is that the control of greenhouse gases will REMOVE the need for dealing with the consequences. THAT is what I object to- the charts presented by Wolfgand, and the data on OTHER planets lead me to think we will still have to deal with those increased seal levels. - But without the industry to be able to support the effort.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 12:50 PM

"The reduction of CO2 is being presented as a CURE for global warming-"

No it isn't

That's like saying that not punching someone in the face is being presented as a cure for their headache.

And please folks:

we aren't trying to stop global warming - that would kill us.

We are trying to stop humans from ENHANCING the effects of the greenhouse effect, thus contributing to the realistically damaging consequences of ENHANCED global warming.

Get with the terminology at least.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Ebbie
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 12:51 PM

Fareed Zakaria in the February 17 issue of Newsweek believes that even if we start immediately to take measures to mitigate the warming that is already occurring it will take decades before greenhouse gases will begin to diminish.

He thinks that the only alternative we have is to begin - at the same time that we work on reducing the gases - an adaptation process to live in a "drier, hotter climate".

He quotes Frances Cairncross of the British Association for the Advancement of Science as saying: "This may involve, for instance, developing new crops, constructing flood defenses, setting different building regulations or banning close to sea level."

She also pointed out that adaptation processes could move forward fast. "Unlike plans to slow down global warming, which require massive and simultaneous international efforts, adaptation efforts can be pursued by individual countries, states, cities and localities."

One thought that keeps recurring to me is that it is almost irrelevant what process started this warming. I think that #1, we have to recognize and address the things that we are doing that exacerbate its effects and #2, if we want to continue to live in an inhabitable world we have to take the steps to see to it that we can.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 12:52 PM

"Please note - the claim is that the control of greenhouse gases will REMOVE the need for dealing with the consequences"

who ever claimed that?

PS last thread was mine too

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 12:54 PM

I mean the last GUEST post not the last thread

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: pdq
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 12:56 PM

Here is a list of the ten most populous countries estimated for year 2050:

1. India - 1,628,000,000 (1.628 billion)
2. China - 1,437,000,000 (1.437 billion)
3. United States - 420,000,000 (420 million)
4. Nigeria - 299,000,000
5. Pakistan - 295,000,000
6. Indonesia - 285,000,000
7. Brazil - 260,000,000
8. Bangladesh - 231,000,000
9. Democratic Republic of Congo - 183,000,000
10. Ethiopia - 145,000,000

The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Kyoto exempt all of these countries except one. Can you guess which one? Take all the time you need. This is a no-grade class.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 12:56 PM

Thank you, Ebbie.

Guest, you miss the point.

If we reduce the CO2 emmisions to nothing, the increased solar flux will still cause global warming. Please look at the plots that Wolfgang referred to.

We will still need to deal with the effects of global warming.

We will still have to take all the steps that are being stated "will not be needed once we reduce CO2 emissions".

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 01:01 PM

Read the post of Lonesome EJ - PM
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 12:28 PM
and my reply.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST,petr
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 02:47 PM

how many of those countries have been spewing pollution and
co2 for the past 150+ years, and enjoying the benefits of economic development.

guess which one.

the developing countries are right when they say
they dont want to bear the burden for a problem that was CAUSED
by the developed world.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 02:53 PM

"problem that was CAUSED by the developed world. "

I know some here think that the sun rises and sets especially for them, but the trends shown in the plots presented by Wolfgang would indicate the PROBLEM is more than just the CO2 emmissions of industrial nations. Or will someone propose that there was excessive industry between 1000 and 1200 CE? Or would it be 800 to 1000 that was such a greenhouse gas producing time?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 04:52 PM

OK

I'm not too busy now to engage properly..

BeardedBruce, where in wolfgangs graphs does it refer to the composition of the climate or the temperature of the sun in correlation with those graphs?

And are gardners greenhouses a phenomenon brought about by solar activity too?

It's the heat that creates the greenhouses, not the greenhouses that trap the heat is it?

The reality is that, as in every field of scientific study, there are many variables.

The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is one of those, and a major factor affecting the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere is pollution due to the burning of fossil fuels.

I'd expect a rocket scientist not to find that too challenging, nor to be too reliant on second rate documentaries that can't get onto the main BBC terrestrial channels to support his arguments.

I seem to remember these ideas first being aired by saudi scientists.

hmmmm - no bias there!

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 04:53 PM

Bruce, (incidentally, you said something on another recent thread that I agreed with, but I can't remember what it was) can you clarify why you say the current warning

(a) is not being caused by man-made pollution?
(b) is being caused by increased solar output?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: dianavan
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 05:42 PM

I may be getting this wrong so be sure to read for yourself.

It seems that in order to extract the last little bit of oil, they will now store CO2 (from industrial sites) in holding tanks under the ground and then pump it into the earth which will force more oil up, out of the ground.

Ol companies like the idea and think it will work but they don't want to pay for it. If this new technology is to be developed, the taxpayers are expected to foot the bill. (Heard this on the local news last night).

" Oil production is slowing as many of the North Sea wells mature, and carbon dioxide pumped down the hole can loosen up and release the remaining oil."

http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/17892/

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bill D
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 05:49 PM

well, Bruce...I see I already 3rd or 4th in line to say that

" reduction of CO2 is being presented as a CURE.." is not accurate.

Where do you find anyone of substance actually claiming that?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST,petr
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 07:45 PM

well the majority of the worlds top scientists agree that
the increase in co2 and other ghgs is man-made and that the result is
increased warming....but

ok lets assume we dont know the cause of the increased c02 in the
atmosphere (which btw is higher than at any time in the past 600,000 years)

we can do two things..
reduce c02 and other ghg to try to mitigate the effect..
and no doubt there will be some cost to the economy
(and possibly increased investment and growth
in renewables - such as there has been in Europe over the last few years)

or we can do nothing about c02 emissions
and if the scientific consensus is correct the result will be
global catastrophe.

choosing reduction over inaction is a no-brainer..
we do it all the time in business..
Its called insurance.

(also a side benefit is that it frees us from oil dependence from
unstable dictatorships )

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST,R. Frost
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 07:47 PM

Some say the world will end in fire
Others say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire
I go with those who favor fire.

Sincerely paraphrased from:
R. Frost

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 09:44 PM

David Keys has done some interesting work, well worth reading. See the 2 links to the text of the TV doco below.

Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of Modern Civilization - David Keys

From Wiki

"The theory belongs to David Keys. With dogged detective work he has pieced together the story of an ancient catastrophe.

By bringing together evidence from contemporary eye witness accounts and tree rings (ice deposits too - Robin) - he has developed a picture of a lethal climate change that began in the year 535AD and affected most of the world for the next ten to twenty years.

He found three possible causes for the huge amounts of dust, ash and water vapour that must have been hurled into the atmosphere to block out the sun-a comet, an asteroid or a volcano. "

The most reasonable conclusion he reached - based on all the evidence, including Chinese ancient reports of a loud noise coming from that direction, was the eruption.

Some useful text of a recent documentary based on his work - Part 1 - Part 2

You might want to read all of this before commenting, and most especially read past and don't waste everybody else's time just parroting the bit that says "However, Keys and Wohletz' ideas are not widely accepted at this point."


It is true that mankind is not the ONLY source of CO2 and other gases into the air.

BTW, the southern oceans are sucking up CO2 at a greater amount than expected, because unexpected 'deep mixing' is taking place there - this not necessarily a GOOD THING - as the acidity rises, many species important to the food chain will die off.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Ebbie
Date: 10 Mar 07 - 09:07 PM

"The draft document by the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change focuses on global warming's effects and is the second in a series of four being issued this year. Written and reviewed by more than 1,000 scientists from dozens of countries, it still must be edited by government officials."

Who'll be all smiles tonight.?


This second edition of the four in the series will be presented to the US government in June 2007. And g.whiz dubya will chuckle.

David Letterman has a recurring feature on Late Night that he calls 'Inappropriate Smiles by President Bush'. Asinine and revealing.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Mar 07 - 10:56 AM

Well, we get large groups of internationally respected scientists assuring us that this warming trend IS indeed happening, and that WE are one major factor in the equation.....and we get one or two guys who continue to assert otherwise.....and there will be lots of folks who grasp at those naysayers reports and refuse to cooperate because it affects their business, stock market planning, religious beliefs or vacation plans.

I, for one, am worried about what will happen when sea level rises in places like Bangladesh and Indonesia and water is scarce in other places. All those folks who can't live where they used to are gonna want to live somewhere else. I can't predict the minute details of the consequences of that situation, but I'm reasonably sure we won't like it.

I CAN predict that *IF* the more pessimistic predictions happen, the world population would need to reduced by a factor of 50-80% for an indefinite period. There are sane, humane ways to reduce population....and there are the ways that would be employed in emergencies.

Who, me? Cynical? naawwwwwww....

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 11 Mar 07 - 08:50 PM

Bill,

so you are saying that armies are not just for waving handies then?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Mar 07 - 09:35 PM

Is that what I said? Me thinks thou dost read between the lines too much....

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Barry Finn
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 05:50 AM

It'll be OK Bill. We'll die off fast enough when the time comes, & the rest we can kill.

Barry

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 05:59 AM

"Do unto others. but shoot first!"

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Dazbo
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 06:18 AM

"Scientists are not the objective open minded free thinkers that they once were". (Lox)


Can someone please point me to this utopian time when scientists were objective free-thinkers?

The history of scientists and science is littered with numerous examples of scientists who've derided other scientists works and vociferously promoted their own, even in the face of all evidence.

Scientists are just as human as the rest of us and just as liable to be blinkered zealots as open minded and free thinking (in fact I'd suggest scientists as a group are probably more blinkered than most as they have their 'evidence' to back up their stance)

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 07:29 AM

Scientists very rarely change their minds. It's simply that the old ones die, and with them so does the support for old theories which have been superseded.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 08:08 AM

I saw the programme.
The scientists were eminent in the field, and did not work for oil industry.
They suggested that money was much more available for global warming research than other fields, and that if it was disproved thousands of scientists would face hardship.
They said that warming caused CO2 levels to rise, as it makes oceans less soluble to the gas, and showed that the rise in CO2 did follow and not lead the temp. rise.
They pointed out that the altitude that warming occurs is wrong for CO2 cause.
They said that CO2 only forms 0.03 of 1% of air, and the fossil fuel proportion is very much smaller still.
Water vapour is an infinitely more important greenhouse gas.

Who knows?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 02:15 PM

"Many -- not all -- of those effects can be prevented, the report says, if within a generation the world slows down its emissions of carbon dioxide and if the level of greenhouse gases sticking around in the atmosphere stabilizes. If that's the case, the report says "most major impacts on human welfare would be avoided; but some major impacts on ecosystems are likely to occur.""

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/03/10/climate.report.ap/index.html


THIS is what I believe is the problem- The above statement is being treated as true without any evidence, in spite of the consequences of it being in error.

I believe that the article is probably correct in its assessment of the impact of global warming: It is the idea that we can PREVENT it by even draconian curtailing of green house gas emissions that I find unsupported in this, or any other report.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: bubblyrat
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 02:29 PM

We used to have a neat way of getting rid of surplus CO2----It was called the Amazon Rainforest.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 02:35 PM

And there was no vegetation during the Cretaceous, Eocene, Miocene,and Pliocene periods?

The FACT of the increase in solar radiation will not go away, regardless of our efforts to remove GHG from the atmosphere.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Andy Jackson
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 05:10 PM

In hindsight (that other underrated science) I should of course had titled this thread along the lines of "human production of greenhouse gas causes global warming , the myth". But I didn't, ho hum. It was an instant reaction to the fact that I was not alone in my firm beliefs. The pompous idea that humans could affect the world's climate I have always thought to be fatuous.Our atmosphere is vast and the volume of the sea mind boggling.
Global warming is a fact of course. But also a fact is that ice sheets have always melted at the poles but we didn't have the cameras to take such dramatic pictures. The global temerature has always gone up and down in a very slow cycle AND CO2 FOLLOWS IT - Not the other way around. Accepting this would mean governments all over the world would have to find other ways of raising / extorting money from us all.
Having spent all my life in media news I know first hand how a little scientific knowledge in the hands of a journalist is a dangerous thing. Anyone remember the "Great Breakthrough Discovery" on Nationwide when a reporter discovered you can get electricity from an orange if you stick two dissimilar metal wires in it. I fell about when I was asked to connect it to a light bulb to demonstrate this free electricity. It is the same mentality that has hitched onto the greenhouse gas theory.
Ah but I must be wrong, 'cos you read the opposite in the paper. Thankfully I am sure there are many out there just queuing up to correct my errant thinking.

Andy

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 08:33 PM

Yes, global warming triggered by human activity is a myth. And cigarettes don't cause cancer, and the holocaust never happened...
...............................
As for the science involved in this, I'm reminded of the argument that since most road accidents involve people who haven't been drinking, there's no point in trying to stop people driving when they've been drinking.

It's very likely true that increased temperature does cause an increase in carbon dioxide. But that just makes things even more critical. It's as certain as certain can be that increased carbon dioxide, from whatever source, does cause increased temperatures. If a consequence of the rise in temperature causing is that still more carbon dioxide is released, so leading to still greater increases in temperature, we're in even worse trouble than ever.

When you're in a hole the thing to do is stop digging - even if the hole was there before you fell into it.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 04:38 AM

"They said that CO2 only forms 0.03 of 1% of air, and the fossil fuel proportion is very much smaller still.
Water vapour is an infinitely more important greenhouse gas."

Well it has been found that the percentage of Oxygen (O2) is decreasing. Logical, if the amount of CO2 is rising.... :-)

Now, if you want to panic...

:-)

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bagpuss
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 05:41 AM

Some good links with comment on the programme:

http://www.realclimate.org/

http://www.badscience.net/
(scroll down for 2 items in the blog), and the forum is also an excellent read. In one thread someone points out that the graphs used in the programme have been distorted.

This article is particularly good:

http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/DamonLaut2004.pdf

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bagpuss
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 05:45 AM

On the final link, look particularly at the graph on page 2.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 06:43 AM

Re the article in EOS,

http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/DamonLaut2004.pdf

The authors only use the solar cycle length based on sunspot minima and maxima for a variation of solar flux. There is NO consideration of total solar flux change over time, which appears to be cyclic over a much longer baseline, nor the effects of that increased solar flux upon the other planets, as has been shown by climactic change on both Mars and Jupiter. Nor is there any consideration of data before 1860, or after 1990. Thus, the conclusion that "the current event is unique and obviously of anthropogenic origin" is neither proven nor reasonable to assume correct.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 06:56 AM

Sort of like measuring the light from just before dawn to sunrise, and then declaring that the increase of light is caused by human efforts.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bagpuss
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 07:02 AM

And see whar Carl Wunsch makes of his own participation in the programme:


http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/papersonline/channel4response

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 07:10 AM

" for example,
I thought more attention should be paid to sea level rise, which
is ongoing and unstoppable and carries a real threat of acceleration,"

"The scientific subjects described in the email,
and in the previous and subsequent telephone conversations, are complicated,
worthy of exploration, debate, and an educational effort with the
public. Hence my willingness to participate."

"I spent hours in the interview describing
many of the problems of understanding the ocean in climate change,
and the ways in which some of the more dramatic elements get
exaggerated in the media relative to more realistic, potentially
truly catastrophic issues, such as
the implications of the oncoming sea level rise. As I made clear, both in the
preliminary discussions, and in the interview itself, I believe that
global warming is a very serious threat that needs equally serious
discussion"

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 07:11 AM

btw... 100!

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 09:10 AM

I think the first thing Wunsch write there was more apposite than the ones bearded bruce picked: "I believe that climate change is real, a major threat, and almost surely has a major human-induced component."

And later on, this : "Fundamentally, I am the one who was swindled...I thought I was being asked to appear in a film that would discuss in a balanced way the complicated elements of understanding of climate change - in the best traditions of British television. Is there any indication in the email evident to an outsider that the product would be so tendentious, so unbalanced?"

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 09:17 AM

McGrath,

You brought out the point that he was not happy with the show- I was bringing up the point that he was aware of the dangers of ignoring the real dangers of Global Warming.

To worry about the man-made contribution WITHOUT any concern for the real effects that all the controls in the world will have no effect upon is like worrying about the oil level in a car while it is rolling off a cliff: YES, you should worry, but AFTER you have stopped the car- ie, dealt with the serious effects that will not go away just because you have got the proper lubricant.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Wolfgang
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 09:51 AM

Bagpuss's link is a lamentably typical example how journalists abuse scientists for one-sided propaganda. They (some journalists) care for headlines and not for truth. In the climate debate, too often the loudest get the headlines. And in the public debate, all the "could's" and "if's" disappear.

I have not seen the TV-film, but it seems to be entertaining at the expense of being extremely one-sided. A government warning "the following is for your entertainement, if you want to be informed look for other sources" should have preceeded its airing.

Global warming is real, and human activity contributes to it. How much is still a question of debate. As a Green voter, I understand the motivation of alarmists to paint the future in the darkest possible coulours, but as a scientist I am appaled by the extremists at both sides of the debate.

The graphs I have linked to show that what happens now is still very small compared to events on which we have no influence. If you read Foolestroupe's link you'll see (whether you are convinced by the the particular scenario or not) that any supervolcano explosion or asteroid impact will have a much larger influence than all our activity could ever have.

At the British coastline one can see a "high water mark" some dozen feet above today's sea level. Sea levels have been dramatically higher and lower than today in earth history. What we do now is a small push in one direction. But it is worth considering whether we want go on pushing or not. Using other forms of energy or reducing energy consumption is also a worthwhile aim for reasons that have nothing to do with climate (health, oil reserves, political dependencies etc.).

I wish we'd do more to prevent CO2 increase but I'm not much worried about global warming. These processes are so slow that we have enough time to react. A German climate scientist said recently at a conference that we should react until the end of the century which is a long time. Any thermonuclear war that is not strictly local during that time might have a larger impact on world climate. This is a scenario which worries me much more.

One should never forget the difference between data and model predictions. The data show a temperature increase which is still not really big. The bleak warnings come from model predictions and I have learned not to trust such predictions. Within the last decade there have been many conflicting predictions what global warming would do for Europe. After a series of predictions that the gulf stream stopping would put an icecap on the Northern half of Europe (which would let the sea level fall by the way), the now newest has Europe getting hotter. Sorry, but when I am reading these largely differing predictions in quick succession I just can't take the newest of them as serious as the authors would like me to.

There are good reasons to think about our way of energy production and to change it, but there is no reason for any panic.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 09:59 AM

"Any thermonuclear war that is not strictly local during that time might have a larger impact on world climate. This is a scenario which worries me much more."


Agreed. And does anyone think that telling nuclear nations such as India and China to cut back on CO2 emmissions will help the situation?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 01:44 PM

It makes sense to try to deal with the stuff we actually can deal with, such as the contribution human beings are actually making. If changes in the Sun's activities are part of it, there's not a lot we can do about that right now.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 01:49 PM

"If changes in the Sun's activities are part of it, there's not a lot we can do about that right now. "

We SHOULD be relocating coastal populations, and preparing for the change in climate: Instead, we bitch and moan about how everything would be just fine if ( insert hated country) would just comply with the Kyoto accords.

And NOTHING is being done to DEAL with the effects that WILL be coming along, regardless of what we "can" do about CO2 emmissions.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Dickey
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 02:02 PM

From a Rapt Audience, a Call to Cool the Hype

By WILLIAM J. BROAD
New York Times March 13, 2007

Hollywood has a thing for Al Gore and his three-alarm film on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,â€쳌 which won an Academy Award for best documentary. So do many environmentalists, who praise him as a visionary, and many scientists, who laud him for raising public awareness of climate change.

Don J. Easterbrook, a geology professor, has cited “inaccuraciesâ€쳌 in “An Inconvenient Truth.â€쳌

But part of his scientific audience is uneasy. In talks, articles and blog entries that have appeared since his film and accompanying book came out last year, these scientists argue that some of Mr. Gore’s central points are exaggerated and erroneous. They are alarmed, some say, at what they call his alarmism.

“I don’t want to pick on Al Gore,â€쳌 Don J. Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told hundreds of experts at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. “But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data.â€쳌

More here

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: MaineDog
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 02:31 PM

Seems to me we pulled out of an ice age about 11000 years ago without having to increase the burning of fossil fuels by using automobiles and power plants. How did we do it?
MD

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Ebbie
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 02:54 PM

re the small temperature changes - it is projected to be 1 + Celsius higher within the next 25 years - I read that the difference between today's temperatures and the last ice age is only 5 degrees C.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 02:55 PM

Well, that's true enough bruce - it's pretty evident that whatever we do about cutting down carbon pollution, it's too late to avoid some pretty hairy problems coming up in a few years with coastal areas flooded and so forth. Anyone who's been suggesting that cutting down really significantly on emissions now can solve everything is just peddling lies.

But there really does appear pretty overwhelming evidence that if we don't cut down the effects are liable to be a whole lot worse than if we do succeed in achieving that.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 02:57 PM

Please see

"Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Wolfgang - PM
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 09:42 AM "

For plots of temperature over time.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST,petr
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 02:57 PM

anyone agree that telling nuclear nations such as the United States to cut back on C02 emmissions will help the situation?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 03:01 PM

Help how? It will NOT prevent global warming; It WILL alter the ability to deal with the problems that global warming creates.

It may be a good idea, for various reasons.

BUT IT WILL NOT STOP GLOBAL WARMING.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 05:38 PM

But not doing it will make things worse. To use your analogy bruce, if you need to stop a car, it's a good idea to take your foot of the accelerator pedal, even if you aren't too sure about the brakes working. It's not an either /or situation, it's both / and.

If your house is on fire you don't put it out by hosing it with petrol.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 06:00 PM

It's almost time for a few cool spinoff threads now, like....

"Democracy - the myth"
"A Just War - the myth"
"Objectivity - the myth"
"Truth in advertising - the myth"
"The War on Drugs - the myth"
"USA Department of Defence - the myth"
"Operation Iraqi Freedom - the myth"

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 06:32 PM

Folk music - the myth.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST,petr
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 07:39 PM

I just took your statement from above and subbed in US for India and China. (after all the bulk of the last 150years of industrial c02 came from the US and Europe)

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bagpuss
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 05:09 AM

From: http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2355956.ece

The real global warming swindle
A Channel 4 documentary claimed that climate change was a conspiratorial lie. But an analysis of the evidence it used shows the film was riddled with distortions and errors
By Steve Connor
Published: 14 March 2007
A Channel 4 documentary that claimed global warming is a swindle was itself flawed with major errors which seriously undermine the programme's credibility, according to an investigation by The Independent.

The Great Global Warming Swindle, was based on graphs that were distorted, mislabelled or just plain wrong. The graphs were nevertheless used to attack the credibility and honesty of climate scientists.

A graph central to the programme's thesis, purporting to show variations in global temperatures over the past century, claimed to show that global warming was not linked with industrial emissions of carbon dioxide. Yet the graph was not what it seemed.

Other graphs used out-of-date information or data that was shown some years ago to be wrong. Yet the programme makers claimed the graphs demonstrated that orthodox climate science was a conspiratorial "lie" foisted on the public.

Channel 4 yesterday distanced itself from the programme, referring this newspaper's inquiries to a public relations consultant working on behalf of Wag TV, the production company behind the documentary.

Martin Durkin, who wrote and directed the film, admitted yesterday that one of the graphs contained serious errors but he said they were corrected in time for the second transmission of the programme following inquiries by The Independent.

Mr Durkin has already been criticised by one scientist who took part in the programme over alleged misrepresentation of his views on the climate.

The main arguments made in Mr Durkin's film were that climate change had little if anything to do with man-made carbon dioxide and that global warming can instead be linked directly with solar activity - sun spots.

One of the principal supports for his thesis came in the form of a graph labelled "World Temp - 120 years", which claimed to show rises and falls in average global temperatures between 1880 and 2000.

Mr Durkin's film argued that most global warming over the past century occurred between 1900 and 1940 and that there was a period of cooling between 1940 and 1975 when the post-war economic boom was under way. This showed, he said, that global warming had little to do with industrial emissions of carbon dioxide.

The programme-makers labelled the source of the world temperature data as "Nasa" but when we inquired about where we could find this information, we received an email through Wag TV's PR consultant saying that the graph was drawn from a 1998 diagram published in an obscure journal called Medical Sentinel. The authors of the paper are well-known climate sceptics who were funded by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine and the George C Marshall Institute, a right-wing Washington think-tank.

However, there are no diagrams in the paper that accurately compare with the C4 graph. The nearest comparison is a diagram of "terrestrial northern hemisphere" temperatures - which refers only to data gathered by weather stations in the top one third of the globe.

However, further inquiries revealed that the C4 graph was based on a diagram in another paper produced as part of a "petition project" by the same group of climate sceptics. This diagram was itself based on long out-of-date information on terrestrial temperatures compiled by Nasa scientists.

However, crucially, the axis along the bottom of the graph has been distorted in the C4 version of the graph, which made it look like the information was up-to-date when in fact the data ended in the early 1980s.

Mr Durkin admitted that his graphics team had extended the time axis along the bottom of the graph to the year 2000. "There was a fluff there," he said.

If Mr Durkin had gone directly to the Nasa website he could have got the most up-to-date data. This would have demonstrated that the amount of global warming since 1975, as monitored by terrestrial weather stations around the world, has been greater than that between 1900 and 1940 - although that would have undermined his argument.

"The original Nasa data was very wiggly-lined and we wanted the simplest line we could find," Mr Durkin said.

The programme failed to point out that scientists had now explained the period of "global cooling" between 1940 and 1970. It was caused by industrial emissions of sulphate pollutants, which tend to reflect sunlight. Subsequent clean-air laws have cleared up some of this pollution, revealing the true scale of global warming - a point that the film failed to mention.

Other graphs used in the film contained known errors, notably the graph of sunspot activity. Mr Durkin used data on solar cycle lengths which were first published in 1991 despite a corrected version being available - but again the corrected version would not have supported his argument. Mr Durkin also used a schematic graph of temperatures over the past 1,000 years that was at least 16 years old, which gave the impression that today's temperatures are cooler than during the medieval warm period. If he had used a more recent, and widely available, composite graph it would have shown average temperatures far exceed the past 1,000 years.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bee
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 06:47 AM

"The original Nasa data was very wiggly-lined and we wanted the simplest line we could find," Mr Durkin said.

Yep. That's the honest way to present complex science data to the public. Have the graphics guy make it look neater.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 06:59 AM

If a 'real peer reviewed scientist' did that, he would be disgraced for 'tampering with the data' - if a journo or a 'pseudo-scientist'¹ does that, it gets headlines and is believed!


¹ Like Dr Singer - working² outside his 'field of expertise'.... :-)


² ... especially if their 'non-peer-reviewed' 'research' is funded by those know to have and agenda to destroy the credibility of the case against their financial interests!

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Stu
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 08:20 AM

The swindle in this case was the entire documentary. It was a misrepresentation of the facts and a distortion of the arguments - it wasn't too difficult to guess something was amiss with the entire documentary as it proceeded.

It's not an exaggeration to say this documentary has caused a stir amongst climate scientists who are angery their work is represented in such sensationalist terms - this is fine for Daily Mail readers, not so good for those after the truth.

So, here we go. Check this lot out:

The article in The Guardian that gives an overview on the problems with the documentary.

On the subject of the graphs, here's a start on the Bad Science forum with discussions on the presentation of data in the graphs, and some more discussion on the erroneous graphs here.

Information on some of the experts here. This thread includes a post from one of the scientists misrepresented on the programme.

More information of flaws in the programme addressed at www.realclimate.org.

bearedbruce - A look at the Wikipedia entry on Abdusamatov makes interesting reading, He is not a climatologist but a mathematician and physicist. Using other planets as models for what is happening on the Earth (and vice-versa) is not good science. Although it's helpful to compare data on other planets systems on theose worlds invariably behave very differently to systems on this one - there may be parallels but often these are because the differnet systems demonstrate some convergence rather that a straight reproduction of a particular behaviour or result.

It is outrageous that science is misrepresented in this way. The result of programmes like this is to give justification to the selfish idiots who tool around in their Humvees and SUVs in between taking too many plane flights and leaving their AV setup on standby permanently.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Wolfgang
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 08:46 AM

State of fear at least was sold and advertised as a novel.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Wolfgang
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 09:40 AM

Good selection of links, Stigweard. That should be the final word about this particular programme.

But I disagree with two minor points.

(1) It is quite misleading to merely say about Abdusamatov he is not a climatologist but a mathematician and physicist. He works on solar physics and that is clearly a part of climatology. What people have studied is less relevant than what they work in.
(2) Using other planets as models for what is happening on the Earth (and vice-versa) is not good science. Sure it is. I bet you wouldn't write that if a scientist uses the Venus atmosphere and temperature as an argument to warn about the danger of a runaway greenhouse effect.

BTW, selfish idiots is the perfect preparation for a change of minds in the people one discusses with.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Dickey
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 10:16 AM

Is the United States the biggest oil consuming nation in the world?

It ranks 17 th at .0677 barrels per day per capita, just above Saudi Arabia at .0672 barrels per day per capita and Canada at .0668 barrels per day per capita.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 10:45 AM

'per capita' is an interesting way of measuring, but hardly addresses the question of which nations use the bulk of the oil.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Wolfgang
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 11:06 AM

I think that 'per capita' is actually a fairly good way to describe oil consumption.

If one looks who ranks before the USA in that measure one sees that nearly all of these countries are tiny island countries or oil producers.

I don't know how the per capita oil consumption is determined, but if transport (of people and goods) to and from the country is in the calculation I am not surprised that small island countries have a very high per capita consumption. And that those who sit on the oil and for whom oil is extremely cheap have no incentive to use anything else to produce energy I also find unsurprising.

If one looks at larger industialised countries without (much of) own oil, those that are comparable to the USA, one finds that roughly the per capita consumption in the USA is twice as much.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST,petr
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 11:19 AM

thats because in oil producing nations gas is so cheap
people dont even turn off their engines..

my mechanic who just came back from his pilgrimage to Mecca
was in a hotel in Saudi Arabia and went outside for a smoke
(even though the security guard said its ok to smoke inside)
all the cars that were outside the hotel were idling and he asked one driver if he could shut the engine off -- the guy said no way man its too expensive! (ie. wear and tear)

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: John Hardly
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 12:40 PM

Jeez, Wolfgang, where were you during this discussion?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Stu
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 01:00 PM

"He works on solar physics and that is clearly a part of climatology"

I disagree. Solar physics is the study of the Sun, it's climate and atmosphere, not the climate of earth. Of course the Sun influences our climate, but though a Solar physicist can make pronouncements on the workings of the earth's climate, he ain't no expert. A different discipline entirely.

"I bet you wouldn't write that if a scientist uses the Venus atmosphere and temperature as an argument to warn about the danger of a runaway greenhouse effect."

I certainly would - I am keeping an open mind on the subject, and anyway I suspect the analogy is flawed. Different planets, different variables driving the climate systems. However, you could say Venus was an example of an extreme greenhouse effect.

"BTW, selfish idiots is the perfect preparation for a change of minds in the people one discusses with. "

Point taken, but bollocks to them all the same. I am not pussyfooting around people who ignore the common good for their own selfish ends - after all they're not pussyfooting around everyone else are they?

And let's face it, they won't gladly take advice from the world's scientific community, what hope from a pompus fart like me?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Wolfgang
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 01:51 PM

Wolfgang, where were you during (the Inconvenient Truth) discussion?

Reading. I read more threads than I post to.

Climatology (the short Britannica online definition with my selective emphasis)

Branch of atmospheric science concerned with describing climate and analyzing the causes and practical consequences of climatic differences and changes. Climatology treats the same atmospheric processes as meteorology, but it also seeks to identify slower-acting influences and longer-term changes, including the circulation of the oceans, the concentrations of atmospheric gases, and the small but measurable variations in the intensity of solar radiation.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Wolfgang
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 02:21 PM

Forget the last paragraph of my post. I am guilty of at least a very ambiguous way of saying what I meant:

He works on solar physics and that is clearly a part of climatology

I did mean with "that" his work within solar physics, but the reading that "that" refers to "solar physics" is the dominant reading for "that" comes directly after "solar physics". My mistake. No, I don't think solar physics is a part of climatology.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Dickey
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 02:32 PM

'per capita' is an interesting way of measuring, but hardly addresses the question of which nations use the bulk of the oil.

Do you want nations to limit their population in order to satisfy environmentalists?

The US is rankes 154th in birthrate

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST, Ebbie
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 04:03 PM

It always astonishes me when 'environmentalist' is used pejoratively. It is as though some people don't understand that the environment is where we have to live; it would seem that ALL of us would be interested in having that environment be as sustainably livable as possible.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 05:16 PM

We insist on living on this planet as if we are planning to live on another very soon... :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 07:04 PM

I suppose it's really another rather more extreme example of "spending the kid's inheritance" - after all we won't be around to see the consequences of our activities and our inaction. What has posterity ever done for us?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 10:12 PM

"Do you want nations to limit their population in order to satisfy environmentalists?"

why yes, as a matter of fact, I do. Birth control by lottery, I'd think would be the fairest. Thanks for asking.
   Do I think it will happen? Oh, maybe when the famine lasts for 5-6 years in a row....

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Mar 07 - 10:52 PM

I finally saw An Inconvenient Truth

There is also a 20 minute epilog to this documentary with more "Gore" and "car chases" that aired on Cinamax.

7 years ago I objected with most of what little hawk said. Now I agree with most of what he says.

Who changed?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bagpuss
Date: 15 Mar 07 - 04:11 AM

I find AGW a really easy argument to have. For every point someone makes, I know I can look up a well thought out evidence based summary at a single website.

Re the increase in solar activity BB keeps talking about:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/recent-warming-but-no-trend-in-galactic-cosmic-rays/

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Wolfgang
Date: 15 Mar 07 - 08:01 AM

That site is a really good source for arguments and articles about climate but I dislike the way they treat dissenting opinions and how they use ad personam arguments. There's too much emotion for me to trust them completely.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Mar 07 - 09:15 AM

from that site:

"The fact that there is little recent trend in the GCR and solar activity does not mean that solar activity is unimportant for earth's climate. There are a large number of recent peer-reviewed scientific publications demonstrating how solar activity can affect our climate (Benestad, 2002), such as how changes in the UV radiation following the solar activity affect the stratospheric ozone concentrations (1999) and how earth's temperatures respond to changes in the total solar irradiance (Meehl, 2003). Furthermore, the lack of trend in GCR does not falsify the mechanism proposed by Svensmark, i.e. that GCR act as a trigger for cloud condensation nuclei and are related to the amount of low clouds. As for this latter issue, the jury is still out."


The site starts with the assumption that the Cosmic rays WILL reflect the increase in soalr radiation:

"There is little evidence for a connection between solar activity (as inferred from trends in galactic cosmic rays) and recent global warming. Since the paper by Friis-Christensen and Lassen (1991), there has been an enhanced controversy about the role of solar activity for earth's climate. Svensmark (1998) later proposed that changes in the inter-planetary magnetic fields (IMF) resulting from variations on the sun can affect the climate through galactic cosmic rays (GCR) by modulating earth's cloud cover. Svensmark and others have also argued that recent global warming has been a result of solar activity and reduced cloud cover. Damon and Laut have criticized their hypothesis and argue that the work by both Friis-Christensen and Lassen and Svensmark contain serious flaws. For one thing, it is clear that the GCR does not contain any clear and significant long-term trend (e.g. Fig. 1, but also in papers by Svensmark)."

Thus, the increase, or lack thereof of solar activity is not proven nor disproven by this paper.


And you fail to account for the present climactic changes to both Mars and Jupiter at this time- Are you claiming that the Martians are also burning too much oil?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Mar 07 - 12:31 PM

As sciences go, this attempting to graph, predict and explain long-term climate changes is still pretty new. We can debate the details as we get more & more data, but the fact remains that ANY attempt to reduce our impact on the complex of systems that sustain us seems to be a good idea. What we do NOT want to do is base decisions strictly on political or economic special interests.
   There is no doubt that there are cyclical natural forces that we cannot easily control, and thus we need to take special care to adjust to them...(like NOT building in flood plains or on beaches!). It IS the case, however, that special interests push pretty hard for the 'right' to build wherever they think they can sell...and to fish, cut, burn, dig, pave and breed without restraints. These people have little concept of maintaining a "margin for error" ...and in the case of Earth resources and living space, it is BEYOND foolhardy not to stay within a safety margin.

so....go on...compare graphs and nitpick over precise melting rates of various glaciers and ice sheets or influence of cosmic rays and solar radiation...but we need to OPERATE as if the most pessimistic predictions 'might' be true....then if we were too conservative, we can shrug. But if we were way too optimistic, it's gonna be awkward.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Mar 07 - 12:34 PM

"but we need to OPERATE as if the most pessimistic predictions 'might' be true....then if we were too conservative, we can shrug. But if we were way too optimistic, it's gonna be awkward. "


Agreed- which is why the assumption that curbing emissions will solve the problem should not be assumed to be correct.

If the steps are taken to deal with the effects of GW, then we can work on the emissions and other controlable aspects- but NOT in place of dealing with the ( highly likely) effects that will occur regardless of who wins the next election.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Stu
Date: 15 Mar 07 - 12:50 PM

"And you fail to account for the present climactic changes to both Mars and Jupiter at this time- Are you claiming that the Martians are also burning too much oil?"

Using other planet's climate systems as an analogy for our own is not a good idea. Whilst I see what you are getting at bb (the Sun's warming Mars and Jupiter so it must be warming us). Your earlier links to the Jupiter story in no way points to solar activity being a catalyst for climate change on the Red Planet. The article clearly states "Little is known about how storms form on the giant planet." If Jovian weather is a mystery, then it's climate is even more of an unknown.

In the case of the Martian warming, the Nasa pages simply state warming appears to be happening on Mars - the reason for this is not clear (though the planet's wobbles seem to be favourite at the moment) at all as we understand the climate on Mars less than we do our own. The final article quotes our old friend Abdussamatov (the Solar physicist and not climatologist, terrestrial or planetary) and as the article states if you read further than the first page, climatologists dismiss his ideas altogether.

Of course the main reason other scientists think Abdussamatov's argument is complete bollocks is because if Martian ice is being warmed by Solar radiation it is releasing C02 into the atmosphere as it melts, speeding up the martian greenhouse effect - precisely the same process Abdussamatov dismisses as being the cause of climate change on Earth.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 15 Mar 07 - 12:53 PM

My I suggest not using the letters GW here, as mixing up 'George W' and 'global warming' isn't useful....

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Wolfgang
Date: 15 Mar 07 - 01:05 PM

Nah. The most pessimistic prediction would be that we have already passed the point of no return to the region of positive feedback and the planet is on its way to become a second Venus soon.

Operating with this prediction we should just go on with business as usual and enjoy the last couple of decades.

More seriously, I strongly disagree with the "we can shrug" part. The more realistic (than the above) very pessimistic predictions would require that the human population should be reduced very much and that our way of living should be changed dramatically and very quickly in many respects, transport, food production and all that. If these measures are applied very quickly, the consequences would likely be worldwide mass deaths by starvation and cold. That is not what I consider "we can shrug" off in case of error.

It is in principle wise in my opinion to err a bit more on the pessimistic side, but what we can do always comes with costs and not only with benefits. So I'd do what can be done with low costs (better isolation, less fuel cars, increasing costs of transport even if the British Mudcatters shout at me) and has also additional benefits like independence from OPEC.

As a political leader I'd assume
(1) that the middle of the road predictions are the best guess and
(2) that the most extreme models that require immediate and drastic measures are plainly wrong.

That has two advantages:
(1) If I err on (1) it doesn't matter much if I am right on (2) which is very likely, for more drastic steps can still be implemented some decades later with better data.
(2) This is the only policy the population will tolerate without a revolution. Any much more drastic policy could only be implemented by brute force and I'm not sure the police and army would follow me.

Even if my policy was wrong and the correct action would be a policy that leads to 1/3 of the wordl population dying within a short time, only a brute force world dictatorship could make it at high costs.

This is actually discussed among some German environmentalists, mainly from the political right. We call them ecofascists.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Mar 07 - 01:16 PM

"Your earlier links to the Jupiter story in no way points to solar activity being a catalyst for climate change on the Red Planet. The article clearly states "Little is known about how storms form on the giant planet." If Jovian weather is a mystery, then it's climate is even more of an unknown."

It is reasonable to assume that, even if we do not understand the exact mechanism of solar flux upon the red spot, the present change ( after 400 years of stability) is indicative of a climactic shift.

1. We know that solar flux has an effect upon climate.
2. We know that climactic changes are occurring on ( at least) Earth, Mars, and Jupiter.
3. The common factor to the planets is solar flux. Others MAY exist, but solar-system wide changes in universal constants and such have not been proven.
4. To postulate that the solar flux is NOT responsible for climactic change on multiple planets at the same time which do not share an industrial civilisation nor population is NOT a reasonable assumption.


Of course, it could all just be coincidence. Just as the increase of atmospheric CO2 on Earth( for whatever reason) and the increase in average temperature could just be coincidence.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Stu
Date: 15 Mar 07 - 01:59 PM

"It is reasonable to assume that, even if we do not understand the exact mechanism of solar flux upon the red spot"
Where is there any indication that the change in the red spot of Jupiter is anything to do with the Sun? It might indicate Jovian climate change but please post a ref where it states it has anything to do the Sun.

"1. We know that solar flux has an effect upon climate."
It's not unreasonable to suggest that there are other variables affecting the climate as well as C02, but some of the data hte Solar theory is based on is suspect - check out this paper in pdf format.

"2. We know that climactic changes are occurring on ( at least) Earth, Mars, and Jupiter."
So? The climates on every planet and all of the moons with atmospheres are in constant climatic change - always have been and always will be. This is not an argument in favour of the solar hypothesis driving the current increase in global mean temperature of the Earth.

"3. The common factor to the planets is solar flux. Others MAY exist, but solar-system wide changes in universal constants and such have not been proven."
Others do exist - how about the position of the entire solar system as it rotates around the galactic centre? We pass through dust clouds, supernovae debris etc. None proven, but all possible influences on the climates of the planets. Are the atmospheres of all the planets and their moons warming? Refs to articles/papers on this subject would be nice.

"4. To postulate that the solar flux is NOT responsible for climactic change on multiple planets at the same time which do not share an industrial civilisation nor population is NOT a reasonable assumption."
Neither is saying it isn't (especially using a non-existent "all the planets are warming so it ain't our fault" theory). I don't know whether it is or not - but current scientific analysis of the available data indicates the current rise in global temperatures is due to the increase in anthropgenic C02.

"Just as the increase of atmospheric CO2 on Earth( for whatever reason) and the increase in average temperature could just be coincidence."
Might be, but the guys who job it is to know seem to have a different opinion. For more info on climate change denial, including rebuttals of the main points of the programme and some information on some of the contributors, have a look here.

Still, either way the results are the same. We need to stop pumping C02 into the atmosphere real quick, or the kids will be cleaning up the mess.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Mar 07 - 02:03 PM

"We need to stop pumping C02 into the atmosphere real quick, or the kids will be cleaning up the mess. "


WRONG_

Whether we stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere or not, the kids will be cleaning up the mess. THAT is my point. THE CLIMATE CHANGE WILL OCCUR, as it has in the past BEFORE the industrial age, even if we stop all CO2 emissions.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Stu
Date: 15 Mar 07 - 02:16 PM

Sorry bb.

It's just in your previous posts you seemed to be arguing in favour of the Channel 4 documentary that said the Sun was responsible for the current rise in global temperatures rather than man pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere causing the rise.

I was wrong. My mistake. You are right.

Did you know birds are actually dinosaurs according to phlyogenetic analysis?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Donuel
Date: 15 Mar 07 - 02:17 PM

Yes bruce, Mars is getting warmer.

THis entire segment of our Galactic spiral arm is entering a new region of space.

Weather ain't just down here but the CO2 we make down here is paramount

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Mar 07 - 02:37 PM

No, you had it right. I believe, from the evidence available, that global warming is real, and occurring, and is part of the nature of being on a planet of a variable star like the sun. CO2 MAY be contributing to it, but the climactic shift, from historical and pre-historical records ( ice cores, fossils, etc) will occur regardless of our efforts to reduce emissions. We may well want to reduce those emissions, but NOT with the belief that that would stop global warming.

The effect of a change in solar flux is illustrated by the climactic changes upon other planets of the same sun (which have totally different models, BUT still are heat-driven engines that react to the energy input into them). Should you show me evidence that other planets of other stars are showing similar climactic shifts, without a corresponding change in their star's flux, I will certainly consider other effects, such as galactic dust. But I will also not postulate LGM without further evidence of them.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Mar 07 - 02:43 PM

"Did you know birds are actually dinosaurs according to phlyogenetic analysis? "

Yes, I did know that.

So, what would dinosaur taste like?

Just like chicken?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Mar 07 - 05:05 PM

There is no doubt whatsoever that adding CO2 to the atmosphere has a greenhouse effect, that the amount of C O" in the atmosphere has increased considerably in recent history, and that there has been a degfree of global warming.

The only argument is about whether this is the primary cause for global warming, and whether human activity is te primary cause for the CO2 increase.

Whatever the truith of that, pretty obviously pumping massive quanitities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere seems a very bad idea in the circumstances

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 15 Mar 07 - 06:30 PM

"amount of low clouds"

Australian research is showing that clouds are getting higher.... certain little frogs need a certain amount of humidity to stay alive on mountains, and they are dying out lower down at a rate that has been shown.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Stu
Date: 16 Mar 07 - 04:29 AM

"I believe, from the evidence available, that global warming is real, and occurring, and is part of the nature of being on a planet of a variable star like the sun"

But where is your evidence for this? Have you read any of the links I put up? Show me where your evidence is - not those links to Jupiter and Mars you put up earlier - refer to my previous posts for the evidence on those sites. I need references and links bruce - show me the data and analysis. Show me the experts discussions.

"The effect of a change in solar flux is illustrated by the climactic changes upon other planets of the same sun (which have totally different models, BUT still are heat-driven engines that react to the energy input into them)"

You ain't listening mate. Show me the evidence I asked for in previous posts. What about the other planets. Show me where the evidence for the Sun heating Jupiter is.

I have presented plenty of evidence to show the case for current global warming is because of man pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It's all in the links in previous posts. Your single source for your 'solar flux' hypothesis is the link to the Abdussamatov article - his evidence was debunked convincingly by climatologists in the very same article. So show me another article that supports this theory.

Just repeating the same old line parrot-fashion does not make a convincing argument.

Not all extant dinosaurs do taste of chicken. Phasianus colchicus tastes just like pheasant.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 16 Mar 07 - 05:09 AM

In that case, chickens, lizards, and dinosaurs should all taste pretty much the same...

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 16 Mar 07 - 06:19 AM

"There is no doubt whatsoever that adding CO2 to the atmosphere has a greenhouse effect, that the amount of C O" in the atmosphere has increased considerably in recent history, and that there has been a degfree of global warming."

All true- but there have been periods of global warming before, with NO man-made CO2 emissions.


"The only argument is about whether this is the primary cause for global warming, and whether human activity is te primary cause for the CO2 increase."

Both questions are still in the range of "We don't know"



"Whatever the truith of that, pretty obviously pumping massive quanitities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere seems a very bad idea in the circumstances "

I NEVER said it was a GOOD idea. We should consider stopping it. BUT, we must have other considerations:

1. It WILL NOT STOP global warming.

2. The stopping of CO2 emissions may well destroy the industrial capability that we (mankind) need to SURVIVE the real global warming ( ie, climactic shift) that is taking place.

3. The focus on CO2 has been used by some as a smokescreen to ingore dealing withg the inevitable effects ( flooding, agricultural failure, species extinction) that WILL occur even after we STOP all CO2 emmissions.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Amos
Date: 16 Mar 07 - 08:01 AM

Earth bakes in hottest quarter on record
By Veronica Smith in Washington
March 16, 2007

THE Earth has just experienced its warmest December-February since records began 128 years ago, adding fire to global warming concerns.
A US government agency reported a record warm January worldwide pushed average temperatures to 0.72C above normal for the 20th Century.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said it was the highest average temperature for the period since records began in 1880.

The report came less than a month after a UN panel said that global warming was almost certainly caused by human activity and several governments and international bodies have sounded the alarm over the need to cut carbon emissions.

The El Nino phenomenon, an abnormal warming of surface ocean waters in the eastern Pacific, contributed to the chart-busting combined global land and ocean surface temperature, the NOAA said.

But El Nino rapidly weakened in February, as ocean temperatures in the central equatorial Pacific cooled more than 0.3C and were near average for the month.

Nevertheless, the ocean-surface temperature in the period tied for second warmest on record, the agency said, just 0.06C cooler than the record established during the very strong El Nino episode of 1997-1998.

The NOAA scientists pointed to a steady rise in temperatures in recent decades.

During the past century, global surface temperatures have increased at a rate near 0.06C per decade.

"But the rate of increase has been three times larger since 1976, or 0.18C per decade, with some of the largest temperature increases occurring in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere," they said.

For the United States alone, the December 2006-February 2007 winter season had an overall temperature that was close to average, while December was the 11th warmest on record.

The UN's Intergovernment Panel of Climate Change said last month that human activity was almost certain to blame for global warming and warned that the Earth's average surface temperature could rise between 1.1C and 6.4C by 2100.

Fossil fuel pollution will raise temperatures this century, worsen floods, droughts and hurricanes, melt polar ice and damage the climate system for a thousand years to come, the UN's top panel on climate change said.

---

Who don't know?


A

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 16 Mar 07 - 09:31 AM

One thing that makes me really wild is the fact that all pro green people insist that the way forward is to price motorists off the roads.

All very well if you have access to good public transport, and earn good money. Many of us do not.

I tow a caravan because it is the only holiday I can afford. I'd look bloody silly trying to do that without a car. I also live in a town where, unless you work for Townsend Hook, you have to leave the village. Public transport operates from 6.45am to approx 8.30pm, so no shiftwork, no early jobs, like cleaning, and no late jobs like bar or restaurant work, UNLESS you run a car.

So, all you environmentallists out there, tell me what I should do, and then answer one other very pertinent question.

Why should the poorest in the community always bear the brunt of this kind of situation. Why should we be pushed off th roads while that fat gutted pig Prescott will still use his two Jags because he's got pocketsful of our cash in the form of expenses.

What a wonderful Britain to live in. We'll all work on the nearest farm, never go more than fifty miles from our birthplace, and stand by the roadside doffing our flat caps when the squire goes past in his limo.

What century is this?

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 16 Mar 07 - 09:52 AM

Snapshots of a warming planet....

In 2005, a Russian research vessel was the first ship able to sail through arctic waters and reach the North Pole unhindered by pack ice.

The genocide in Darfur is likely the first human evidence of war based on diminishing farm land induced by global warming. Most low-lying land in Darfur was traditionally farmed by a family of tribes who tended the wells, springs, and soil. Nomadic Arabs would pass through these lands, using the water and grazing their herds on surrounding hillsides. For hundreds of years, this peaceful relationship existed. In the last few years, a warmer, dryer climate in Darfur has caused springs and wells to dry out and hillside grasses to disappear. This has resulted in the framers fencing off their lands for the first time ever, and to closing access to water from the Arabs. The reaction from the Arabs has been to band together to take these resources by force, and to begin to eliminate the private property of the farmers, and the farmers themselves. There is no racial difference in the Farmers and Arabs ; the genocide is based on a struggle for diminishing resources.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Wolfgang
Date: 16 Mar 07 - 12:42 PM

We Have to Take Away People's Fear of Climate Change (DER SPIEGEL interview with one of the leading German experts)

Unfortunately many scientists see themselves too much as priests whose job it is to preach moralistic sermons to people.

His opinion (also from other sources) in a nutshell: Global warming is real and unavoidable, man is responsible for most of it, we should better deal with the consequences, there's no need for panic and doomsday predictions.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 16 Mar 07 - 12:49 PM

There was an article in yesterday's (15.03.07) 'Independent' newspaper (UK) by the Climatologist, Carl Wunsch who was featured on the Channel 4 programme. The article is entitled, 'I should never have trusted Channel 4'.

Wunsch tells us that, "...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 opposed to the point I was making - which is that global warming is real and threatening."

He goes on to say that, " Channel 4 now says that they were making a film in a series of "polemics". There is nothing in the communication we had that suggested they were making a film that was one-sided, anti-educational, and misleading. I took them at face value - a great error."

Draw your own conclusions!!

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bee
Date: 16 Mar 07 - 01:09 PM

Don, I don't think 'all pro-greens' say anything of the sort. I live further in the boonies than you ever will, there is no public transit at all. It is Big Oil which is pricing you off the road, not the greens. Vehicles with better fuel economies, sensible alternate fuels (ethanol is a sham, IMO, as it is just as unfriendly to produce in the long run), more dependence on wind power, solar arrays, decentralization so jobs will be in more communities, not just in gigantic urban centres, good public transit, etc., are things more likely to be effective.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Mar 07 - 01:29 PM

Oh, ethanol is not a total sham, Bee...but it is certainly no major solution, as it just trades one resource abuse for another, but it may help bridge the gap if we treat it like that...a temporary crutch.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 17 Mar 07 - 07:25 AM

"there have been periods of global warming before, with NO man-made CO2 emissions"

During the Constantinan and medieval times - C6 & 1300s - there were massive die-offs of people - and their associated activities - and a corresponding drop in CO2 produced.

Volcanic activity has also happened -> massive global atmospheric disruptions -> human disruptions....


"3. The focus on CO2 has been used by some as a smokescreen to ignore dealing with the inevitable effects ( flooding, agricultural failure, species extinction) that WILL occur even after we STOP all CO2 emissions. "

By those like you apparently - those in the choir KNOW we DO have to deal with such resultant disasters whether we stop polluting now and have limited disasters, or push the limits further and have bigger disasters...



""The only argument is about whether this is the primary cause for global warming, and whether human activity is the primary cause for the CO2 increase."
Both questions are still in the range of "We don't know""


So the CONSERVATIVE decision is to just keep the accelerator pressed down hard to the floor, just in case there is no curve on the cliff road hidden in the fog ahead?...

Alleged 'Primary Cause' or not, human activity IS an input - welding the accelerator to the floor helps in what way?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bagpuss
Date: 19 Mar 07 - 11:49 AM

Durkin's response to reasonable criticism...

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Peace
Date: 19 Mar 07 - 01:42 PM

Well, whether or not the planet is warming, it's evident that the scientific and media communities are.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bill D
Date: 19 Mar 07 - 01:48 PM

LOL...

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 19 Mar 07 - 01:57 PM

Fooles,

I have given reasons why IMO the blind dash to limit CO2 is flawed.

I have NO PROBLEM if you want to reduce CO2, but I have given several examples of how THAT is presented AS A CURE to global warming, which I dispute.

"By those like you apparently - "

HARDLY. I claim that those who feel that Global warming is caused by C)2 emmissions are ignoring the significant effects of the variable solar flus. Your example is of no validity- LOOK at the graphs that Wolfgang presented earlier- WHEN did the climate shift? NOT at the time YOU state, nor do you account for the previous several hundred million years of data.



"So the CONSERVATIVE decision is to just keep the accelerator pressed down hard to the floor, just in case there is no curve on the cliff road hidden in the fog ahead?...

Alleged 'Primary Cause' or not, human activity IS an input - welding the accelerator to the floor helps in what way?"


False claim- I have said the problem with CO2 emission reduction is the claim that it will stop Global Warming, and reduce our ability to DEAL with Global Warming, NOT that we should continue unlimited production of CO2. Feel free to stop all CO2 emmissions- BUT PLAN to deal with the real effects of global warming REGARDLESS.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Peace
Date: 19 Mar 07 - 02:28 PM

Simple and easy to read.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 19 Mar 07 - 02:40 PM

Peace,

Thank you.

8-{E

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Stringsinger
Date: 19 Mar 07 - 03:00 PM

There are scientists who will question the idea that it's just the sun. They use dated stats to prove their point but not recent ones. There are stats that support that we are affecting the weather and climate change.

There is no consensus on this issue.

Frank Hamilton

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 19 Mar 07 - 03:05 PM

"There are scientists who will question the idea that it's just the sun. "



I DID NOT SAY "JUST"!!!!!!!!


For various reasons, GLOBAL WARMING WILL OCCUR. The solar flux is one componant- as is the Earth's orbit, polar icecap reflectivity, Natural and man-made particles and gases.

Wishing it away DOES NOT WORK!!!!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 19 Mar 07 - 03:15 PM

From the "contrails" thread blinky-

"It had been hypothesized that in regions such as the United States with heavy air traffic, contrails affected the weather, reducing solar heating during the day and radiation of heat during the night by increasing the albedo. The suspension of air travel for three days in the United States after September 11, 2001 provided an opportunity to test this hypothesis. Measurements did show that without contrails the local diurnal temperature range (difference of day and night temperatures) was about 1 degree Celsius higher than immediately before;[3] however, it has also been suggested that this was due to unusually clear weather during the period.[4]"


CURE for Global Warming! Just increase the air traffic world-wide to levels like those over the US.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST, Ebbie
Date: 19 Mar 07 - 04:34 PM

OK,let's say that tha article Peace linked to is right- it sounds knowledgeable, although I don't like its occasional grammatical lapses such as using "lay" for lie and "it's" for you know what - it is high time that we started adapting to the changes. I see no reason for anyone to deny that on a local level events are deteriorating dramatically and I think it is entirely possible that there is a tipping point at which conditions become unsustainable very quickly.

So how do we adapt? Do we let nature take its course, do we give up on and abandon arid continents and lands and their populations? Do we let large animals like polar bears die?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST,petr
Date: 19 Mar 07 - 07:31 PM

the article states that Stephen Schneider predicted global cooling
due to industrial pollution. In fact he was right about that one too.
Its called global dimming, and scientists noticed a change in the few days after 9/11 when there were no contrails (it was actually hotter during the day) so ironically, reduced industrial pollution over the last 30years or so has actually lessened the global warming...

anyone commenting on past ice ages and solar flux etc. sure the climate has changed in the past ,except over thousands of years, however has there been such a huge increase of c02 in such a short time as in the past century. As for the cost to the economy of reducing green house gases - Germany has been able to implement Kyoto compliance without a huge cost to its economy and it is still paying huge amounts of money to support the former East Germany..

as far as the cost - I dont see anyone worrying about the US military budget (bigger than the next 10 biggest nations combined)

the fact is the writing is on the wall even in the US - the energy companies know there will be carbon trading, and requirements for green or alternative energy, even if it is to reduce dependence on the middle east.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 19 Mar 07 - 10:48 PM

BB

You have once again, cleverly misrepresented my post of 17 Mar 07 - 07:25 AM - I agreed thatthere are OTHER inputs to global warming - which seems to be YOUR sole argument...

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 06:18 AM

"it sounds knowledgeable, although I don't like its occasional grammatical lapses such as using "lay" for lie and "it's" for you know what - it is high time that we started adapting to the changes."


1. THAT is probable cause to think that the person writing it had a scientifice, rather than literary, background.

2. WHAT I HAVE BEEN SAYING!!!!!!!!


"You have once again, cleverly misrepresented my post of 17 Mar 07 - 07:25 AM - I agreed thatthere are OTHER inputs to global warming - which seems to be YOUR sole argument... "

Fooles,

You have NOT read my post- MY arguement is that the efforts to LIMIT CO2 emmissions are being presented as a CURE for what will occur regardless. When the global warming DOES cuase problems, there will have been NO effort to deal with it, because "Kyoto" "solved" the problem.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: bubblyrat
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 07:01 AM

Of course, it could just be that there really IS a God, and that He is trying to tell us something !!! I am not a religious man myself, but in my 60 years on this Earth, I have learned NOT to put all my trust and belief in science !!

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bee
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 08:22 AM

Beardedbruce, hardly anyone thinks Kyoto will 'solve the problem'. The point is to stop making the problem worse, while searching diligently for a better scientific understanding of all the influences on earth's climate. If the house is on fire, what sane person throws gasoline on it?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 08:25 AM

If a house is on fire, what sane person pisses on it, while ignoring the screams of the children inside?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST,petr
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 10:27 AM

95% of the scientific climate community disagree with you.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 12:49 PM

The idea that trying to bring ourselves into harmony with the environment is too expensive rings hollow when you examine the matter. For example, American automobile manufacturers insist that making smaller, more environmentally friendly autos is too costly, and besides, the American consumer doesn't want them. This flies in the face of the facts that General Motors and Ford are having to cut back and lay thousands of people off, and Chrysler is seriously thinking of simply shutting its doors because of backed up inventory—SUVs sitting on showroom floors and in storage that no one wants—while Toyota and Honda, who make small, fuel efficient cars, are swamping them out in sales. Huge numbers of American car buyers are willing to put themselves on a waiting list for three, four, six months to get a Toyota Prius or Honda Insight. Hybrids and other fuel-efficient cars can't be made fast enough to meet the demand for them.

Being environmentally friendly is just good business. But apparently there are a lot of American manufacturers who are not good businessmen.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST,Ignoramus
Date: 20 Mar 07 - 03:20 PM

I'd love to leave my carbon footprint on Tony Bliars arse!

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 09:31 AM

"Being environmentally friendly is just good business. But apparently there are a lot of American manufacturers who are not good businessmen."

Lots of Aussie W*ankers too...

Look up a company called Suntech. Started by a Chinese guy who loved Australia so much he took out citizenship (still has it!) and discovered several patented things on solar cells while working in Australia. The w*nkers refused to let him develop the technology commercially by manufacturing in China and was laughed at, so he moved to China - with $3million seed capital, he now has a $6billion company and has $3billion personal assets after less than 10 years. he makes solar sells, exported world wide - the Aussie w*nkers have now licenced the patents he developed to a german company... :-) It could have been an Aussie company rather than a Chinese company...

He now is looking at manufacturing in Australia - cheap pure sand - cheap Tassie power, good engineers - and eventually wants to shift Suntech from a manufacturer, to a power generating company. After all Kodak made far more money (for a while) from film than cameras...

He insists that all of his 3,000 employees watch "Saint Al's" movie - he will have 5,000 employees next year...

He sees his life as a 'mission to save the planet' rather than just getting rich...

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 10:42 AM

"Being environmentally friendly is just good business. But apparently there are a lot of American manufacturers who are not good businessmen."

Statements like this tend to assume that your average businessman is a sane, rational human being. If there is one thing that 38 years in industry has taught me it is that many of them are nothing of the sort! And the further up the managerial ladder you go the more arbitrary and egotistical they seem to get. It beats me that ANY modern company makes any money if their chief executives are anything like some of the psychopathic wackos that I have met!

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bill D
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 12:10 PM

You have to remember that the guys designing and marketing vehicles are also driving them....and most of them can afford to drive 'almost' anything they wish....so it's likely that production of SUVs and such is not totally controlled by 'normal' consumer wishes.

   I really doubt the masses of folks picketed G.M. and Ford, demanding gas-guzzling, polluting monsters. We really need stronger regulations about fuel economy and vehicle size to gradually bring down the total use of fossil fuels, aiming toward alternate ways of powering vehicles. I am not sure price of fuel will do it.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 05:03 PM

"By those like you apparently - those in the choir KNOW we DO have to deal with such resultant disasters whether we stop polluting now and have limited disasters, or push the limits further and have bigger disasters..."


Well, Gore for one is certainly not in YOUR choir.


"Gore -- who is one of voters' top choices for the Democratic presidential nomination even though he says he's not running -- implored lawmakers to adopt a list of policy prescriptions
***************TO STOP GLOBAL WARMING.********************

Fresh off a triumphant Academy Awards appearance in which his climate change documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" won two Oscars, Gore drew overflow crowds as he testified before House and Senate panels about a "true planetary emergency" ******* IF CONGRESS FAILS TO ACT.************ (Read more about Gore's Oscar-night speech)

Gore advised lawmakers to cut carbon dioxide and other warming gases 90 percent by 2050 ******************TO AVOID***************
a crisis. Doing that, he said, will require a ban on any new coal-burning power plants -- a major source of industrial carbon dioxide -- that lack state-of-the-art controls to capture the gases."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/03/21/gore.ap/index.html

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bill D
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 05:30 PM

so, Bruce...a slight change of phrasing, being sure to avoid 'stop' and 'avoid' and being sure to use 'reduce' and 'combat' might help reduce the use of asterisks?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 05:42 PM

Bill,

The presentation is being made that cutting co2 emmissions WILL STOP global warming.


THAT is what I was told "ain't so" several times, when I commented on it.

Yes, telling the real truth about it would be useful.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 07:51 PM

I believe "Saint Al" is being misrepresented - he is trying to stop only part of 'global warming' - the percentage that is clearly admitted to be man produced, quite a different thing from trying to stop it all - and doing that will reduce the tendency for global warming to rapidly get out of control - no matter what the cause...

I get the impression that some contributers here, while perhaps not so stupid as to miss the finer points of difference, are deliberately (or perhaps so dumb as to do it unconsciously) trying to muddy the waters so that those who have not yet worked it out for themselves can happily say "It's all too complicated for me - so I'll just keep on the way I am - my little bit won't make any difference!"

I note that the push for all governments to ban incandescent light bulbs is now gaining strength worldwide. There are good arguments for certain uses of incandescent technology in appropriate place - I agree that domestic use in the home is not the best place for them, but incandescents are available for certain uses (such as dimming, projection etc) and in many cases, there is no plug in equivalent, or indeed any appropriate replacement in other technology, such as in colour temperature related applications. 'Halogen' lamps are incandescents too - and will be banned under the current proposals.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 08:00 PM

Well we just had Mr Brown's last budget as chancellor of the exchequer, and once again the bastard has performed his conjuring trick of giving and taking away in one movement.

First analysis suggests that the poorest will get considerably poorer, the middle class will gain, and the rich will lose a tiny amount. Socialism at work again, New Labour Style.

The main problem for me is that I now have a car which will shortly carry a road fund licence burden I cannot afford, and which I cannot sell for the same reason.

When, if ever, will our so called government recognise that for some people, a large car is a necessity. There should be discounts, or even exemptions, where overriding need can be demonstrated.

Perhaps Prescott could be persuaded to give up one of his Jags?...Naaaahh, I thought not.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 08:07 PM

The way to stop ALL global warming is simple. The USA, Russia, Israel, the UK, France, China, India, and Pakistan must pool all their nuclear weapons and place them at a prearranged location to be agreed on by all participants.......like.....hmmm....Belgium? Well, no.... Las Vegas? Worth thinking about.

Well, anyway, they all agree on a location, okay? Then they set off all the nukes simultaneously at the right moment which should be sufficient to jar this planet out of its present orbit and move it a bit farther out from the sun. The planet will cool down almost immediately.

Plus there will be a nuclear winter afterward which will add to the cooling effect.

End of global warming.

It's so simple, I'm surprised that no one else has thought of it.

It would also achieve worldwide nuclear disarmament in one glorious stroke.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 08:12 PM

"This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels."

Not Al Gore in 2006 but US President Johnson 41 years earlier (1965!)



"The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences."

Winston Churchill - 1936.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Don Firth
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 08:31 PM

Graphic example of the situation:

We have a basin containing water. Through osmosis or whatever process, not clearly understood, water flows into the basin. By a similarly unclear process, water also flows out of the basin. Over time, although the level in the basin rises and falls, so far it has never overflowed.

We have a vested interest in the basin not overflowing. In fact, our lives depend upon it.

Now, we don't understand all of the factors in this ebb and flow and the consequent and apparently periodic rise and fall. We do, however, understand many of the factors.

Within recent years, lots of people—lots of people—have been peeing into the basin. We see the level starting to rise, and it's rising very fast.

Now, there may be other factors involved in the rise.

But, especially considering that if the basin overflows, we can all die, it doesn't seem like a very intelligent thing to keep peeing into the basin!

Comprende?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bill D
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 10:35 PM

You know, Bruce...you are no doubt correct that 'some' have mis-stated at times the finer points about what reducing CO2..and other measures.. will accomplish. I do not believe I have seen any major players (especially Al Gore) actually claim, under cross examination, that it will ***STOP*** global warming. If there are careless suggestions made that give false impressions, they should be corrected, of course.....but ****NOT**** (my asterisks, I didn't use any of yours!) at the expense of losing the point that human beings are exacerbating the problem!

   You have railed against this little issue until folks were puzzled as to what you were actually upset about. It seems to me that if folks get it thru their heads that they need to BOTH reduce their contribution to the overall problem AND prepare for the possible consequences of the warming in general, all interests will have been served. If we all do the very best we can, maybe those who were overly enthusiastic can be forgiven their little exuberant transgressions, hmmmm?


**************** (I had several asteristics left over....you may have a few if you need them.)

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Peace
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 10:48 PM

There are three places one can put garbage on Earth. In the air, in the water or in the ground.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: pdq
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 10:53 PM

Which one is reresented by Mudcat?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 11:01 PM

Heh! That would be "air", I think.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 01:40 AM

"There are three places one can put garbage on Earth."


Among the many places...

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Barry Finn
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 02:08 AM

"Huge numbers of American car buyers are willing to put themselves on a waiting list for three, four, six months to get a Toyota Prius or Honda Insight. Hybrids and other fuel-efficient cars can't be made fast enough to meet the demand for them."

I took my mother to buy a Prius one afternoon, she drove it home that night. A couple of weeks later we went to buy a Pruis & bought it that night & dorve it home the next day.
The waiting time is now going down because they're becoming much more popular. Chrysler years ago came out with the slant 6 which saved the company at the time because it would run forever, you just couldn't kill it. The big 3 should be watching this trend, lest it kill them.

I was pissed that the auto industry didn't offer more in the way of hybrid choices to their consuming public. I'm also pissed that the government is slack of it's tax incentives for buying fuel eco cars. It gave some but then reduces it depending on how many vechiles the manufactur sells & it doesn't look like it will repeat the incentives this year, at least not yet. Buy American, why? You couldn't pay me to buy an American vechile.

Cutting auto fuel efficiency & admissions in the US alone would be a huge step in the reduction of global warming world wide. At this point there ought to be a law or at least a decent incentive!

Barry

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 02:28 AM

Americans call it 'lobbying' politicians - others call it 'bribery'...

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 10:09 AM

"It seems to me that if folks get it thru their heads that they need to BOTH reduce their contribution to the overall problem AND prepare for the possible consequences of the warming in general, all interests will have been served."

I agree- BUT that IS NOT what I see is happening- the claim is being made, repeatedly, that Kyoto accords, and reducing CO2 emmissions, WILL prevent global warming- NOT that it will still occur, and we should takles any other steps to deal with it.

EVERY presentation is " Here is what WILL happen if we don't stop CO2 emmissions- If we just cut C)2 emissions, all will be well."

THAT is what I have been protesting, to little effect here. Do people really not care about human survival, or is it just too much for them to understand?


**********************************************************************
(I was trying to show that "Saint Al" was using the terms I was told are not being used.)

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 10:40 AM

"Cutting auto fuel efficiency & admissions in the US alone would be a huge step in the reduction of global warming world wide."

Numbers, please. ( I presume you meant increasing efficiancy and cutting emmissions)

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 10:46 AM

BTW, has anyone looked at volcanic erruptions over the last, say, 40 years?

If you can't get God to sign the Kyoto accords, is it really going to help any?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bill D
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 11:18 AM

Well, Bruce....it seems to me you need to write "Saint Al" and any others you have caught mis-stating the problem as you see it. Convincing everyone in Mudcat that 'some' scientists and environmentalists are too optimistic may not be the best use of your time.

I, personally, am more concerned that the world in general BE convinced that there is indeed a problem, and that something needs to be done...


(You know, of course, that if we all try VERY hard and it is still bad, we will still never know if the task was impossible, or if we just didn't start early enough....and both claims will be made.)

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bee
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 01:20 PM

BBruce, some of us just wish for something to be done in the right direction. It looks very much like, and the scientific consensus is, that regardless of other influences over which we have no control (the sun, volcanos, etc.) humans are contributing hugely to the problem. What you seem to advocate (even if you aren't doing so in every post) by your insistence on the 'other causes' is that nothing can be done except to mitigate the resulting disasters.

I seriously doubt many people are so sanguine as to think 'Kyoto will fix everything'. Canadians know that serious problems are already occurring in the Arctic (we may need to relocate people, build very high cost roads, abandon some ventures, and not far in the future). There are low-lying tropical islands (damn if I can recall the name of the place) which will have to be evacuated soon, after centuries of habitation, because the sea has already risen enough, along with other factors, to flood them regularly, and soon, permanently. Perhaps people where you live are less informed or less educated, I wouldn't know.

"2. The stopping of CO2 emissions may well destroy the industrial capability that we (mankind) need to SURVIVE the real global warming ( ie, climactic shift) that is taking place.

3. The focus on CO2 has been used by some as a smokescreen to ingore dealing withg the inevitable effects ( flooding, agricultural failure, species extinction) that WILL occur even after we STOP all CO2 emmissions. " - bearded bruce

Frankly, I don't believe either of the above is true. Humans are unlikely to 'destroy our industrial capacity'; if you think about it, you'll realise that's not gonna happen. And honestly, anyone with two brain cells knows we (worse, our children) have a long hard road ahead, and that we will not see many species again, we will lose cities and shorelines, we will need to adjust our agriculture greatly, and even if we are solely responsible for climate change, we will not see any positive results in our own lifetimes.

But to do nothing, to not continue to study the climate, to not try to mitigate our enormous six billion body footprint, would be a complete and cruel betrayal of our own offspring.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: DougR
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 01:24 PM

No doubt about it ...the sky is surely falling.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bill D
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 01:35 PM

Gee, Doug...that was SO helpful. You wanna expand on that carefully worded, succinct comment?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 02:08 PM

"But to do nothing, to not continue to study the climate, to not try to mitigate our enormous six billion body footprint, would be a complete and cruel betrayal of our own offspring. "

You presume I advocate doing nothing- Not true. I advocate dealing with the results of global warming, which IMHO will not go away as soon as the CO2 emissions are reduced, as the spokespeople for this issue keep telling me.

I have no problem with reducing CO2 emissions, provided that it is NOT claimed that will solve allour problems, as Gore and others have stated repeatedly. BUT WE NEED to deal with the real effects of global warming, as well- and THAT is what is being ignored.

Please show me ANY plans that Gore has proposed to deal with ANY of the aspects of global warming, besides pushing for the reduction of CO2 emissions. Yet, HE has the solution to the problem?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 03:19 PM

"the claim that it will stop Global Warming,"

Is anyone actually saying that?   What I'm hearing is people saying is that not reducing carbon emissions it is likely to make it worse, and at most hoping against hope that if we can cut down the consequences might not be as bad as currently predicted and feared. And I find the evidence for the first part of that totally convincing.

I think it's not justifiable to assume that cutting carbon emission is supposed to make it harder to deal with the predicted effects of global warming. Rebuilding cities inland and easing the process by which millions of people will be moving away away from areas and whole countries that will be flooded need not be carbon intensive operations.

Insofar as these kind of activities might in fact be carbon intensive, it seems pretty self evident that this would be another argument for reducing carbon emissions on other far less urgent aspects of human activity.

As I said earlier, when you're in a hole, you stop digging, even if the hole was there before you fell into it.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 02:40 AM

OK, I think I see where BB claims he is coming form now, even though I don't think he was very clear about it at first, but trying to get out the message that you should love your enemy tends to be a bit counterproductive while the bullets are still flying...

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 07:54 AM

"As I said earlier, when you're in a hole, you stop digging, even if the hole was there before you fell into it. "


When you are in a hole, filling with water, don't keep saying that stopping the digging will keep you fropm drowning.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 08:20 AM

"When you are in a hole, filling with water, don't keep saying that stopping the digging will keep you from drowning"

No - but keeping on digging will just make the hole DEEPER, and more likely to drown you once it gets over your head.

The smart would just get out of the hole...

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 08:48 AM

"The smart would just get out of the hole..."

The implication being that on COULD get out of the hole-

MY premise is that Global warming WILL occur, regardless, and we CAN'T* get out of the hole. Regadless of how smart we are.



Except by moving to another planet- Mars should warm up a little, and we can FORCE global warming there, by having LOTS of CO2 emissions.
But that still leaves the Earth in the hole, with the water rising...

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 09:07 AM

""When you are in a hole, filling with water, don't keep saying that stopping the digging will keep you from drowning""

"The smart would just get out of the hole... "

Obviously, the RAF is flying high today...

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Ebbie
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 02:08 PM

bb, it appears that you are more defeatist than those of us who are sounding the alarm. You seem to be saying that we can't fix it so we shouldn't try. We are saying, Let's fix the parts that we *can* fix and see if that tips the balance in our direction.

Or is it all, in your opinion, just semantics?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Little Hawk
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 02:14 PM

I think the real problem here is that BB just doesn't like Al Gore very much and resents the attention Al is getting these days... ;-) It is your resentment of Al Gore which keeps drawing you back to this thread to argue, BB, that's my opinion. It's a similar phenomenon to the way many of us are drawn to various threads to attack George Bush...because we resent him. It's irresistible.

By the way, I think you're right in much of what you say. Obviously there are a number of reasons for global warming, and human-based CO2 emissions are not the only one.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 02:27 PM

"We are saying, Let's fix the parts that we *can* fix and see if that tips the balance in our direction."


What is being said is that this WILL fix everything, so there is no need to bother with any solutions to the effects of global warming. NO-ONE is trying to deal with the problems.

If I am wrong, but we solve the problems, everything will still be livable.
If those who say that the SOLUTION is to limit CO2 emissions are wrong, and global warming still occurs, there will be mass die-offs of many species, destruction of cities, and inevitable war as the populations try to find a livable place.

I have no problem with reducing CO2: It is advisable for other reasons as well- BUT IT IS NOT THE ****SOLUTION**** to global warming.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 02:48 PM

BTW, how much should the CO2 be reduced?


When would lack of CO2 cause cooling?

How much is need to keep the plants that convert it to oxygen alive?
(most of which are in the oceans, and would be reduced by global cooling if it occurs.

If global warming is "caused" by CO2 emissions, wouldn't there also be a growth in the vegetation ( especially in the oceans) becuae of the trapped heat, the increased ocean area, and the CO2 itself? Won't that cause a rebound into global cooling, as the increased vegetation takes the CO2 out of the air? How long before we are thrown into an ice age, with ice caps reflecting the solar radiation back ino space?

When ALL of these questions have been addressed, THEN I think we can safely tamper with the CO2 in the atmosphere- BUT we can start to deal with the effects of global warming NOW, BEFORE the inevitable disruptions have altered our ability to take any effective action at all.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST,petr
Date: 23 Mar 07 - 08:27 PM

the debate on this is long over...over 900 of the worlds climate scientists agree on this..

but if you want to look at ways of dealing with global warming
(without dealing with c02 emissions) then you can look at 'roger angels
space umbrella' with millions of tiny gps umbrellas that can deflect solar radiation enough to make a difference in temperature..
(i tried to make a link but google roger angel space umbrella)

of course Angel himself believes the much better solution is to reduce co2 emissions, what does he know he's only a physicist astronomer..

then theres Gregory Benford from U Cal who proposed seeding northern skies with diatomaceous dust - from planes, to reflect some of the solar radiation..
one of his other ideas - is to float farm waste, from corn crops etc down rivers and sink them in the ocean..(as a way of sequestering the co2)
this is only a temporary solution as the co2 will eventually be released.. but if one is standing in a cornfield the amount of co2 present in the corn is far more than in a column of air going up to the upper atmosphere...

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Ebbie
Date: 24 Mar 07 - 06:49 PM

"What is being said is that this WILL fix everything, so there is no need to bother with any solutions to the effects of global warming. NO-ONE is trying to deal with the problems. " bb

That is just not true, bb. A two-part error in your thinking. #1) That is NOT what we are saying. #2): Perhaps you are not aware of it but there are a LOT of places and people who are and have been for some time trying to make a difference. Even some states- Massachusetts and California, for just two.


"When ALL of these questions have been addressed, THEN I think we can safely tamper with the CO2 in the atmosphere- BUT we can start to deal with the effects of global warming NOW, BEFORE the inevitable disruptions have altered our ability to take any effective action at all." bb


What are you saying? Surely you don't mean this part? "When ALL of these questions have been addressed, THEN I think we can safely tamper with the CO2 in the atmosphere" bb

You're talking as though the atmosphere needs all that CO2? As though we would damage something if we reduced it- or at least kept ourselves from adding to it forever. (!)

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Don Firth
Date: 24 Mar 07 - 07:52 PM

When the house is on fire, just sitting around and speculating on how the fire might have got started is not the smartest thing one can do. The intelligent thing to do is to try to put out the fire.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 24 Mar 07 - 09:06 PM

From seeing BB's comments in this thread, I now understand his approach in previous threads...

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 25 Mar 07 - 09:25 AM

" #1) That is NOT what we are saying. #2): Perhaps you are not aware of it but there are a LOT of places and people who are and have been for some time trying to make a difference. Even some states- Massachusetts and California, for just two."

1. I have given the examples of where they HAVE/. Please show me examples of otherwise.

2. Wonderful! What have they done?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Don Firth
Date: 25 Mar 07 - 01:15 PM

Quite a bit, BB. Why don't you look it up? Educated yourself.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 25 Mar 07 - 02:44 PM

When ALL of these questions have been addressed, THEN I think we can safely tamper with the CO2 in the atmosphere- bb

Well all the questions haven't been answered, but here we are tampering with the C02 in the atmosphere, by adding to it fast. Safely is another matter....

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 25 Mar 07 - 08:48 PM

What is being said is that this WILL fix everything,

Anyone who says that is being hopelessly naive - or rather overhopefully naive. And I haven't come across anyone serious seriously saying that.

What is being said is that not cutting down on carbon emissions is likely to make things significantly worse, and that cutting down on them sufficiently would go some way to stop things getting as bad as is currently anticipated.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 25 Mar 07 - 08:54 PM

As I said - I now understand BB much better.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Andy Jackson
Date: 26 Mar 07 - 11:39 AM

Now then. To re-cap where were we when I started this thread all those sunfilled days ago, (cough cough splutter, God this CO2 I just exhaled will be the death of me)

Ah yes
"The SUN governs our weather and the CO2 changes with the temperature , not the other way around."

Ok off you all go again

Round and round the arguments
Knocking Tony Blair,
One step, two step,
Getting us nowhere.


I must say it's a jolly old jape to come back to a thread weeks after you start it and look at some of the equine poo that it has generated.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Stu
Date: 26 Mar 07 - 12:08 PM

You're not kidding.

Try asking for references to some of the arguments here. An eerie silence occurs, followed by a change of subject. Supply the references, and chances are they won't be read and countered with other data, just badly argued toss.

They'd never get through the peer review process.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 26 Mar 07 - 03:57 PM

"Anyone who says that is being hopelessly naive - or rather overhopefully naive. And I haven't come across anyone serious seriously saying that. "

So Al Gore is not serious? And he is hopelessly naive? What a revelation!

""Gore -- who is one of voters' top choices for the Democratic presidential nomination even though he says he's not running -- implored lawmakers to adopt a list of policy prescriptions
***************TO STOP GLOBAL WARMING.********************

Fresh off a triumphant Academy Awards appearance in which his climate change documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" won two Oscars, Gore drew overflow crowds as he testified before House and Senate panels about a "true planetary emergency" ******* IF CONGRESS FAILS TO ACT.************ (Read more about Gore's Oscar-night speech)

Gore advised lawmakers to cut carbon dioxide and other warming gases 90 percent by 2050 ******************TO AVOID***************
a crisis. Doing that, he said, will require a ban on any new coal-burning power plants -- a major source of industrial carbon dioxide -- that lack state-of-the-art controls to capture the gases."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/03/21/gore.ap/index.html "

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 26 Mar 07 - 04:04 PM

Another example, though not as extreme as Gore, of what you state is hopelessly naive...



"Many -- not all -- of those effects can be prevented, the report says, if within a generation the world slows down its emissions of carbon dioxide and if the level of greenhouse gases sticking around in the atmosphere stabilizes. If that's the case, the report says "most major impacts on human welfare would be avoided; but some major impacts on ecosystems are likely to occur.""

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/03/10/climate.report.ap/index.html

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 26 Mar 07 - 11:23 PM

As I said.. naw, don't wanna sound like a broken record...


""Many -- not all -- of those effects can be prevented, the report says, if within a generation the world slows down its emissions of carbon dioxide and if the level of greenhouse gases sticking around in the atmosphere stabilizes. If that's the case, the report says "most major impacts on human welfare would be avoided; but some major impacts on ecosystems are likely to occur."""

It's called the 'hysteresis effect' (the system is fooking large, you know!) - and goddamme, there's certainly an excess of hysteria in this thread too!

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 27 Mar 07 - 07:56 AM

Fooles et al,

You seem to be missing the point.

Looking at the charts of past temperature, before the Industrial Revolution, it is obvious that global warming has occurred in the past, and can be expected to occur in the future.

The present CO2 emissions may be accelerating the onset of global warming, but is not the sole cause.

The change in solar flux can be seem by the climactic changes on the other planets, ie Mar's ice cap shrinking, and the change, after so many hundred years, in the Red spot on Jupiter.

There is NOTHING ( Yes, I mean to yell!) being done to DEAL with the real EFFECTS of global warming, save to state that if we just cut our CO2 emissions, we can stick our heads back in the sand and wait for the rising water to cover us up.



"As I said.. naw, don't wanna sound like a broken record..."

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 27 Mar 07 - 02:24 PM

"When the house is on fire, just sitting around and speculating on how the fire might have got started is not the smartest thing one can do. "


So, you would run into the burning house and take away all matches- then go home while the house burns down?


"The intelligent thing to do is to try to put out the fire"

IE, you would deal with the situation- unlike those who state that "just cut the CO2 emissions and all will be well" , like Gore.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Dickey
Date: 27 Mar 07 - 03:07 PM

Weather global warming exists or not, weather it is man made or not, it behooves all of us to cut energy consumption and decrease CO2 emissions.

If not for the sake of ecology then for the sake of economics.

It can be done so let's do it. China and India should be made to follow with economic sanctions.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 27 Mar 07 - 03:09 PM

"China and India should be made to follow with economic sanctions."

??????

The UN can't stop Iran with economic sanctions: How will we stop countries with populations the size of China and India??????????

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Dickey
Date: 27 Mar 07 - 03:26 PM

Why involve the UN?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Amos
Date: 27 Mar 07 - 03:55 PM

Climate zones to disappear
Email Print Normal font Large font James Randerson, London
March 28, 2007

Other related coverage
Planet 'hotter than ever'
Advertisement
AdvertisementUP TO two-fifths of the Earth will have a hotter climate by the end of the century, according to a study that predicts the effects of global warming.

The changes — which will have a devastating effect on biodiversity in areas such as the Amazon and Indonesian rainforests — will wipe out numerous animals that are unable to move to stay within their preferred climate range. They will have to evolve rapidly or die out.

Lead author John Williams, of the University of Wisconsin, said: "How do you conserve the biological diversity of these entire systems if the physical environment is changing and potentially disappearing?"

Studies already suggest that animals are shifting towards the poles at six kilometres a decade.

Professor Williams' team used emissions scenarios set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to predict changes in temperature and precipitation.

The team predicts that as the planet warms, climate zones will move towards the poles. To work out the significance of these changes, it compared them with the natural climate variation. It attached greater weight to changes in relatively stable areas. This suggests that some of the worst impacts will be in tropical and sub-tropical regions as they shift to new climatic conditions.

"The tropics have very little variability from year to year in temperature, they are a very stable climatic zone. So species that live in those climates expect a limited degree of variability," Professor Williams said.

Other studies have suggested the Amazon basin will have an increased risk of forest fires because of its hotter, drier climate.

"One of the things that comes from our paper is that because the species that live in the tropics are adapted or have evolved for a reduced range of variability, it may be that a two to three-degree temperature change in the tropics may be more significant than say a five to eight-degree change in high latitudes," he said.

Up to now, much of the focus of the impact of global warming has been on polar regions because this is where the climate is changing fastest.

The climate model predicts climates will be lost mainly from tropical mountains and the edges of continents nearest the poles.

As the Earth warms, these climate regions have nowhere to go. Some of the losers are the tropical Andes, the African Rift Mountains, the Zambian and Angolan highlands, the South African Cape region, south-east Australia, parts of the Himalayas and the Arctic.

The team reports in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that by 2100, 12 to 39 per cent of the land surface of the Earth will have a new climate, while the combination of climatic conditions on 10 to 48 per cent of the planet will have disappeared altogether. This is using one of the climate change panel's business-as-usual global development scenarios. Using a different scenario that assumes more environmentally friendly development, the corresponding predictions are 4 to 20 per cent.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Amos
Date: 27 Mar 07 - 05:05 PM

Yesterday morning when our new book This Moment On Earth went on sale in bookstores nationwide, it was ranked 3,398th on Amazon.Com.

No wonder the skeptics thought they were winning -- one reporter even thought she had a fair point when she asked John whether Americans really cared about the environment.

Well, it's only one day later -- and the book is now ranked #139 on Amazon.Com!

This huge first day of sales shows that Americans really care about the environment.

Please, come check it out -- write a review -- share your thoughts about environmental heroes you know -- and spread the word to your friends and neighbors:

http://www.amazon.com/This-Moment-Earth-Pioneers-Environmental/dp/1586484311/

"John Kerry and Teresa Heinz have written a book that is a profound challenge to all of us but contains, in the examples of the men and women who are fighting the great fight for a better future for our environment, the clear hope that if we can embrace their resourcefulness, determination and essential patriotism we will prevail."
-- Former Vice President Al Gore

The book grew out of conversations that John and I had with Americans from coast to coast about the environment and the critical challenges we all face in protecting the earth for future generations.

The stories inspired and moved us. John and I share the hope that they will lead all of us to question the way things are and look for small but significant ways that each of us can make a positive contribution to this new environmental movement. We hope they spark a new conversation about ways that everyday Americans from all walks of life can have an impact on the environment around them.

And, since all of the proceeds of the book go to environmental causes, we hope the book makes a financial difference for some great environmental organizations, as well.

Come check it out -- write a review -- and let your friends know:

http://www.amazon.com/This-Moment-Earth-Pioneers-Environmental/dp/1586484311/

Sincerely,

Teresa Heinz Kerry

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Mar 07 - 05:48 PM

If Al Gore was saying that cutting down carbon emissions will instantaneously restore all the effects of carbon pollution t5hat are already predicted he was indeed being remarkably naive and unscientific.

My understanding is that he has been saying is that a major reduction in carbon emissions is essential if we are to avoid much worse things happening within our lifetimes and the lifetimes of our children.

That isn't the same thing at all. And it does indeed qualify as "an inconvenient truth". Or how about "an inconvenient strong possibility", bb?

In any case it's a fairly academic issue, since the likelihood of our energy hungry culture making the kind of reductions that appear highly advisable is pretty remote, at least until New York and London are under water, so getting ready to cope with the impending problems is clearly a high priority. Retrospectively I suppose there'd be arguments as to whether the blame for the catastrophe should be laid at the door of the older generation and their politicians, or on the Sun - but so what?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 27 Mar 07 - 11:01 PM

"The present CO2 emissions may be accelerating the onset of global warming"

So just sod anything bad we might be doing, eh?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 27 Mar 07 - 11:08 PM

When the Thames barrage is finally topped, the water in the streets of London will be up near the tops of the light poles.

New York has no such physical delaying tactics... :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Amos
Date: 28 Mar 07 - 10:56 AM

wonder how Mr. Cooney would have edited the recent draft report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, written and reviewed by 1,000 scientists convened by the World Meteorological Society and the U.N. It concluded that global warming is "unequivocal," that human activity is the main driver, and that "changes in climate are now affecting physical and biological systems on every continent."

I am not out to promote any party, but reading articles like the Cooney one makes me say: Thank goodness the Democrats are back running the House and Senate — because, given its track record, this administration needs to be watched at all times.

But I also say thank goodness for the way Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has built a Republican-Democratic coalition in California to blunt climate change. The governor is not only saving the Republican Party from being totally dominated by climate cranks, like Senator James Inhofe, and hacks-for-hire, like Cooney, but he also is creating a bipartisan template for dealing with climate change that will be embraced by Washington as soon as the Bush team is gone. I went out to Sacramento to interview the "Governator" a few weeks ago.

"The debate is over," he said to me. "I mean, how many more thousands and thousands of scientists do we need to say, 'We have done a study that there is global warming?' "

What is "amazing for someone that does not come from a political background like myself," said Governor Schwarzenegger, is that "this line is being drawn" between Democrats and Republicans on climate change. "You say to yourself: 'How can it be drawn on the environment?' But it is. But the great thing is more and more Republicans are coming on board for this. Seeing how important this is. And more and more Democrats and Republicans are working together. ... I said in my inaugural address: 'There isn't such a thing as Republican clean air or Democratic clean air. We all breathe the same air.' Let's get our act together, fix this problem and fight global warming."...

(Friedman, NY Times, 3-27-07)

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Don Firth
Date: 28 Mar 07 - 02:47 PM

It's turning out that Conan the Barbarian is a lot better governor than I would have anticipated. Good for him. Good for everybody!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 28 Mar 07 - 08:18 PM

He's not really a thick headed fool - he only plays one in the movies...

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 30 Mar 07 - 08:06 AM

Scientists: Antarctic ice sheet thinning
POSTED: 4:49 p.m. EDT, March 29, 2007
Story Highlights• Antarctica's Amundsen Sea Embayment is undergoing rapid changes
• Scientists blame the melting ice on changing winds around Antarctica
• Amundsen holds enough water to raise world sea levels close to 20 feet
Adjust font size:
HOUSTON, Texas (Reuters) -- A Texas-sized piece of the Antarctic ice sheet is thinning, possibly due to global warming, and could cause the world's oceans to rise significantly, polar ice experts said on Wednesday.

They said "surprisingly rapid changes" were occurring in Antarctica's Amundsen Sea Embayment, which faces the southern Pacific Ocean, but that more study was needed to know how fast it was melting and how much it could cause the sea level to rise.

The warning came in a joint statement issued at the end of a conference of U.S. and European polar ice experts at the University of Texas in Austin.

The scientists blamed the melting ice on changing winds around Antarctica that they said were causing warmer waters to flow beneath ice shelves.

The wind change, they said, appeared to be the result of several factors, including global warming, ozone depletion in the atmosphere and natural variability.

The thinning in the two-mile- thick ice shelf is being observed mostly from satellites, but it is not known how much ice has been lost because data is difficult to obtain on the remote ice shelves, they said.

Study is focusing on the Amundsen Sea Embayment because it has been melting quickly and holds enough water to raise world sea levels six meters, or close to 20 feet, the scientists said.

"The place where the biggest change is occurring is the Amundsen Sea Embayment," said Donald Blankenship of the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics.

"One, it's changing, and two, it can have a big impact," he said in a Webcast with a number of conference participants.

Other parts of the continent also were losing ice, he said, but generally not as quickly.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Highest Point    The highest point in Florida is Britton Hill, Lakewood Park in Walton County and is only 345 feet above sea level. Walton County is located in the Florida Panhandle.   (More...)

Lowest Point      The lowest point in Florida is sea level where Florida meets the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.

Mean Elevation    The Mean Elevation of the state of Florida is only 100 feet above sea level.


Hear all those moving vans headed north?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 04 Apr 07 - 04:58 PM

Study: Red planet heating up
POSTED: 3:46 p.m. EDT, April 4, 2007

CHICAGO, Illinois (Reuters) -- Earth's dusty neighbor Mars is grappling with its own form of climate change as fluctuating solar radiation is kicking up dust and winds that may be melting the planet's southern polar ice cap, scientists said Wednesday.

Researchers have been watching the changing face of Mars for years, studying slight differences in the brightness and darkness of its surface.

These changes in brightness have been generally attributed to the presence of dust, but until now their effect on wind circulation and climate has not been clear.

NASA scientist Lori Fenton and colleagues, reporting this week in the journal Nature, now believe variations in radiation from the surface of Mars are fueling strong winds that stir up giant dust storms, trapping heat and raising the planet's temperature.

By studying changes in light reflected from the surface of Mars -- a measure known as an object's albedo -- they predict the red planet has warmed by around 1 degree Fahrenheit from the 1970s to the 1990s, which may in part have caused the recent retreat of the southern polar ice cap.

On Earth, carbon dioxide traps infrared radiation which can affect global climate. This a phenomenon is known as the greenhouse effect. Fossil fuel emissions add to the problem.

On Mars, it's the red-tinged dust.

Fenton's team compared thermal maps gathered from NASA's Viking mission in the 1970s with maps gathered more than two decades later by the Global Surveyor.

They saw that large swaths of the surface have darkened or brightened over the past three decades.

These albedo changes strengthened winds, picking up and circulating dust, creating a vicious cycle that is warming the planet.

"Our results suggests that documented albedo changes affect recent climate change and large-scale weather patterns on Mars," Fenton's team wrote.

They believe changes in albedo should be an important part of future studies on atmosphere and climate change.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 04 Apr 07 - 06:38 PM

So Man's ever increasing activities do not stir up ever increasing amount of dust?

I had to mow my drought ravaged front lawn yesterday - grass spikes up to knee high - and it pulled up so much dust in just a few minutes.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Wolfgang
Date: 05 Apr 07 - 10:26 AM

BB's last article is not a good argument for "global warming skeptics" says this article.

BTW, Stigweard's Using other planets as models for what is happening on the Earth (and vice-versa) is not good science argument gets shot down in that article as well.

The more we learn about Mars, the more intuition it gives us about Earth (Christensen, quoted in Nature's news online, from April 4th, 2007)

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Scoville
Date: 05 Apr 07 - 10:35 AM

Frankly, I don't even think it matters if global warming is a myth or not. Even if it doesn't trap greenhouse gases and didn't exacerbate respiratory problems, there is no good reason for us NOT to work toward reducing pollution. We don't need it in the atmosphere. It's not natural. It should be a given that we work to reduce pollution regardless of what the last word finally is on global warming.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 05 Apr 07 - 10:41 AM

" It should be a given that we work to reduce pollution regardless of what the last word finally is on global warming. "

I have no arguement with this statement.

MY complaint is that the "global warming enthusiests" have said, repeatedly, that the SOLUTION to global warming is to reduce CO2 emissions. Not ONE word of how they will deal with the real and present consequences of it- for whatever reason it exists. All energy is placed in cutting emissions- NONE in relocating threatened populations, preserving endangered species, or assisting farmers in shifting crops to better fit the new climates.


Reducing emissions MAY help- but not doing the above WILL hurt.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Scoville
Date: 05 Apr 07 - 10:53 AM

I'm not as big a tree-hugger as I sound, really. I mean, I am a tree-hugger, but I'm not a militant, evangelical, tree-hugger.

You're right, though, that focusing on one area won't solve it. It has to be a blanket effort. Of course, not being able to solve it all at once is no excuse to do nothing, but there needs to be an across-the-board effort.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 05 Apr 07 - 11:09 AM

"Some of the biggest debates expected Thursday in the closed-door negotiating session center on what to include on the charts that summarize "key vulnerabilities" the world faces with global warming.

The charts have been called a "highway to extinction" because they show that with every degree of warming, the condition of much of the world worsens -- with starvation, floods and the disappearance of species.

Those charts "tell us there's a danger in the future," said Belgian delegate Julian Vandeburie, who is in the science policy branch of his government.

.....


The more urgent the IPCC report is, the higher the public expectations are of the politicians, who this year will have to make a very firm decision to start new negotiations, binding negotiations, for further deep reductions in carbon pollution."

NOT in dealing with the consequences.
NOT in trying to do anything OTHER than to cut C02.



http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/04/05/belgium.climate.ap/index.html

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Arne
Date: 05 Apr 07 - 07:02 PM

Richard Bridge:

What was also noticeably missing was any indication of how ocean levels had varied over time.

Yes, it was warmer millions of years ago. And the entire middle of the U.S. was sea-bottom.

Cheers,

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Arne
Date: 05 Apr 07 - 07:19 PM

BeardedBruce:

1. Global warming is real.

Glad to see you haven't completely divorced from reality.

2. The probable cause is flutuation in the solar output- Or do you think that the CO2 here on earth is what is changing the Red Spott on Jupiter?

The ol' RW fallacy of "binary thinking" strikes again. "You're either with us or you're with the Terra-ists"....

There is no one "cause" of global climate. The trick is to tease out and identify the contributing factors and relative contributions.

If I have $1005 gross after inventory costs, and if I have $1000 rent and salaries, I make $5. But if my taxes (of all kinds) go from just $3 to $8, I go from a $2 net to a (-)$3 net loss, a -150% change in my balance each month, and a severe change in status. But even a 1% change in that rent and salary swamps even that, as does the same in the gross after inventory. Even little things make a difference, and small canges in big things do too, to the bottom line.

Even if the solar irradiance is changing slightly, if we can reduce heating from CO2 significantly (note: not eliminate it), we can still have a marked effect on the bottom line. And though the bottom line per year may not be alarming on that time frame, if we look at the effect of a continued change in the same direction over many years, we may not like where we're going.

That being said, the contribution to the change in temperature is estimated to be over 50% anthropogenic (and solar irradiance factors are less), and if we can curtail that component (even though we can do less about solar output), we can effect big changes in the end mean teperatures in the middle future.

Cheers,

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Arne
Date: 05 Apr 07 - 07:30 PM

FWIW, most of the "scientists" on the Channel 4 show have their arms up to their elbows in the oil industry pocket (and some of these folks aren't climatologists at all, like Dr. Reiter, an entomologist [studies bugs], or even non-scientists, like Paul Driessen, a lawyer and PR guy).

See here for my quick lookup on these guys...

Cheers,

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 06 Apr 07 - 07:20 AM

Tools: Save | Print | E-mail | Most Popular
Study: Climate change could bring new U.S. Dust Bowl
POSTED: 4:01 a.m. EDT, April 6, 2007
Story Highlights• Bottom line: "Better start planning" for parched Southwest, says researcher
• Study, published in journal Science, yields "scary results," scientist says
• Computer models show transition to drier conditions due to climate change
Adjust font size:
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Changing climate will mean increasing drought in the southwestern United States, where water already is in short supply, according to a new study.

"The bottom line message for the average person and also for the states and federal government is that they'd better start planning for a Southwest region in which the water resources are increasingly stretched," said Richard Seager of Columbia University's Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory.

Seager is lead author of the study published online Thursday by the journal Science.

Researchers studied 19 computer models of the climate, using data dating back to 1860 and projecting into the future. The same models were used in preparing the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (Watch how the latest panel report is different )

The consensus of the models was that climate in the southwestern United States and parts of northern Mexico began a transition to drier conditions late in the 20th century and is continuing the trend in this century, as climate change alters the movement of storms and moisture in the atmosphere.

The reduction in rainfall could reach levels of the 1930s Dust Bowl that ranged throughout the Midwestern United States, Seager said in a telephone interview.

That does not mean there would be dust storms like those of the 1930s, Seager said, because conditions at that time were complicated by poor agricultural practices. But he said the reduction in rainfall could be equivalent to those times when thousands of farmers abandoned their parched land and moved away in search of jobs. (Watch drought hit Australian farmers hard )

Currently, most water in the Southwest is used in agriculture, but the urban population of the region is growing and so the water needs of people are growing as well, he explained.

"So, in a case where there is a reduced water supply, there will have to be some reallocation between the users," Seager said. "The water available is already fully allocated."

He said he feels that adjustments can be made to deal with the change, perhaps by withdrawing some land from production and by conserving water in urban areas.

"But it's something that needs to be planned for," Seager said. "It's time to start thinking how to deal with that."

Jonathan T. Overpeck, director of the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth at the University of Arizona, said the finding "agrees with what is already happening in the Southwest, and will be further complicated by the already declining spring snowpack due to warming."

"These are scary results, but scary in part because they are results of well thought-out scientific work by a large number of strong scientists," said Overpeck, who was not part of the research team. (Watch a worst-case scenario for coastal U.S. cities )

In other reports in this week's issue of Science:

• Researchers led by Alan Gange of the University of London reported that as a result of warming temperatures some species of mushrooms and toadstools in southern England have begun to fruit twice a year rather than once.

They found that some species that previously only fruited in October now also fruit in April. In addition, the length of the fruiting period has grown over time and in the last decade alone it has more than doubled, they found.

• Deep waters in the North Atlantic some 125,000 years ago were warmer than they are now and may have helped melt the Antarctic ice sheets, according to researchers led by Jean-Claude Duplessy of the Laboratory of Climate and the Environment of Institute Pierre Simon Laplace outside Paris.

Deep North Atlantic water flows south, then rises to the surface near Antarctica. The researchers said current warming climate trends indicate similar conditions to that period could occur in the next couple of centuries.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 06 Apr 07 - 07:27 AM

Anger over global warming report
POSTED: 4:34 a.m. EDT, April 6, 2007

Story Highlights• Scientists, diplomats argue over wording of landmark global warming report
• Disagreement centers on confidence scientists have in their findings
• China and Saudi Arabia insist confidence level be reduced to "high"
• Delegates are also struggling to make the report easy to understand

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- An authoritative international global warming conference, way past the deadline for finishing its report, lapsed into an unprecedented showdown between scientists and diplomats over authors' concerns that governments were watering down their warnings.

Last-minute negotiations over language continued behind closed doors Friday, less than one hour before a scheduled release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in Brussels.

A dispute between the scientific authors and the diplomatic editors of the report erupted over the sixth paragraph in the 21-page summary that sets out how much confidence the scientists have in their findings about the effects global warming is already having.

The sentence originally said scientists had "very high confidence" -- which means more than 90 percent chance of accuracy -- in the statement that many natural systems around the globe "are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases."

After days of intensive negotiations over this section, delegates from China and Saudi Arabia on Friday insisted that the confidence level be reduced to "high" -- which means more than 80 percent accuracy.

Three top scientific authors formally objected to the change by the diplomats, saying it was an unprecedented weakening of the scientific confidence that the issue was not raised when the report was circulated months ago.

In the hurry to get the report finished before a 10 a.m. (0800GMT) release and news conference, diplomats forced the last-minute removal and altering of parts of the iconic table, which shows the ill-effects of warming with each 1-degree Celsius (1.8-degree Fahrenheit) increase in temperature, scientists and other delegates told The Associated Press.

Participants in the marathon negotiations said government delegates have already weakened the original language in the report.

A final draft of the report -- written by scientists before government officials edit it -- says "roughly 20-30 percent of species are likely to be at high risk of irreversible extinction" if global average temperature rises by 1.5 to 2.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 to 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit). (Watch a worst-case scenario for U.S. cities )

That part has been "diluted," said retired scientist Ian Burton attending the session on behalf of the Stockholm Environment Institute.

Another delegate said the amended version hedged on the sweep of the original text, inserting a reference to species "assessed so far."

Guy Midgley of the National Botanical Institute in South Africa, a lead author of the chapter on ecosystems that includes extinctions, said the changes will be "commensurate with the science."

Another prolonged tussle emerged over whether to include estimated costs of damage from climate change -- calculated per ton of carbon dioxide emissions, said the delegates on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

A main issue at the Brussels conference is how the report will say what it has to say in the most effective possible way -- that 120 nations' negotiators can accept.

The key is making it easily understandable, said Oyvind Christophersen, who heads the Norwegian delegation as a senior adviser for climate and energy. "The challenge is how to summarize a big, big report."

The entire final draft report, obtained last week by The Associated Press, has 20 chapters, supplements, two summaries and totals 1,572 pages. This week's wrangling is just over the 21-page summary for policymakers.

It is the second of four reports from the IPCC this year; the first report in February laid out the scientific case for how global warming is happening. This second report is the "so what" report, explaining what the effects of global warming will be. (Watch how this report differs from earlier statements )

Some of the biggest debates in the closed-door negotiating session centered on what to include on the charts that summarize "key vulnerabilities" the world faces with global warming.

The charts have been called a "highway to extinction" because they show that with every degree of warming, the condition of much of the world worsens -- with starvation, floods and the disappearance of species.

Those charts "tell us there's a danger in the future," said Belgian delegate Julian Vandeburie, who is in the science policy branch of his government.

Vandeburie compared the world's current situation to the Munich peace conference in 1938, when Britain and France had a choice between confronting Hitler and appeasing him: "We are at the same moment. We have to decide on doing something or not."

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bill D
Date: 06 Apr 07 - 11:26 AM

Of course the bureaucrats are disputing the scientists over exact wording! If a really serious report were released, they might have to actually DO something! (or stop doing some things)

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 06 Apr 07 - 11:59 AM

Scientists: Lake Superior warming rapidly
POSTED: 7:55 a.m. EDT, April 6, 2007

Story Highlights• Surface temperatures on Lake Superior up 4.5 degrees since 1979
• Warmer winters mean less ice cover which mean more warming
• Levels dropping as Superior loses water to winter evaporation

DULUTH, Minnesota (AP) -- Lake Superior has been warming even faster than the climate around it since the late 1970s because of reduced ice cover, according to a study by professors at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Summer surface temperatures on the famously cold lake have increased about 4.5 degrees since 1979, compared with about a 2.7-degree increase in the region's annual average air temperature, the researchers found. The lake's "summer season" is now beginning about two weeks earlier than it did 27 years ago.

"It's a remarkably rapid rate of change," Jay Austin, an assistant professor with the university's Large Lakes Observatory and Department of Physics, told the Star Tribune newspaper. Austin co-authored the study with geology professor Steve Colman.

The study is based on data collected by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration buoys on the lake and on 102 years' worth of daily temperature readings at a hydroelectric plant near Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.

Austin said the surface temperature increase is not only "a symptom of climate change," but also could reinforce itself. A trend toward warmer winters would mean less winter ice cover, which would allow more solar radiation of the lake and continued warming, he said.

Lake Superior freezes over completely about once every 20 years, according to the Minnesota DNR's climatology office. If trends continue, it could be routinely ice-free by about 2040, the study found. This would cause water levels to continue to drop because the lake loses more water to evaporation in a winter without ice cover than it does during the summer. In recent months, the lake's level has been lower than at any equivalent time since 1926.

The study was first published by the American Geophysical Union on March 23.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: pdq
Date: 06 Apr 07 - 12:39 PM

"In recent months, the lake's level has been lower than at any equivalent time since 1926"

What caused it to be so low back about 80 years ago?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 06 Apr 07 - 02:42 PM

"It is Big Oil which is pricing you off the road, not the greens. Vehicles with better fuel economies, sensible alternate fuels (ethanol is a sham, IMO, as it is just as unfriendly to produce in the long run), more dependence on wind power, solar arrays, decentralization so jobs will be in more communities, not just in gigantic urban centres, good public transit, etc., are things more likely to be effective."

I've not looked at this thread for some time, so apologies to Bee for the delay in answering.

NO! It isn't big oil in the UK, Bee, nor is it the greens. It is in fact a government policy which has been ongoing for ten years or more, to annually add tax onto the price of fuel to discourage use of cars, and this accumulative increase is now a very significant proportion of what we pay (about three times as much as it costs in the USA). Their latest stunt now, is to increase the cost of our road fund license by 100%, if we drive large cars.

Not only do these increases hit the individual motorist, but they have a knock on effect on prices in general.

Now, who do we think might be hardest hit by this? YES! The poorest people in the country become even poorer. Many of us will be starving to death long before global warming takes serious effect.

The rich will simply move into those areas with the best resources and lock the gates to keep us out.

Don T. (Whose newest car in the last twenty years was eight years old when he bought it....Might be able to afford a second hand hybrid by about 2020).

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 12 Apr 07 - 04:26 PM

Fuzzy Climate Math

By George F. Will
Thursday, April 12, 2007; Page A27

In a campaign without peacetime precedent, the media-entertainment-environmental complex is warning about global warming. Never, other than during the two world wars, has there been such a concerted effort by opinion-forming institutions to indoctrinate Americans, 83 percent of whom now call global warming a " serious problem." Indoctrination is supposed to be a predicate for action commensurate with professions of seriousness.

For example, Democrats could demand that the president send the Kyoto Protocol to the Senate so they can embrace it. In 1997, the Senate voted95 to 0 in opposition to any agreement that would, like the protocol, require significant reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in America and some other developed nations but that would involve no "specific scheduled commitments" for 129 "developing" countries, including the second-, fourth-, 10th-, 11th-, 13th- and 15th-largest economies (China, India, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico and Indonesia). Forty-two of the senators serving in 1997 are gone. Let's find out if the new senators disagree with the 1997 vote.

Do they also disagree with Bjorn Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist"? He says: Compliance with Kyoto would reduce global warming by an amount too small to measure. But the cost of compliance just to the United States would be higher than the cost of providing the entire world with clean drinking water and sanitation, which would prevent 2 million deaths (from diseases such as infant diarrhea) a year and prevent half a billion people from becoming seriously ill each year.

Nature designed us as carnivores, but what does nature know about nature? Meat has been designated a menace. Among the 51 exhortations in Time magazine's " Global Warming Survival Guide" (April 9), No. 22 says a BMW is less responsible than a Big Mac for "climate change," that conveniently imprecise name for our peril. This is because the world meat industry produces 18 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, more than transportation produces. Nitrous oxide in manure (warming effect: 296 times greater than that of carbon) and methane from animal flatulence (23 times greater) mean that "a 16-oz. T-bone is like a Hummer on a plate."

Ben & Jerry's ice cream might be even more sinister: A gallon of it requires electricity-guzzling refrigeration and four gallons of milk produced by cows that simultaneously produce eight gallons of manure and flatulence with eight gallons of methane. The cows do this while consuming lots of grain and hay, which are cultivated by using tractor fuel, chemical fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides, and transported by fuel-consuming trains and trucks.

Newsweek says most food travels at least 1,200 miles to get to Americans' plates, so buying local food will save fuel. Do not order halibut in Omaha.

Speaking of Hummers, perhaps it is environmentally responsible to buy one and squash a Prius with it. The Prius hybrid is, of course, fuel-efficient. There are, however, environmental costs to mining and smelting (in Canada) 1,000 tons a year of zinc for the battery-powered second motor, and the shipping of the zinc 10,000 miles -- trailing a cloud of carbon dioxide -- to Wales for refining and then to China for turning it into the component that is then sent to a battery factory in Japan.

Opinions differ as to whether acid rain from the Canadian mining and smelting operation is killing vegetation that once absorbed carbon dioxide. But a report from CNW Marketing Research ("Dust to Dust: The Energy Cost of New Vehicles from Concept to Disposal") concludes that in "dollars per lifetime mile," a Prius (expected life: 109,000 miles) costs $3.25, compared with $1.95 for a Hummer H3 (expected life: 207,000 miles).

The CNW report states that a hybrid makes economic and environmental sense for a purchaser living in the Los Angeles basin, where fuel costs are high and smog is worrisome. But environmental costs of the hybrid are exported from the basin.

We are urged to "think globally and act locally," as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has done with proposals to reduce California's carbon dioxide emissions 25 percent by 2020. If California improbably achieves this, at a cost not yet computed, it will have reduced global greenhouse gas emissions 0.3 percent. The question is:

Suppose the costs over a decade of trying to achieve a local goal are significant. And suppose the positive impact on the globe's temperature is insignificant -- and much less than, say, the negative impact of one year's increase in the number of vehicles in one country (e.g., India). If so, are people who recommend such things thinking globally but not clearly?

[e-mail]

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Wolfgang
Date: 18 Apr 07 - 04:09 PM

Warming May Keep Hurricanes From Forming

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: MMario
Date: 18 Apr 07 - 04:39 PM

wow - I don't know who this George F. Will is - but have to seriously consider what qualifications if any he has when his article contains such items as:

"Ben & Jerry's ice cream . . .: A gallon of it requires electricity-guzzling refrigeration and four gallons of milk"

Ice cream yields are normally significantly larger then the fluid input.

"most food travels at least 1,200 miles to get to Americans' plates"

most implies more then half. Not true in a lot of areas.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: TIA
Date: 18 Apr 07 - 04:41 PM

With all due respect, I must add follow-on quotations from one of the authors of the study that Wolfgang cites above. wolfgang's article truncates before getting to these important statements (by the author remember)...

"On the other hand, warm water provides the energy that drives hurricanes, so warmer conditions should make the storms stronger.

"We don't know whether the change in shear will cancel out the increased potential from warming oceans, but the shear increase would tend to make the Atlantic and East Pacific less favorable to hurricanes," said Vecchi, of NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J.

"Which one of the two — warming oceans or increasing shear — will be the dominant factor? Will they cancel out? We and others are currently exploring those very questions, and we hope to have a better grasp on that answer in the near future," Vecchi said.

"What we can say is that the magnitude of the shear change is large enough that it cannot be ignored," he added.

********Any decrease in strength or frequency of storms caused by shear would apply only if all else was equal******, Vecchi said..."

(emphasis by TIA)

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Amos
Date: 20 Apr 07 - 12:15 PM

Obviously som efolks will be mor eintelligent about the data on global warming than others.

This lady, for example, seems to have noticed something the others have overlooked.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Apr 07 - 12:42 PM

Yeah, Amos. Unfortunately, that's about the level of thinking that determines our leaders these days.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Wolfgang
Date: 02 May 07 - 10:04 AM

Arctic sea ice decline: Faster than forecast?

the models still underestimate observed ice loss...the Arctic could be seasonally free of sea ice earlier than the IPCC projections

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: tarheel
Date: 02 May 07 - 04:46 PM

Its the biggest HOAX ever pulled on the whole WORLD!
Tar...

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 May 07 - 08:04 PM

Yeah, yeah, yeah. . . .

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Dickey
Date: 02 May 07 - 09:44 PM

I am not thoughly convinced that it is man made but never say never. I would not invest in any tidal waterfront.

I have noticed the weather is getting more extreme and unpredictable. It seems we have had a drought every summer since 1996.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Wolfgang
Date: 03 May 07 - 09:59 AM

EMOTIONALIZING CLIMATE CHANGE

(a four part article)

Part I: Is the IPCC Doing Harm to Science? (roughly: how politicians try to influence what the IPCC report should tell and scientists don't know how to fight back)
Part II: Like a Major Terrorist Attack    (roughly: the consequences of climate change; outlines the majority opinion)
Part III: The Leading Critic of Climate Change Theories   (roughly: the minority position in person of Lindzen)
Part IV: Al Gore, Scaremongerer?    (roughly: arguments for and against emotionalisation of a scientific debate)

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Amos
Date: 03 May 07 - 10:32 AM

Arctic Sea Ice Melting Faster, a Study Finds
               
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: May 1, 2007

Climate scientists may have significantly underestimated the power of global warming from human-generated heat-trapping gases to shrink the cap of sea ice floating on the Arctic Ocean, according to a new study of polar trends.

The study, published online today in Geophysical Research Letters, concluded that an open-water Arctic in summers could be more likely in this century than had been estimated in the latest international review of climate research released in February by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"There are huge changes going on," said Julienne Stroeve, a lead author of the new study and a researcher at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. "Just with warm waters entering the Arctic, combined with warming air temperatures, this is wreaking havoc on the sea ice, really."

The intergovernmental panel concluded that if emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide were not significantly reduced, the region could end up bereft of floating ice in summers sometime between 2050 and the early decades of the next century.

...

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: freda underhill
Date: 03 May 07 - 10:56 AM

The Zugspitze glacier (the largest one in Germany) is melting. it was 80 metres thick in 1910, now it is 45 metres thick .

we live in an era when politicians and business moguls deride scientists and academics. their decisions are all about getting back in in the next election and appeasing interest groups.

maybe global warming will force the world to listen to scientists - and maybe the intelligensia might have to rise up and move into positions of political power.

because if they don't, we are going down the gurgler like that German glacier, led by a bunch of bumbling politicians with their heads in the sand and their hands in the till.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bee
Date: 03 May 07 - 11:09 AM

I would not put my faith in the 'intelligentsia' - very few of those politicians and moguls and CEOs who are intent on leading us further into destruction are stupid.

It's more important to make sure the ordinary person is well informed and able to distinguish between propaganda and reality, and you needn't hold a doctorate for that.

I did hear a few Canadian premiers make some sane statements this week, and one admitted that his children are so concerned about the future that he feels he must be proactive. 'Won't someone think of the children' has been a mocked buzzphrase, but I fear for the future my neices and nephews might face, and a majority of Canadians must have similar fears, since even the Harper government is starting to pay attention, albeit not enough.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST,Jim Martin
Date: 03 May 07 - 11:16 AM

Well said, Freda!

Are you UK ,cos the same applies here in Ireland.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: freda underhill
Date: 03 May 07 - 11:29 AM

thanks Jim, I'm an aussie (sydney).

Bee, I know academics can be a vague lot, ivory towers and all. but we have an international trend of decisions being made for financial reasons only. and managers without specific skills are popped into positions of power specifically because they don't understand what the hell is going on in their particular area - and so won't rock the boat and oppose blatantly poor decisions with appalling consequences.

there, enough said, soapbox has been tucked away & I'm off to sleep. 'night all.

freda zz

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Amos
Date: 05 May 07 - 11:22 AM

The Warming Challenge


Published: May 5, 2007   Full article here

Yesterday's report on global warming from the world's most authoritative voice on climate change asserts that significant progress toward stabilizing and reducing global warming emissions can be achieved at a relatively low cost using known technologies. This is a hugely important message to policy makers everywhere, not least those in the United States Congress. Many of them have been paralyzed by fears — assiduously cultivated by the Bush administration — that a full-scale attack on climate change could cripple the economy.

The report was the third this year from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The first report, in February, blamed humans for rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. A second report last month warned of famine, floods and other ecological disasters unless emissions were brought under control.

The new report deals with remedies. It warns that over the course of this century, major investments in new and essentially carbon-free energy sources will be required. But it stresses that we can and must begin to address the problem now, using off-the-shelf technologies to make our cars, buildings and appliances far more efficient, while investing in alternative fuels, like cellulosic ethanol, that show near-term promise.

The report also made clear the risks of delay, noting that emissions of greenhouse gases have risen 70 percent since 1970 and could nearly double from current levels by 2030 if nothing is done. For that reason, it said, it is vital for policy makers to discourage older technologies — coal-fired power plants with no capacity to store carbon emissions, for instance — so as not to lock in further increases in emissions, which would make the task much harder and more expensive down the road. ...

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Dickey
Date: 05 May 07 - 12:16 PM

Amos:

Do you have any ideas other than yeah, what that guy said?

Are you capble of indepenant thinking or just a robot programmed to echo whetever you percieve as the most popular ideas at any given time?

It seems to me you have no heart and soul and are afraid to go out on a limb and differ from wht you believe is the norm because you may be wrong.

What have you done to fight global warming other than rebroadcast the background noise?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Amos
Date: 05 May 07 - 12:26 PM

Seems to me, Good Dick, that you have your head coming up on your tonsils from below.

The "norm". when I started marshaling rebuttals to Bush's fascism, was strongly in support of him. Insanity was at an all time high in the country buying into his arguments for war.

You are so far off base on your assertions that I can only assume you are resorting to personal assault out of cognitive desperation.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Dickey
Date: 06 May 07 - 01:12 AM

I see no objection to Bush's actions here:
Subject: RE: BS: Admirable Qualities of GWBush
From: Amos - PM
Date: 05 Nov 03 - 10:39 PM

Yes, that's true -- by tracking down and arresting the troublesome parts. It is important that Iraq be unified, and force works as well as anything else he's got.


What have you done to fight global warming other than rebroadcast the background noise?

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Wolfgang
Date: 08 May 07 - 07:13 AM

GLOBAL WARMING: It's Not the End of the World as We Know It (Four part article in DER SPIEGEL)

An in my mind very level headed article based on interviews with German climate scientists. This is not the there's-nothing-to-worry-about crop of scientists. For them, global warming is real and (largely) man made. But they argue that newer and better simulations show that the consequences are not as bad as the repent-or-die alarmists of the 90s wanted to make us believe.

The newer models show an increase of antarctic ice, rather a decrease of both severity and frequancy of tropical storm (has someone told Al Gore yet?), a smaller increase of sea level than the old models, more rain in the Sahel zone, less rain in the south of the USA, Australia and the Mediterranean Europe, and the Greenland ice sheet melting in millenia if at all.

I also recommend reading about the problems of modeling the future. All models predict more clouds, but whether that leads to cooling or warming is far from sure.

German climate researcher von Storch: "Unfortunately many scientists see themselves too much as priests whose job it is to preach moralistic sermons to people."

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Wolfgang
Date: 08 May 07 - 11:35 AM

Interview with a German biologist about the impact of global warming on biodiversity

Many species are certainly threatened, but not by climate change. The true danger comes from the destruction of habitats, such as the rampant deforestation of species-rich tropical forests. Particularly as a conservationist, I believe that focusing on the greenhouse effect is very dangerous. The climate is increasingly being turned into a scapegoat, to deflect attention from other environmental crimes.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: TIA
Date: 08 May 07 - 10:49 PM

Yes. I agree. In terms of acute (as opposed to chronic) environmental threats, global warming probably does not even crack the top ten. But I get very suspicious of people who claim that it is NOT a threat. And just because it may not be in the top ten, does this mean we should not do what we can to alleviate the threat? (While working on the other ten as well of course).

It's like the guy who punches you and breaks your jaw and says "hey, just be glad I didn't shoot you between the eyes."

A person who claims that it is not the worst thing we face gets my attention.

A person who claims it is a "hoax" or "myth", and not a problem at all loses all credibility.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Amos
Date: 24 Jun 07 - 12:29 PM

From Sunday's NY Times:

When you watch a baby being born, after a difficult pregnancy, it is so painful and bloody for the mother it is always hard to tell the truth and say, "Gosh, that baby is really ugly." But that's how I feel about the energy legislation passed (and not passed) by the Senate last week.


Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Thomas Friedman.
Related
Q. & A. With Thomas L. Friedman
The columnist answered readers' questions.
Columnist Page »
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TimesSelect subscribers can listen to a reading of the day's Op-Ed columns.

The whole Senate energy effort only reinforced my feelings that we're in a green bubble — a festival of hot air by the news media, corporate America and presidential candidates about green this and green that, but, when it comes to actually doing something hard to bring about a green revolution at scale — and if you don't have scale on this you have nothing — we wimp out. Climate change is not a hoax. The hoax is that we are really doing something about it.

No question, it's great news that the Democrat-led Senate finally stood up to the automakers, and to the Michigan senators, and said, "No more — no more assisted suicide of the U.S. auto industry by the U.S. Congress. We're passing the first bill since 1975 that mandates an increase in fuel economy." If the Senate bill, which now has to go through the House, becomes law, automakers will have to boost the average mileage of new cars and light trucks to 35 miles per gallon by 2020, compared with about 25 miles per gallon today.

But before you celebrate, pay attention to some fine print in the Senate bill. If the Transportation Department determines that the fuel economy goal for any given year is not "cost-effective" — that is, too expensive for the car companies to meet — it can ease the standard. That loophole has to be tightened by the House, which takes up this legislation next week.

But even this new mileage standard is not exactly world leading. The European Union is today where we want to be in 2020, around 35 miles per gallon, and it is committed to going well over 40 m.p.g. by 2012. Ditto Japan.

There are other things that make the Senate energy effort ugly. Senate Republicans killed a proposed national renewable electricity mandate that would have required utilities to produce 15 percent of their power from wind, solar, biomass and other clean-energy sources by 2020. Twenty-three states already have such mandates. No matter. Making it national was too much for the Republicans.

And the Senate, thanks again to the Republicans, also squashed a Democratic proposal to boost taxes on oil and gas companies that would have raised some $32 billion for alternative fuel projects.

Despite all the new research on climate change, the Senate didn't even touch the idea of either a cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax to limit carbon dioxide emissions. An effort by Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota to legislate a national reporting ("carbon counter") system to simply measure all sources of greenhouse gas emissions, which would enable a cap-and-trade system to work if we ever passed one, also got killed by Republicans. We can't cap and trade something we can't measure.

Here is the truth: the core of our energy crisis is in Washington. We have all the technology we need right now to make huge inroads in becoming more energy efficient and energy independent, with drastically lower emissions. We have all the capital we need as well. But because of the unique nature of the energy and climate-change issues — which require incentives and regulations to build alternatives to dirty, but cheap, fossil fuels — you need public policy to connect the energy and capital the right way. That is what has been missing.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Ebbie
Date: 24 Jun 07 - 02:02 PM

Rather belatedly, I'd like to point out to beardedbruce that Al Gore (Saint Al, to some.:) is not implying what bb says. The one crucial element to countering someone's argument is to become familiar with the argument. Ergo, as many have suggested in the past, go see the film, 'An Inconvenient Truth'. You'll note that at the end Gore lists a number of things that can be done *now* at fairly low cost and inconvenience to start mitigating the early effects of global change.

In Juneau Alaska, in addition to the rapid changing of our landscape - in a few years our largest glacier will have GONE out of sight- but anomalies in flora, fauna and fish are being increasingly reported.

For some years now I have been exhorting my Juneau neighbors: Buy land! Plant bananas!

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Don Firth
Date: 24 Jun 07 - 05:52 PM

Ah, yes! Good old "Yankee Ingenuity!"

Where, oh, where has it gone?

There are a few entrepreneurs out there with a brain—who do not write off the overwhelming scientific evidence for global warming, and that global warming is primarily caused by human beings using the eco-sphere as a garbage dump and septic tank—who are going to be the real money-makers in the near future by accepting what is and coming up with eco-friendly, energy-efficient, non-polluting products. There are fortunes to be made by facing reality and adapting to it.

For example:   the tip of the only iceberg on the planet that is increasing in size instead of melting is the success Toyota has had with the Prius. They can't make them fast enough to meet the demand. In the meantime, look at the sad condition of the American automobile industry.

A little foresight and the willingness to be flexible and innovative.

Species tend to become extinct when they haven't the intelligence, ability, or willingness to adapt to new conditions.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Stringsinger
Date: 25 Jun 07 - 01:06 PM

If global warming was a myth, the top scientists of the world would not be getting together to solve the problem.

The myth is the propaganda offered by the corporate entities who profit financially from their disinformation.

Frank

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 25 Jun 07 - 02:26 PM

We should remember that despite all the Kyoto rhetoric, European CO2 emissions have increased, and USA has been cutting CO2 emissions.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Wolfgang
Date: 03 Jul 07 - 01:14 PM

Environmentalism: the new death cult? (comment in THE GUARDIAN)

Environmentalism is by far the most influential death cult in existence today. It is inculcating in the masses the idea that the end of the world is nigh; that we shall we punished for our sins; that penance is our earthly duty; and that anyone who says or thinks otherwise is a "heretic" or a "denier" who should be held up to public ridicule.

I agree with nearly nothing in that comment, but I find the idea amusing.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Bill D
Date: 03 Jul 07 - 05:33 PM

From some standpoints, anything that might cause some corporations to *gasp* alter their "full speed ahead" business practices is to be denied and rejected.

As several have noted, even IF it's not quite as bad as the worst case projections, people with a finite planet need to err on the side of caution! We need some wiggle room...we do NOT need to climb out as far on various limbs as we 'think' we can get away with.

Doesn't anyone remember DDT and how it was supposed to be a boon?

Whether it gets a lot warmer, OR a lot colder, we need to be careful what we commit to.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Kipp
Date: 04 Jul 07 - 12:10 PM

Wolfgang
   I agree with that point if you listen to Al Gore his message is very similar to that of the fundimental christains, either change your behavior or the end of the world is coming. Although his idea of what is bad behavior is different yet he has taken from their favorite book of the bible the book of revelation.
Kipp

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: MaineDog
Date: 04 Jul 07 - 03:17 PM

Re: the Prius

In 1992 I bought a Honda Civic VX which got about 60 mpg commuting. No electric motors, no big battery, just a clever engine design with 3 valves per cylinder, and a pre-combustion chamber that burned rich, with a main charge that was able to burn lean via this arrangement. It also would shut down one cylinder when coasting. This was better mileage than the Prius, with not nearly so much to go wrong, and you didn't need an instrument to tell you how to drive it. I lived in Massachusetts then.
In 2002, the state effectively outlawed these cars by defining them to be uninspectable. The 3-cylinder ploy crashed their inspection computers, so they could neither pass nor fail this car, and there was no way except via bribery to get the required inspection sticker. So much for progress. Just one of may reasons why I now live in Maine.
MD

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 04 Jul 07 - 05:20 PM

either change your behavior or the end of the world is coming.

The point is, it seems pretty certain that something not too far short of that is actually true. An inconvenient truth.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Leadfingers
Date: 04 Jul 07 - 06:47 PM

If we are having Global Warming , how come South London had INCHES of
ICE on the ground yesterday ? And its not exactly warm tonight !

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 04 Jul 07 - 08:04 PM

"Global warming" doesn't mean it gets warmer everywhere. What it means is more disturbed and extreme weather patterns - crazy weather even. And our current weather certainly fits into that.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: John Hardly
Date: 04 Jul 07 - 09:15 PM

That's the story, anyway. I'm still waiting for that disclaimer to come out when we're in the midst of a heat wave and everyone is saying "See? ...I told you we were having global warming!"

Just once. That all. Just once.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: John Hardly
Date: 04 Jul 07 - 09:16 PM

My excitement at scoring 300 made me forget my " 's "

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Ebbie
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 12:04 AM

The other day they told us that our northern Pacific ocean up here in southeast Alaska has warmed an official four degrees. Doesn't sound like much - but we're getting all kinds of new critters in our waters.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Dickey
Date: 05 Jul 07 - 11:03 PM

I saw a blurb about how great a Prius is. It gets 45 MPG!!!

In the 70's I had a Volkswagen Rabbit diesel hatchback company car. It never got less that 45 MPG no matter how you drove it. It usuallly got around 50 MPG and sometimes 54 on a trip.

If gas keeps going up I am getting one of those new VW bugs with a diesel engine.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Barry Finn
Date: 06 Jul 07 - 01:44 AM

We have a Prius & I've been getting 45 -53 mpg on the highway, it's supposed to do better in city driving but I hardly do any city driving so I don't know how it does with that.

Amos, that bill might as well be written on toliet paper for all it's worth & you're right! The hoax is that we're doing something about it.

Barry

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Ebbie
Date: 06 Jul 07 - 02:27 AM

Dickey, some friends of mine have a VW diesel station wagon. They get 52-54 mpg. And it seems that one no longer has to wait for the diesel plug to warm.

I used to have a 1981 Mitsobishi-made Plymouth Champ hatchback- I routinely got 42 mpg. The lowest I ever got with it was 36 but it was when I had four people in it and we crossed the Cascade range.

I really liked that car - it had the usual four gears and then another three or four *lower*- I used to say that I could climb a wall with that car.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Dickey
Date: 06 Jul 07 - 09:04 AM

While looking up info in the old Rabbit I found out that VW made a "Lupo" that had 61 hp compared to the 49 hp of the rabbit, yet it got 99 MPG.

It was not built to pass American crash tests so they were never imported.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Dickey
Date: 06 Jul 07 - 09:30 AM

Here ya go, 157 MPG with no batteries.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 25 Jul 07 - 01:47 PM

Prius Politics

By Robert J. Samuelson
Wednesday, July 25, 2007; Page A15

My younger son calls the Toyota Prius a "hippie car," and he has a point. Not that Prius drivers are hippies. Toyota says that typical buyers are 54 and have incomes of $99,800; 81 percent are college graduates. But, like hippies, they're making a loud lifestyle statement: We're saving the planet; what are you doing?

This helps explain why the Prius so outsells the rival Honda Civic Hybrid. Both have similar base prices, about $22,000, and fuel economy (Prius, 60 miles per gallon city/51 highway; Civic, 49 mpg city/51 highway). But Prius sales in the first half of 2007 totaled 94,503, nearly equal to all of 2006. Civic sales were only 17,141, up 7.4 percent from 2006. The Prius's advantage is its distinct design, which announces its owners as environmentally virtuous. It's a fashion statement. Meanwhile, the Civic hybrid can't be distinguished by appearance from the polluting, gas-guzzling mob.


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The Prius is, I think, a parable for the broader politics of global warming. Prius politics is mostly about showing off, not curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Politicians pander to "green" constituents who want to feel good about themselves. Grandiose goals are declared. But measures to achieve them are deferred -- or don't exist.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the champ of Prius politics, having declared that his state will cut greenhouse emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 (about 25 percent below today's levels) and is aiming for an 80 percent reduction below 1990 levels by 2050. However, the policies to reach these goals haven't yet been formulated; that task has been left to the California Air Resources Board. Many mandates wouldn't take effect until 2012, presumably after Schwarzenegger has left office. As for the 2050 goal, it's like his movies: make-believe. Barring big technological breakthroughs, the chances of reaching it are zero.

But it's respectable make-believe. Schwarzenegger made the covers of Time and Newsweek. The press laps this up; "green" is the new "yellow journalism," says media critic Jack Shafer. Naturally, there's a bandwagon effect. At least 35 states have "climate action plans." None of this will reduce global greenhouse gas emissions from present levels.

Even if California achieved its 2020 goal (dubious) and the United States followed (more dubious), population and economic growth elsewhere would overwhelm any emission cuts. In 2050, global population is expected to hit 9.4 billion, up about 40 percent from today. At modest growth rates, the world economy will triple by mid-century.

Just to hold greenhouse gas emissions steady will require massive gains in efficiency or shifts to non-fossil fuels. The McKinsey Global Institute predicts that, under present trends, worldwide energy use will have risen 45 percent from 2003 to 2020. China will have accounted for a third of the increase, all developing countries for four-fifths. Even after assuming huge improvements in energy efficiency (better light bulbs, etc.), McKinsey still projects an increase of 13 percent in global energy demand.

But we've got to start somewhere, right? Okay, here's what Congress should do: (a) gradually increase fuel economy standards for new vehicles by at least 15 miles per gallon; (b) raise the gasoline tax over the same period by $1 to $2 a gallon to strengthen the demand for fuel-efficient vehicles and curb driving; (c) eliminate tax subsidies (mainly the mortgage interest rate deduction) for housing, which push Americans toward ever-bigger homes. (Note: If you move to a home 25 percent larger and then increase energy efficiency 25 percent, you don't save energy.)

I support these measures, because we should implement them anyway. We should limit dependence on insecure foreign oil. Tax subsidies cause Americans to overinvest in oversized homes. But practical politicians won't enact these policies, except perhaps for higher fuel economy standards. They'd be too unpopular.

Prius politics promises to conquer global warming without public displeasure. Gains will occur invisibly through business mandates, regulations and subsidies. That's why higher fuel economy standards are acceptable. They seem painless. It sounds too good to be true -- and it is. Costs are disguised. Mandates and subsidies will give rise to protected markets. Companies (utilities, auto companies, investment banks) will manipulate rules for competitive advantage. There will be more opportunity for private profit than public gain.

The government's support for ethanol is instructive. In 2006, 20 percent of the U.S. corn crop went for ethanol; the share is rising. Driven by demand for feed and fuel, corn prices have soared. With food costs increasing, inflation has worsened. The program is mostly an income transfer from consumers to producers and ethanol refiners. Americans' oil use and greenhouse gas output haven't declined.

Deep reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases might someday occur if both plug-in hybrid vehicles and underground storage of carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants become commercially viable. Meanwhile, Prius politics is a delusional exercise in public relations that, while not helping the environment, might hurt the economy.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Don Firth
Date: 25 Jul 07 - 03:03 PM

"Prius politics." That sounds to me like another of these bumper-sticker type of generalizations that replace the necessity of thinking. "Let's all sneer at people who buy hybrid cars, especially Priuses!"

My friend who owns a Prius bought it (he's had it for a couple of years now—it was one of the first ones out) for a combination of reasons. First, he liked small cars because they are peppy, maneuverable, and easy to park. Second, the fuel economy appealed to him. It was the most fuel-economical car on the market that was available to him at the time, and that he could afford. And third, he is very environmentally conscious, and he liked the idea of an electrically powered car, and the Prius looked like a good compromise until someone made a fully electrical car that a) had some range to it, and b) he could afford.

He doesn't give diddly-squat about his "image," or trying to make some sort of statement to other people.

People get on Arnold Schwarzenegger's case for advocating environmental responsibility when he owns two Hummers. But—in an interview with him that I heard a week or so ago, he said that he'd had the Hummers modified. One runs on hydrogen and the other runs on bio-diesel. He considers it an experiment.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: beardedbruce
Date: 26 Jul 07 - 01:10 PM

Study: Renewable Energy Not Green

Sara Goudarzi
Special to LiveScience
LiveScience.com
Thu Jul 26, 8:35 AM ET


Renewable energy could wreck the environment, according to a study that examined how much land it would take to generate the renewable resources that would make a difference in the global energy system.

Building enough wind farms, damming adequate number of rivers and growing sufficient biomass to produce ample kilowatts to make a difference in meeting global energy demands would involve a huge invasion of nature, according to Jesse Ausubel, a researcher at the Rockefeller University in New York.

Ausubel came to this conclusion by calculating the amount of energy that each renewable source can produce in terms of area of land disturbed.

"We looked at the different major alternatives for renewable energies and we measured [the power output] for each of them and how much land it will rape," Ausubel told LiveScience.

Land grab for energy

The results, published in the current issue of International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology, paint a grim picture for the environment. For example, according to the study, in order to meet the 2005 electricity demand for the United States, an area the size of Texas would need to be covered with wind structures running round the clock to extract, store and transport the energy.

New York City would require the entire area of Connecticut to become a wind farm to fully power all its electrical equipment and gadgets.

You can convert every kilowatt generated directly into land area disturbed, Ausubel said. "The biomass or wind will produce one or two watts per square meter. So every watt or kilowatt you want for light bulbs in your house can be translated into your hand reaching out into nature taking land."

Small dent in landmass

Other scientists are not on board with Ausubel's analysis and say that his use of energy density—the amount of energy produced per each area of land—as the only metric may not be the correct way to calculate the impact of energy from renewable resources on the environment.

"In general, I would say his use of energy density just does not capture the entire scope of issues and capabilities for all the different resources," said John A. Turner, a principal scientist at the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, who was not involved in the study.

Turner explains that if the entire United States were to be powered by solar cells with 10 percent efficiency, an area about 10,000 square miles would have to be covered by solar panels in a sunny place such as Arizona or Nevada.

"Now there's 3.7 million square miles of area for the continental U.S." Turner told LiveScience. "This represents a very, very tiny area. And that's just one technology."

"If you look at how much land area we've covered with roads, it's more than double that. So yeah, it's a large area, 100 miles by 100 miles, if you pack it into one thing, but if you scatter it across the country and compare it to all the other things we've already covered, it's not an egregious area."

Double use of land

Ausubel's analysis concludes that other renewable sources such as solar power and biomass are "un-green". According to his findings, to obtain power for a large proportion of the country from biomass would require 965 square miles of prime Iowa land. A photovoltaic solar cell plant would require painting black about 58 square miles, plus land for storage and retrieval to equal a 1,000-megawatt electric nuclear plant, a more environmentally friendly choice, Ausubel wrote.

However, new land doesn't have to be put into use just for a solar plant. Some scientists say already existing infrastructures could be doubled up for use to cover such an area.

"We could do with just rooftops of buildings and homes, land area we've already covered," Turner said. "We could meet 25 percent of our annual electrical demand by just putting solar panels on already existing rooftops of homes and businesses."

"Similarly, wind farms use up a lot of land area but they only really take up 5 percent of the land they cover," he explained. "The rest of it can be used for farming so it doesn't really impact the land area that much."

Going nuclear

Ausubel thinks that a better alternative to renewable energy resources would be nuclear power, which would leave behind far less waste than other alternatives

"There are three legs to the stool of environmentally sound energy policy—one is improved efficiency, second is increased reliance on natural gas with carbon capture and sequestration and the third is nuclear power," he explained.

"Nuclear power has the proliferation issues, which are serious but the environmental issues are small. With nuclear energy the issue is to contain radioactivity, which has been successfully done."

Turner agrees that nuclear power leaves a smaller carbon footprint, but he thinks that the waste issue associated with this technology is very serious.

"It's unconscionable to dismiss the issue of nuclear waste," Turner said, "because you have to store that waste for hundreds of thousands of years and nuclear wastes are particularly damaging to the environment and have social impacts also."

Similarly, Gregory A. Keoleian, co-Director for the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan, thinks more in-depth analyses are needed before dismissing renewables and considering nuclear power as a viable option.

"I think the characterizations made that 'renewables are not green' and 'nuclear is green' sound provocative, but they do not accurately represent these technologies with respect to a comprehensive set of sustainability criteria and analysis," Keoleian told LiveScience. "The treatment of renewable technologies [in this study] is shallow and the coverage of the nuclear fuel cycle is incomplete."

To capture the entire scope of issues and capabilities for all the different resources, scientists believe there need to be more studies and discussions.

"We have a finite amount of time, a finite amount of money and a finite amount of energy, and we need to be very careful about the choices we make as we build this new energy infrastructure," Turner said. "I'd like to see something that will last for millennia and certainly solar, wind and biomass will last as long as the sun shines. "

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: GUEST,saulgoldie
Date: 26 Jul 07 - 01:41 PM

Nevermind increased mileage. That will only slow down the rate of growth in our energy consumption. We ultimately need fewer people driving fewer miles. That means population control--too late for that, probably--and a whole new approach to "getting there." We need to go fewer places, stay closer to home, and we need to put more people in larger capacity vehicles, like buses and trains. Oh, and there are two more ways to get around: YOUR LEGS! Walking is a good start, and maybe the final stop for many people. But cycling is pretty effective. In fact, a person on a bicycle is the most efficient traveler of all vehicles and animals.

Of course, with the American process of building residences further and further out from centers of commerce, all of this will be pretty problematic, especially with the minimal political support it currently enjoys. For example, we are (locally, in Maryland, USA) about to build a multi-billion road that will suck up virtually all of our transportation dollars for the next few decades. And by the time it is done, people will have finally woken up to the fact that we need to drive less. At least I HOPE they will. We are fucked.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Wolfgang
Date: 11 Oct 07 - 08:39 AM

Gore's climate film has scientific errors

An Inconvenient Truth, was yesterday criticised by a high court judge who highlighted what he said were "nine scientific errors" in the film....
Mr Justice Barton said many of the claims made by the film were supported by the weight of scientific evidence and he identified four main hypotheses, each of which is very well supported "by research published in respected, peer-reviewed journals and accords with the latest conclusions of the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]."

The title the GUARDIAN used for the article focuses upon the errors. "Gore's film basically right" could also have been a correct title line.
I am pleased that the judge agrees with me that Gore's information about hurricanes is erroneous.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: Joe_F
Date: 11 Oct 07 - 10:55 PM

This is a party question, which means that there will be a good many crackpots & hired liars even among the experts, and for many, perhaps most, people the first response to any statement will not be "Is this likely to be true?" or "Is this relevant?", but "Which side is this person on?". That makes the task of a nonexpert, who must nevertheless form an opinion, difficult.

It is also clear that, politics aside, there is a lot of noise on the signal. There have been warmer & cooler days, months, years, decades, centuries, millennia, eons, and so on, and most of it has nothing to do with human enterprise or folly. In particular, only 14,000 years ago (I think it was), the ice came down to New York & St Louis, and the sea was so low that there was no English Channel and the Thames flowed into the Rhine. Since then, clearly, there has been a good deal of global warming, which has made it easier for our species to propagate. If it goes on, tho, it may well make it harder, and then it will make sense to try to do something about it, without arguing a lot about how much of it is our fault.

Very likely, we have done *something* to help it along already. No question we have put a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Regardless of how little or how much we are contributing to current changes, it is high time we started watching what we are doing very carefully, because we are getting to be important on the surface of this planet. In that effort, neither the idolization of business nor the idolization of nature will be helpful. More actual evidence may be.

In that connection, I see some plausibility in Freeman Dyson's complaint that we are putting too much effort into necessarily crude computer modeling and too little into gathering data. Some of what we don't know yet may be good news (negative feedback loops that stabilize things), and some may be bad (positive feedback loops that may lead to runaway). Dyson says, for example, that no-one has modeled the release of methane due to the melting of permafrost, because we don't know enough about it. But if it turns out to be important, it may be catastrophic. We might have to do something about it right away -- I can't imagine what, but maybe someone can.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: bobad
Date: 06 Feb 08 - 09:13 PM

Positive proof of global warming.

Subject: RE: BS: Global warming - the myth
From: pdq
Date: 06 Feb 08 - 10:00 PM

Ah yes, bobad. It can still be explained by the simple scientific formula we all learned in college:

The angle of the dangle is proportional to the heat of the meat as long as the mass of the ass remains constant.