BS: US Politics and Global Warming

Subject: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Pied Piper
Date: 08 Nov 04 - 12:12 PM

I'm really worried; looking at the map of those states that showed some sense and didn't vote for Bush, what you see is that there all near the coast.
Sea level rise due to global warming (and come to think of it earthquakes) could further reduce the number of decent folks and the handling Rattle Snakes mob could be in permanent control.

PP

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: DougR
Date: 08 Nov 04 - 04:14 PM

PP: I think you can go back to your cage now. They should have it cleaned up by now.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Once Famous
Date: 08 Nov 04 - 04:19 PM

Why don't you worry about changing your shorts everyday? Or is it that you have no clean ones because you are worried that you might use up all of the water?

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 01:32 AM

Pied Piper, you are in real serious trouble. You appear to have titivated the appetites of the predators!You will be smothered by words of wisdom. Just look at the MG stuff----
A news item on CNN today [Monday] reported that there was evidence of a looming tragedy due to the melting of the polar icecap, and that this was attributable to global warming. The inevitable editorialising on Blitzer's own channel brought the comment from the bright blonde newscaster that the news wasn't all bad, as it was thought that gas and oilfields in Northern Russia might well become exploitable. As all the posters on this thread so far know, this is typical of attitudes found all the way to the top--and not only in the U.S. The wilfully blind, the greedy, and the plain stupid ones deny the existence of the stone wall ahead. The rest are coming close to despair.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 01:37 AM

That's right, Doug and Martin, keep repeating to yourselves;

"There's no such thing as Global Warming"
"There's no such thing as Global Warming"
"There's no such thing as Global Warming"
"There's no such thing as Global Warming"
"There's no such thing as Global Warming"
"There's no such thing as Global Warming"
"There's no such thing as Global Warming"

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Peace
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 01:41 AM

Google

Global Warming

and read the latest articles about it. Then, have a good night's sleep. It is NO joke, folks.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: freda underhill
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 01:50 AM

new report on warming in the arctic

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 01:50 AM

Global warming is indeed real, and NOT man-made. If one looks at climate over the long term, we have been in a "little" ice age for some time- which got worse in about 1100 AD. Now, the climate is shifting back to the normal that we can expect. The polar ice caps will melt, reducing the reflectivity of the earth even more, and we will have near tropical condition well up towards the poles. Just a natural shift. You can't blame this on modern industry, the Bush administration, or even Diebold. It's just the way things are- so get used to it.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 01:53 AM

of course, we will have hundreds of years to sit back and argue over whose fault it is.....

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 01:57 AM

BB, if you really think we have the luxury of that kind of timeline left for our species, then feel free to join in the chorus of;

"We don't need to worry about Global Warming,
Stickin my head right back into the saaannnd"

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 01:58 AM

Even Democrats should be able to move uphill, if they get their heads out of the sand and look at reality....

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: dianavan
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 02:00 AM

beardedbruce - Sources please.

d

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 02:06 AM

crossposted:

I meant that the effect of global warming will be to raise the water level by some feet per year. The first state to go under will be Florida. Look at the elevations, and you will see that the BLUE states will have almost no loss of area.... Pied Piper is really out of line on this one. If anything, all those red states will send population into the blue states, where the liberals can properly educate them and make sure that they vote according to the Party Line.

We are far more likely to destroy enough of the infrastructure, or allow terrorists of some sort to destroy it, so that the poulation will be greatly reduced, without any need to worry about global warming.

Or that asteroid that we should be looking for, but don't quite want to fund the search for is going to hit, and give us a few hundred years of winter- Now that would stop global warming, since once the ice caps build up, they reflect the sunlight that would melt them, and the glaciers would return...

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 02:09 AM

Sources?

Books on climatology, history ( think about the viking Greenland colony), basic physics, astrodynamics.... Not everything requires a soundbite from the net.

I am more authoritative on crustal motion- climate is such a transient phenomenom...

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 02:10 AM

But, of course, it is all theory, so we can argue about it, as the water rises arond our feet, and the world starves as the food growing regions shift...

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 03:03 AM

"And the melting of glaciers is expected to raise world sea levels by about 10 cm (4 inches) by the end of the century."

from the CNN article...

Looks like I was wrong on the feet per century- but I don't know if this includes the polar ice caps, or just glaciers.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 03:06 AM

You seem confused b.b. Sometimes in denial. Are you saying that man made atmospheric pollution has NO effect on the climate? If you are not, then to advocate letting the status quo prevail reeks of moral bankruptcy. Or are you one of those who have recognised the likely future and has just given up? Global warming is happening NOW at a faster rate by far than has ever been detected through archeological investigation. Reputable science has suggested that the rate of species extinction today is faster than the great extinctions of the dinosaur period. If humankind accepts that their actions are having climatic effects, then it follows that it has a much greater moral obligation to take action to arrest or reverse those effects than any that George Bush ever prayed to his "god" about. The measures promised by the Kyoto accord are woefully inadequate. Those being approached by the US administration are abysmal, and, frankly, cowardly.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 03:17 AM

Boab,

Have you ever looked at the numbers? The primary cause of climatic change is NATURAL causes, such as volcanoes ( how many major erruptions in the last 20 years?) and solar flux change. The sun is a variable star, to some degree.

Should we try to reduce pollution? OF COURSE. But to decide that that is the cause of the warming is an act of hubris far beyound any that the Bush Administration has ever demonstated. We might slow, or speed things by a percent- but that would take a major effort, and I think that the effort would be better spent using the resources to help ease the REAL shift that will happen, regardless of political decisions.

As for species extinction, that is primarily due to habitat destruction. All we need to do is have mandatory birth control, and reduce the population down to sustainable levels, to keep the level of available animal habitate constant. So, who gets to decide who will have children? (And I mean a serious, population reducing level- like one birth per 10 couples per decade.)You? Me? I certainly don't want that job. Or should we just kill off everyone who disagrees with you, leaving enough room for the animals? I am open to a reasonable method- but the moral bankruptcy is not on my part.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: freda underhill
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 03:35 AM

I guess the title and responses on this thread say it all - when politics (read business interests) tries to interfere with science, we have global warming being denied by those ideologoically opposed to accepting it is occurring, including those responsible for taking measures to address it.

Boston Globe on global warning 9th Nov 04

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: muppett
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 04:36 AM

The end of the last ice age was due to global warming and sea levals rose by several tens of feet, that wasn't due to industry,lack of government policies or the greed of companies. However that's not to say that the modern way of life doesn't contribute towards it, t'other week I was going to a conferance in Rotherham (UK),went in a mini bus with some local residents and we went along the motorway, the journey was only 30 odd miles in length but it took a couple of hours to do it, we got stuck in lines of traffic and the vast majority of them had one person in them. Three or four buses or coaches could have carried these folk, but no what happens instead gridlock, road rage & pollution and they say it'll get worse, Roll on Amergedon!!!!!!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: emjay
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 01:44 PM

From the Anchorage Daily News, Nov. 9, 2004

For decades, an oceaninc and atmospheric pattern known as arctic oscillation has been stuck in a phase that increases warming over parts of the Arctic. In recent years, the pattern has shifted to a more neutral state, "yet the Arctic is still warming and we're still losing sea ice," said Mark Serreze, a researcher with the National Snow and Ice Date Center in Colorado, who contributed to the report.
"This is one of the pieces of evidence that we're starting to see more clearly the effects of greenhouse warming," he said.

Since this is from a wire service, it has obviously been widely circulated. A geologist friend offered her insight into all of this when she said that one of the advantages of being a geologist is that she is able to take a long term look at the problem. A very long look! She sees humanity killing itself off, but the world will go on just as it has through other catastrophic events. She sees that as the solution to a people created problem that people will never attempt to cure.
This thread is evidence of the unwillingness to correct. Just deny, deny, deny. Even here in Alaska where global warming is seen clearly year to year, people deny it or say it is just part of the natural cycle. The quotation cited above seems to say maybe it's not.

For more information of the report go to www.adn.com/links

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 02:02 PM

The science is pretty solid in some ways about global warming. It happened without industrial greenhouse gases all on it's Ice Age own. But that doesn't mean that greenhouse gases aren't precipitating the global warming.

Now, for those of us here in Minnesota, that ain't such bad news. We, uh, kinda like the globe around here warming up a bit!

But that said, the dangers of greenhouse gases and pollution are becoming alarming, if for no other reason than the rapidity with which they have built up in the atmosphere and are causing serious health effects, effects on agricultural systems, economies, etc.

Then there is that pesky fact that we aren't going to have fossil fuels to kick around for much longer, even if Bush DOES drill in the ANWR and everyplace else on the globe, and strip mine every coal field, and exploit every pocket of natural gas.

We pretty much have used most that stuff up, it's making us sick, when technology should be extending our lives AND the quality of them, that sort of thing.

Not to mention, the fossil fuel economy is bankrupting us ethically, financially, burning up other resources...

The list of reasons why we need to welcome the brave new world of alternatives is a couple of miles long at this point. We need to be worried, because one thing about climates--they change alot faster than than the tectonics do. Which means these changes will effect, if not us, then our kids or theirs.

It ain't about the being of political rightness, it is about sound stewardship, and being proactive in deciding what kind of world we want to live in, considering the limitations over which we have no control.

Can we stop global warming? No. Do we want to try and slow it down? Maybe, maybe not. But we should at least be allowed to discuss it thoughtfully, without getting shouted down by the Republicans and Republicrats, who keep patting us on the head and telling us not to worry, their experts will take care of everything.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 05:35 PM

b.b.--by the tone of your postings, I wouldn't be surprised at all if you'd heard, or even read, Mona Sharon or Dr Dixie Lee Ray. Mona Sharon was a rabidly right wing columnist, and Dr D.L.R. claimed to be a scientist , and was also a right wing politician. Where they both are nowadays I don't know. Somewhere they can remain harmless I hope. Mona Sharon, like yourself, waved the "volcano factor" at everybody. The "scientist" Dixie Lee Ray, went so far as to deny the existence of acid rain! I do not deny the effects of volcanic activity. And, moreover, I am aware of the production of methane gas and co2 from the very fact of living and breathing as an animal. The methane emissions from cattle are enormous. But volcanic action, living and breathing --and eating--are essential parts of the continuation of life on this Planet; the profligate use of fossil fuels, the escalating masses of military vehicles [planes included], the over-consideration for those of us who drive gas-driven vehicles, and the constant barrage of t.v. advertising for gas-guzzlers which are seemingly being manufactured for blithering idiots who don't even drive on a highway ---none of these are essential, and indeed are having an obvious and accelerating effect on our world. We must recognise the difference between necessity and frivolity; otherwise, I dread what lies in the future for my Great-grandchildren---and I do have some.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Once Famous
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 05:43 PM

It's supposed to be a very cold winter.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: GUEST,petr
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 05:45 PM

well before florida and other parts of the south are underwater,
expect a lot more hurricanes, heatwaves, droughts and floods. The last couple years are probably only a small indication of whats to come.

recently an Inuit village in the north, came across an insect theyve never seen before and do not even have a word for in their language. It turns out it was a wasp. and it was a lot farther north than its ever been. The polar bears wait longer and longer each year for the ice to form so they can start hunting. The permafrost will melt,
(less snow and ice in the north will also reflect less sunlight into space and further increase global warming)

there is nothing wrong with the greenhouse effect, in fact thats what keeps us alive, it the runaway warming that is a threat.

Although GW BUsh finally admitted global warming is a fact, the Pentagon already published a paper last year on the same topic, and how to use military means to control diminishing resources.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 08:09 PM

Boab

Never heard of either one...


But I do have a college education, and a few decades of work experience. Sorry if I don't agree with your political conclusions.

And I certainly do not deny that global warming is taking place- READ MY POSTS!

I just don't think you can put the political spin on it that you are obviously trying to do. If a nearby star goes nova, I expect a number of people here to blame it on the Bush administration...

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: CarolC
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 08:58 PM

Well, the good news is that Washington DC is also at sea level. The bad news is that the secret bunker under the mountain where the shadow government hides out is quite a bit above sea level.

;-)

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 09:03 PM

WHich bunker doe you mean? None of them are very secret...

And I think 4 inches might not even get up to the Mall... Certainly not Capitol Hill.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 09:11 PM

Don't worry. It'll be poor people in other parts of the world who will really be hit before the USA has any serious problems.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: CarolC
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 09:31 PM

That's true, beardedbruce. I know about the under-mountain bunker in Drainsville, VA (my dad worked there for a while), and I've been past the one further north, I think in Loudon County VA (can't remember the name).

I bet all those beautiful old row houses in Georgetown and Old Town Alexandria will go under though.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 09:33 PM

Which is what I said- all the money spent in political argueing should be used to help those who will be most affected by the warming.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: beardedbruce
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 09:36 PM

Sorry, Carol- crossposted...

The location of all the alternate command posts and government shelters has been in the open press for better than 30 years.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 09:42 PM

all the money spent in political arguing should be used to help those who will be most affected by the warming.

Should, but won't. There's no need for political argument about this, any more than there is about whether cigarettes cause cancer. But as in that case, there are people with vested interests in pretending the case is still wide open. And that most signifcantly includes the people in power in the USA.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 09 Nov 04 - 09:53 PM

Sea level rise is by far NOT the biggest threat from global warming. How about loss of thermohaline circulation in the oceans? The geographic shifts in zones hospitable to agriculture and even habitation will be enormous. Imagine entire countries in Northern Europe either starving or moving south. The global upheaval will be unimaginable. The Pentagon is actually planning for such a cataclysm.

Five years ago, despite nearly unanimous scientific consensus, The Right claimed that global warming was a myth. Interestingly, they now admit that it is in fact real, but deny human involvement. The proof of human involvement (with deforestation and consequent loss of monstrous carbon sinks/reservoirs rivalling greenhouse gas emissions) is rapidly mounting and unanimity is again on the horizon, and The Right is again clinging vainly to tiny shreds of dissent.

Thoise who state that it is simply a natural cycle, and that life will go on are quite correct. Life on earth has survived many such cataclysms over the millenia. Life has even survived massive extinctions brought on by life forms themselves (witness the PreCambrian poisoning of anaerobic life due to their production of the modern oxygen atmosphere). After each cataclysm, life did indeed survive, even flourish. But, the array of life forms was often vastly different.

I have no fear at all that the planet and many life forms will survive global warming. But will my grandchildren? Are you willing to risk it? Is short-term economic hardship worse than possible condemnation of our descendants?

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 10 Nov 04 - 03:27 AM

Observe B.Bruce---the previous post. Now THERE is your political "spin". How you come to assert that I used it in my post I don't know. Unless it was the mention of the fact that Dixie Lee Ray was a right wing politician? Well , that is a fact, and no "spin" is involved. The term , in any case is similar to "political correctness"---it has been too often used in attempts to belittle opposing opinions. [ not that I accuse yourself in this instance!]
You are correct in restating on my behalf, though, my detestation of the Bush administration.
Peace----

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Stu
Date: 10 Nov 04 - 05:15 AM

There is a grain of truth in bb.s assertion that global warming is a natural phenomenon. As for returning to a 'normal' temperature, there is no such thing, as temperature variation is cyclic and doesn't really ever settle for any length of time.

There is some evidence we are in an interglacial, and the geological record is full of evidence that the earth has been much warmer, without permanent ice caps many times before (during the Mesozioc for instance). Check here for a brief discussion on the effects of interglacials and temperature variations between the ice ages.

There is no doubt in my mind that anthropogenic activities have exacerbated the process, but in geological terms this will not be noticed by geologists 10,000 years from now, who will see rapid warming but nothing that they would not expect.

All that said, Bush's attitude to the Kyoto protocol and the US public's deep desire to use the earth's resources as fast as possible and sod everyone else is not going to make life easier for anyone, including themselves in the long run.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: mooman
Date: 10 Nov 04 - 10:13 AM

I'm getting more and more brassed off by the global warming denial expressed by some here over recent years.

Here is a definitive report from the

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: mooman
Date: 10 Nov 04 - 10:18 AM

Sorry...end of post and link lost above...

I'm getting more and more brassed off by the global warming denial expressed by some here over recent years.

Here is a definitive report from the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment organization published last Monday.

I'm afraid it's 146 pages of rather depressing reading...

Expecting the usual Pavlov's 'Catters to come along shortly and rubbish it.

Peace

moo

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: GUEST,Larry K
Date: 10 Nov 04 - 10:43 AM

They keep telling me that global warming is coming and if we don't do something it will be 5 degrees warmer in 50 years.   I live in Michigan and it is very cold here.    I can't wait 50 years.   Why can't that global warming come now.    Every time I look at my winter heating bills I keep thinking "if only we could have global warming now".   (Fortunately, I have a geothermal heating and cooling systems so my bills are very low)

Maybe I should go rent the movie "the day after"

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Nov 04 - 11:11 AM

Like I said, it isn't just global warming that is the problem. It is the ozone depletion, climate change, sea level changes, agricultural ecosystem changes, pollution, etc. that comes along with the increased levels of greenhouse gases.

I can't even believe people are still debating whether or not these pollution issues are a bad thing or benign.

Our technology has saved us from ourselves and our idiocy so far, but we are most definitely running out of time and quick technological fixes to problems that result from global warming AND ozone depletion AND pollution.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Stu
Date: 10 Nov 04 - 12:20 PM

Moonman - it is not an expression of denial over global warming, but just how much man's activities are causing it. In the case of global warming, my opinion is there is an impact from pollution and the relaease of greenhouse gasses, but the temperature is probably rising as we are on the upward curve of a warming-cooling cycle.

The real problems arise when you take into account deforestation, the overfishing and pollution of our seas etc. We are currently in the middle of what may turn out to be the largest mass extinction in the planet's history, and when you look at the P-T extinction, that is grim indeed. And there is no doubt about who is causing that.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 10 Nov 04 - 12:23 PM

Yes, The Right loves to say "what's the big deal about a 5 degree rise in temperature?". They are, of course being deliberately obtuse, and insisting upon fiddling while Rome burns. Global average temperature increase in the world's shallow oceans of less than 5 degrees has led to the death of 70% of the world's coral in the last decade. The right wing coal miners say "big deal, it's just one dead canary".

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: CarolC
Date: 10 Nov 04 - 12:29 PM

Larry K, you old hippie you.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: DougR
Date: 10 Nov 04 - 01:54 PM

Good news today from CNN! Bush is going to drill for oil in the Alaskan wilderness! All that oil just lying there that can be used to fuel our cars and our homes! Looks like he may be able to pull it off this time. Thread creep, I know, but I'm sure you wacko far left environmentalists would want to know this if you haven't heard.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 11 Nov 04 - 02:59 AM

Now read above--this is an example of what should NEVER be in a position to either influence economy or environment. The tragedy is that such as this already ARE in powerful positions. However, since they don't much care about Iraqi kids, they are unlikely to worry over much about ours.....

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 11 Nov 04 - 03:02 AM

---And thread "creep" is a perfect description, since you want to throw your own twisted insults around.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Peace
Date: 11 Nov 04 - 03:16 AM

The main threat to our planet will come when oil stocks deplete. When we have to burn wood and coal for heat, then we shall see polution such as seldom before in our planet's history. THEN, we will have serious issues that make global warming in a hundred years seem like issues we'll have time to solve. Right now, it's our almost complete and total dependency on fossil fuels that is scary. It's a dependency we have that will have to be reversed or seriously curtailed, because the planet cannot take it.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 11 Nov 04 - 01:38 PM

DougR says "All that oil just lying there that can be used to fuel our cars and our homes!"

For 180 days DougR, 180 days.

And who says 180 days?

Those far left environmentalist wackos at the US Department of the Interior*

*USFWS (2002), "Arctic National Wildlife, Refuge Report on the Potential Impacts of Proposed Oil and Gas Development on the Arctic Refuge's Coastal Plain: Historical Overview and Issues of Concern"

Then again, 180 days of oil does solve the whole problem 'cause the Bush supporters don't have memories that long.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: CarolC
Date: 11 Nov 04 - 03:00 PM

They just hate to see all those potential profits sitting there under the ground instead of in their pockets.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 11 Nov 04 - 10:07 PM

It's not just the profits, it's the tribalism. If Rush Limbaugh told them their sphincters had taste buds, they'd be sitting on lollipops.

Actual quote from Limbaugh:

"C'mon folks, think about it...If the ice caps were melting, the world's oceans would be getting cooler."

Wadda Maroon.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Peace
Date: 11 Nov 04 - 10:52 PM

Did he really say that? Ah, man, this is grim.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: dianavan
Date: 12 Nov 04 - 02:08 AM

One question, DougR -

How does Bush plan on getting that oil from the Alaskan wilderness to your home?

Oh, thats right! He doesn't make plans. Oops!!!

d

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 12 Nov 04 - 09:37 AM

Yes, he really did. Tuesday, September 14, 2004.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Wolfgang
Date: 13 Nov 04 - 03:31 PM

global warming being denied by those ideologoically opposed to accepting it is occurring (Freda)
global warming denial (Mooman)

Sorry, Freda and Richard, I do not understand this particular argumentation here at all. There is no one in this thread (I know I repeat this, but I get the impression that repetition is here necessary) who has denied global warming is observed for some time now. Since you both can read I suspect you do not mean what I read you to say.

Do you mean the fact or do you mean the interpretation which causes the fact? If you mean the fact there is no use insisting upon what is undisputed. If you mean the interpretation I strongly object to the word 'denial'. Denial is used for someone denying something she knows to be true. This is not the case here. You should know that there is an open scientific debate about the causes (or at the very least about the relative importance of the various causes). The word 'denial'/'deny' in a scientific debate should be used with more care. 'Denial' is a term from a political debate and I did not understand you as wanting to contribute from a political point of view.

A debate can never be ended by strong words like denial. And this debate is still open as everyone knows who reads about it. I share your worries that the human influence could be larger than a few percent and I'd act (as a politician) as if the worries were true for the one error (acting without need) is much less fatal than the other (not acting though there is need) and doing our bit to reduce human made 'exhausts' cannot be really bad, for a couple of other reasons too. But I'll do everything I can to keep a debate open when there is still dissent. We can only learn from that and we should be open to errors in our position.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: dianavan
Date: 13 Nov 04 - 03:38 PM

One thing that I do not understand about emission control is why the emphasis is on automobile emission and not jet fuel emission. It seems that jets, trucks and busses are at least partially to blame. Is this being ignored because of the profits involved?

d

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: GUEST,Frank
Date: 13 Nov 04 - 04:01 PM

There are very few if any qualified scientists on this thread to offer a valuable opinion. There are many who have warned us.

Frank

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Peace
Date: 13 Nov 04 - 04:04 PM

True, Frank, but it does seem that scientists dance to the tune of the people who issue their pay cheques. Not meant to be offensive; meant to be an observation.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: GUEST,pitythefoo's
Date: 27 Nov 04 - 07:40 PM

I think you're all ignoring one of the most significant sources of dangerous emissions. The level of potentially lethal hot air escaping out of your collective pieholes is enough to make us all go the way of the saber tooth. I'd be interested to see the round of pre-"Y2K" posts attributed to this esteemed panel of experts.
Fair thee well, chicken littles.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 27 Nov 04 - 08:14 PM

See also A Foreboding Thaw from the Times editorial section.


A

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: DougR
Date: 28 Nov 04 - 12:54 PM

If you liberals are so concerned about Global Warming, why don't you stop emitting all that hot air? :>)

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: CarolC
Date: 28 Nov 04 - 01:07 PM

You two dinosaurs seem to not realize that typing into a computer creates no more hot air than any other activity in which one sits relatively still for any length of time, like, for instance, watching FoxNews on TV.

Message to dinosaurs... evolve or face extinction.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Peace
Date: 28 Nov 04 - 11:18 PM

Some people are not at all concerned about the world that gets left to future generations. That's too bad, really. Fossil fuels are getting low, but we've always know they wouldn't be here forever. This is not about politics, per se; it IS about survival twenty years in the future. If you expect to have died before then, than maybe it need not concern you. I expect to be dead ten years into the future. However, I had hoped my children and those of other people could continue on with something resembling a decent quality of life. My political views have little to do with this. My personal views have everything to do with this. My human views.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: DougR
Date: 29 Nov 04 - 12:08 AM

brucie: right. I assume from now on you will be walking instead of driving, right? Carol C. would probably be more than happy to join you, but JTS would likely keep an eye on you I expect.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Peace
Date: 29 Nov 04 - 12:11 AM

I drive a four cylinder standard and spend about $35 dollars a month on gas. How's that, Doug? Not bad, huh? And my electric bills are an average of $50 a month. Not bad, huh?

What do you drive, Doug?

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: CarolC
Date: 29 Nov 04 - 12:52 AM

We have a van that doesn't get the best gas mileage but we only use it on average once every one or two weeks. On those occasions, we mostly just go within about a 20 mile radius. This probabaly won't change any time in the very near future, because we require the van for when we need to tow our house (last time we did that was around this time last year, but we expect to need to do it again at least once more before we settle into somewhat more permanent housing). But eventually we will probably get a vehicle that has some of the new, less petroleum-dependent technology.

Our current living situation, I have discovered, is making an environmental footprint that is only slightly larger than the average for the rest of the world, and waaaaayyyy below the average for people in the US. We hope to continue to improve our impact in that respect.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: GUEST,petr
Date: 29 Nov 04 - 08:55 PM

the US uses up 20mill. barrels per day. If more efficient
mileage regulations were required for vehicles (and required SUVs to meet the same standards as cars) it would save a million barrels a day.
(btw - the Bush administration actually opposes more efficient mileage regulations, and US automakers dont consider that a high priority - as opposed to luxury options)

(More efficient standards would more than offset any oil taken out of ANWR which is only estimated to be 6billion barrels)

in 20 years the US will probably use 30mill barrels per day,
and with China hunger for oil growing so rapidly, one wonders where youre going to find more. Youre going to need a lot more ANWRs.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: DougR
Date: 30 Nov 04 - 01:06 AM

brucie: why a Hummer, of course, what else? :>)

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Peace
Date: 30 Nov 04 - 01:07 AM

Why did I know that?

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: CarolC
Date: 30 Nov 04 - 01:17 AM

I bet he doesn't drive a Hummer. I bet he drives a Mercury Grand Marquis.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Peace
Date: 30 Nov 04 - 01:31 AM

So, uh, Doug, it's uh called a Hummer because ..................................................................................................................



















IT DOESN'T KNOW THE WORDS!

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Wolfgang
Date: 30 Nov 04 - 09:51 AM

I'm interested to read about this debate on a more empirically focused level.

(1) The last survey I read about scientists' (experts in that field) opinions was a Gallup poll from 1992. Even then, 60% agreed that the global temperatures had risen but only 19 % attributed the increase to human activities. The opinions may have changed since then. Does anyone have newer polls?

(2) Last time I read about the climate models these models were tested by looking at their ability to predict the past changes starting back from now. The models usually were off from the mark at least by a factor of 2. Does someone have newer information on that question?

(3) There is not the slightest disagreement that carbondioxide in the atmosphere is increasing. There is also no disagreement since at least Arrhenius more 100 years ago that this factor viewed in isolation predicts an increase of the temperature. His prediction of the actual temperature increase was far off, but his argumentation that CO2 viewed alone leads to a temperature increase stands unchallenged. The debate is whether other factors resulting from a temperature increase (like increased rainfall, clouds etc.) will work in the direction of higher or lower temperatures. If someone could point me to newer results I'd like to read them.

Basically the question here is whether the earth climate works in a negative (like for instance in the Gaia hypothesis) or in a positive feedback mode. In a negative feedback mode the effects leading to higher temperatures will on the other hand trigger effects leading to lowering the temperatures, keeping all in all a balance (notwithstanding extremely large natural catastrophes like a hit by a big celestial body). Does anyone have newer informations on a consensus on the mode of feedback?

One last question that is often in my mind in these discussions: Everybody knows that a weather prediction for let's say the weather in two weeks is extremely difficult to make and should not be trusted a lot. Why do some people who on other occasions don't trust long-term (14 days) weather predictions and have a deep mistrust in scientific modeling and predicting in other fields trust here so completely in extremely simplified and simplifying global climate models predicting the weather not in 14 days but in 100 years?

Having said that I still think that acting as if the danger was true is the better option in the light of conflicting theories about the future. But I must say when I look back at the 'ice age' predictions from the 1970s I'm a bit skeptical about the new kids on the block predictions, especially if they come in some cases from the same people who have dismally failed in 1970 to predict the state of the world in 2000.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: GUEST,petr
Date: 30 Nov 04 - 08:26 PM

well, Stephen Schneider, one of the main proponents of the global warming theory, in the 1970's warned of an imminent Ice Age. When he was asked about later this he shrugged it off by saying he was wrong.

as far as Wolfgangs last point about not being able to predict the weather more than a few days ahead and people's willingness to trust theories a century ahead, (Chaos theory, or sensitivity to initial conditions makes it difficult to predict what will happen past 6days or so because there are so many variables, on the other hand,
long term trends may not be as difficult, as we know that temperature has gradually increased over the last century, and atmospheric co2 has increased as well.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: dianavan
Date: 30 Nov 04 - 10:23 PM

Here's what David Suzuki has to say about it:

http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Climate_Change/Science/

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Wolfgang
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 07:46 AM

Thanks for the URL, dianavan, but that's more or less exactly what at least I do not like reading anymore: Opinion only slightly disguised as science, one-sided selected facts with the deliberate omission of potential problems in the equation. For instance, if one compares the first page CO2 curve (as an aside, look at his clever choice of the numbers at the ordinate making the increase visually larger) with the temperature curve on one of his next pages one sees that most of the temperature increase (roughly two third) in the past century was during those years when the CO2 increase was still small. I see no mention of this problem by Suzuki. From a good site I'd expect more even-handedness and a little more sense of the problems for his position.

Last year I have heard an equally bad lecture (one-sided, selective, ridiculing,...) by a person from the other side of the debate, one from the all-is-well faction. I was the first one to stand up at the questions section and complain about his approach. I'm fed up with halfsense from whichever side it comes. I'm looking for facts (and theories) to help me form an opinion, and whereever I look I see opinions looking for supportive facts and nothing else.

What I'm looking for is, for instance, a doomsayer explaining me from his point of view why the temperature has decreased from 1700 to 1850 and why the decrease started from temperatures as high as in the late 1990s. Or one of the all-is-wellers instead of only criticising others' models for not including one potentially interesting factor leading to negative feedbak making a model himself showing that an increase of CO2 and similar gases does not lead to higher temperatures (at least in his model).

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 08:05 AM

Two things Wolfgang:

1) Predicting weather and predicting climate are two very different things.
2) Brace yourself for some reading, but to get the whole history of global warming research from way back to right now, go here....

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: mooman
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 09:14 AM

Dear Wolfgang,

Of course I appreciate your desire for an empirical scientific debate. The fact is that there are people in political positions and also here at Mudcat who do deny the increasing weight of scientific opinion concerning global warming. There are also those who like to split hairs and sell red herrings on the matter.

The report of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment that I linked above is an authorative scientific report with an impressive list of contributors. I used the word "deny" pointedly here because it seems to me that some peoples' belief systems (not in the religious sense of course) simply do not allow them to accept that which can clearly be observed and measured (not the interpretation thereof) and which now has the overwhelming weight of scientific opinion behind it.

All the best,

Richard

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: GUEST,Chief Chaos
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 11:41 AM

Whether or not global warming is attributable to human activities is a moot point.

We already know that it is real.
We already know that smog causes asthmatic folks problems.
We already know that Ozone is poisonous and not something we want to breathe.
We already know that acid rain is real.

So what are we going to do about it?

Study it until it goes away!

And you just know that the powers that be have good water and air filters in their home so why should they worry?

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Wolfgang
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 12:01 PM

That's a link much more to my taste, TIA. Thanks.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Wolfgang
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 01:59 PM

Skeptical linksite on global warming

That's one of those sites from the other camp I (mostly) dislike. Many piss poor articles sometimes even without an author name and mostly without references. But some of those links lead to good links that have what I like. If one goes at those links one can see easily that there are dissenting opinions.

I have read recently (by whom???) what I recollect as 'a case study of skepticism carried too far'.

CC, your way of arguing does damage to what you want to happen.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 06:33 PM

As a percentage of scientists actually in the field (who said "beware of experts outside their field of expertise"?), the number of dissenters is vanishingly small. Used to be much larger, but the concensus is pretty broad that (in descending order of unanimity):

1) it is happening,

2) it could have cataclysmic consequences,

3) whatever the cause, we would be wise to do whatever we can to, if not prevent it, at least slow it,

4) human activities are at least partially implicated.

The people who continue to crow that it is an liberal environmnetalist whacko myth are the crackpots.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: GUEST,Chief Chaos
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 07:00 PM

Sorry Wolfgang,

Too many years of fighting pollution (that's what I do) and having industry tell me there's nothing damaging about it. I realise my last statement kind of kills it but haven't we all been seeing ads for water purification devices and air purification devices? If things are so hunky dory then why is htere even a market for filtered/bottled water? And for people who are living on paychecks that don't stretch two weeks these things are beyond their means.

All of our actions have had impacts on the weather. We have paved over a great deal of the land changing the albido of the planet.
Whereas it is true that volcanos while active spew tons of sulfates and dioxides as well as other compounds, should we still do nothing and add tons more to what nature puts out?

All the while we have also been losing forests, not by the acre, but by the mile. And our current administration is rolling back laws that protect old growth forests, allow strip mining (which causes the loss of more trees and allows the mine waste to be dumped down the hillside into the streams) without requiring the companies to recover the land.

I've seen part of the proposed ANWAR and it talks about a small footprint. Well according to them the footprint is the concrete base of the facility pier, a 1 ft square piece of concrete. It doesn't account for the masses of metal stretching from base to base.


I am by no means a tree hugger. I have always enforced US law and regulation to the best interest of the public and industry trying to find a balance between economy and ecology. The EPA has not been pursuing violations and unless a state has it's own environmental cops then there is probably no-one else to do it.

The administrations first position was that Global warming didn't exist after years of study. Then they had their own scientists say "guess what, it does exist!" They changed strategy to say that no-one knows for sure that our actions have anything to do with it. This is the same President who reversed course on improving water quality standards saying a lower level of arsenic wouldn't matter.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: dianavan
Date: 01 Dec 04 - 07:38 PM

Wolfgang - It is laughable that you think Suzuki's website is not scientific enough for you. Maybe if you had looked a little further you would have found this link, http://www.acia.uaf.edu/.

d

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Susan-Marie
Date: 02 Dec 04 - 08:43 AM

What has struck me recently is that the same tactics that were used by the U.S. tobacco industry decades ago are being used by the Bush administration now. "Not enough science", "Too hard to predict", "We'll do our own studies because we can't trust you ivory-tower academicians". Here's the latest installment: "Modeling isn't science" Wash Post The Competitive Enterprise Institute has no problem with modeling when it supports their contention that environmental protection is bad for the economy. But when it points out the likely consequences of no environmental protection - THEN it's unreliable.

That's the analytical me talking. My gut is saying "BUNCHA TWO-FACED GREEDY ASSHOLES!" There, I'm glad I got that off my chest.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Wolfgang
Date: 02 Dec 04 - 11:08 AM

Susan-Marie,

the tobacco example is true. But it is easy to compile an impressive list of past warnings that have turned out to be not true. Looking who is it (and what his affiliation is) who says something is true or can still be doubted can help to determine how much one personally trusts a source, but it is not much more than an indication.

A scientist can have a personal reason (like an industry link) to adopt one particular position and can be right, another can have an impeccable record of working for the benefit of mankind and be wrong. Those warning about the global warming have at least one personal interest: inflating the potential danger increases the chances for grant monies. The personal interests of the other camp have been mentioned by Brucie in one old post.

One item from the Scientific American News section in June this year:
Rising Sun
Humans may be shouldering too much of the blame for global warming, according to a new look at data from six sun-gazing satellites. They suggest that Planet Earth has been drenched in a bath of solar radiation that has been intensifying over the past 24 years--an increase of about 0.05 percent each decade. If that trend began early last century, it could account for a significant component of the climatic warm-up that is typically attributed to human-made greenhouse gases, says Richard C. Willson of Columbia University's Center for Climate Systems Research in Coronado, Calif. Willson concedes that the climate's sensitivity to such subtle solar changes is still poorly understood, but the evidence merits keeping a close eye on both the sun and humans to better gauge their relative influences on global climate. "In 100 years I think we'll find the sun is in control," he says. His team's report appears in the March 4 Geophysical Research Letters. (I wouldn't see yet that humans can be held responsible for that)

A policy statement of the American Association of State Climatologists (I can agree with much of what they write)

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: freda underhill
Date: 29 Jul 05 - 10:22 AM

On Thursday, temperatures of 40 degrees were recorded, the highest in Poland in 83 years.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 29 Jul 05 - 11:55 AM

At this time the tundra permafrost in Alaska and Russia is softening to liquid at depths that have been frozen for thousands of years; ice shelves are breaking away into the sea in unprecedented chunks as large as small states.

These are empirical data, from what I have read; they werte reported in a series in The NEw Yorker earlier this year; wish I had links to them.

But there is little question, if the author's facts are correct, that the warming phenomenon is outside the range of "normal" rise and fall curves from the last couple of centuries of recorded data.

I'll see if I can come up with a link to substantiate these recollections.


A

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: freda underhill
Date: 29 Jul 05 - 12:05 PM

Greenland glacier 'melting rapidly'; From correspondents in Paris;
July 22, 2005, The Australian

A GLACIER in Greenland is melting very rapidly and has accelerated its slide sliding into the sea, Greenpeace said. The environmental group said the "dramatic" discovery proves that immediate action is needed to stop climate change. "Preliminary findings indicate Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier on Greenland's east coast could be one of the fastest moving glaciers in the world with a speed of almost 14 kilometres per year," scientists aboard a Greenpeace ship in the Arctic said today.

In 1988, the glacier was advancing at just five kilometres per year, the scientists on the Arctic Sunrise ship said, citing satellite imagery. "This is a dramatic discovery," said Gordon Hamilton of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine in the United States, who took the measurements on the glacier on Greenland's east coast. "These new results suggest that the loss of ice from the Greenland Ice Sheet, unless balanced by an equivalent increase in snowfall, could be larger and faster than previously estimated."

The melting of the glacier could have a knock-on effect on glaciers further north in the Arctic, Mr Hamilton warned, which "could have serious implications for the rate of sea level rise". The Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier takes ice from the Greenland Ice Sheet to the ocean and discharges icebergs which contribute to sea-level rise.

Any change in the glacier's speed would be very significant in terms of sea-level rise, Greenpeace said. Researchers from the Arctic Council last November warned that the Arctic is warming at double the rate as the rest of the planet, and that within the next 100 years the ice cover there will completely disappear in summer and species living in the ice field, such as polar bears, will be threatened.

Seven of the eight countries on the council - made up of Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States - have backed the 1997 Kyoto Treaty on climate change, but have been stymied by Washington, which refused to ratify the pact and then ditched it in 2001. "Greenland's shrinking glaciers are sending an urgent warning to the world that action is needed now to stop climate change," said Martina Krueger, the leader of the Greenpeace expedition said in a statement.

"How many more urgent warnings does the Bush administration need before it takes meaningful action on climate change?"

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 29 Jul 05 - 12:24 PM

Two excerpts from a discussion here by the author of the 3-part article I mentioned:

On Alaska:
Alaska is being very dramatically affected by climate change; the state is warming up just about as fast as any place on earth. This is producing a lot of problems in Native communities; several Native villages may have to be moved owing to erosion that is being caused, or at least hastened, by climate change. It's also affecting daily life in places like Fairbanks, parts of which are built on permafrost. As the permafrost degrades, people's houses are starting to split apart. The roads need to be repaired more often; sometimes they just cave in. Ironically, it's also affecting the oil industry. The kind of heavy equipment used in oil exploration is allowed out on the tundra only when the ground is frozen to a depth of twelve inches. Since 1970 the number of days that meet that condition has been reduced by half. Early on, computer models developed by scientists working on climate change predicted that global warming would have a disproportionate effect in the Arctic.

On Greenland:

Outside of Antarctica's, Greenland's ice sheet is the largest in the world. It contains enough water to raise global sea levels by twenty-three feet. There is a very real possibility that global warming will set in motion the destruction of the Greenland ice sheet. No one really knows how warm the world would have to get before that happens, but the signs are not encouraging. Scientists are already seeing changes to the ice sheet that suggest that it could occur at temperatures not much higher than today's. And although the process could take centuries, or even millennia, to fully play out, once the ice sheet started to melt it would become self-reinforcing and therefore impossible to stop.

On lay versus scientific opinions:

I think there is a surprisingly large—you might even say frighteningly large—gap between the scientific community and the lay community's opinions on global warming. As you point out, I spoke to many very sober-minded, coolly analytical scientists who, in essence, warned of the end of the world as we know it. I think there are a few reasons why their message hasn't really got out. One is that scientists tend, as a group, to interact more with each other than with the general public. Another is that there has been a very well-financed disinformation campaign designed to convince people that there is still scientific disagreement about the problem, when, as I mentioned before, there really is quite broad agreement. And third, the climate operates on its own timetable. It will take several decades for the warming that is already inevitable to be felt. People tend to focus on the here and now. The problem is that, once global warming is something that most people can feel in the course of their daily lives, it will be too late to prevent much larger, potentially catastrophic changes.


More at the linked reference above.


A

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: jpk
Date: 29 Jul 05 - 05:38 PM

the sky is falling,it's falling.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 29 Jul 05 - 06:54 PM

Bra-a-a-wk buck buck buck buck....


That's American bucks BTW...

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 30 Jul 05 - 11:08 AM

JPK, I would suggest you get your facts straight and your head back in the sunlight.

Here's Part 1 of the New Yorker Series on climate change, the reduction of planetary albedo and the softening of the deep permafrost.

Read it and learn, grasshopper.


A

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: jpk
Date: 30 Jul 05 - 04:40 PM

yea,eco alarmist,they can work with pita
last time we went camping,had to pick up the trash[lot of it]left behind by a enviro group. they really care,anything for a scare.
got a sun spot pointing at us right now,is it ed dains big one.hmmmpff
bet you eat him up too

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 30 Jul 05 - 04:49 PM

Working with pocket-bread? You been in the sun too long, pal. Seems to have burned the back of your neck some. Get some facts.

Oh, and while you're up, mebbe some manners, too?


A

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: jpk
Date: 30 Jul 05 - 04:52 PM

ps push it on the show fear factor
believe all the half science you want
i'll wait for all the facts
don't forget to ask ed dains what his crystal ball shows,and get art bells ideas too

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 30 Jul 05 - 05:27 PM

I think you must be talking to some imaginary half-wit you have confused with me. :)

The article I referred you to is one of three very richly endowed with factual observations.

I suspect in waiting for "all the facts" you mean to stay in a cloud of apathetic hostility until you get "raptured" away just in the nick of time.

A

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Don Firth
Date: 30 Jul 05 - 06:52 PM

I don't recall what program it was because I saw it several months ago, but it was either Nova or Nature on PBS or something on the Discovery Channel. It had to do with variations in the earth's climate over millions of years and the various things that precipitate them.

The scientific fact is that the actions of human beings are definitely a major factor in the climate changes that are currently taking place (and they are taking place). Since the beginning of the industrial revolution and the widespread use of fossil fuels (coal) to produce energy, followed by the invention of the automobile and the even more widespread use of oil, humans have poured more hydrocarbons into the atmosphere within the past century and a half than in all of human history.

We don't know what the hell we're doing. One possibility we're flirting with is the runaway greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide blankets the atmosphere, not allowing heat buildup to escape out into space. The earth just gets hotter and hotter. Something like this happened to Venus awhile back. The average temperature there is a few hundred degrees hotter than a pizza oven.

"What do you want on your Tombstone?"

But whatthehell! As long as the quarterly report looks good, who gives a diddly-spoo?

Don Firth

(On the other hand, if the sea level rises, Florida will be under water. I might be tempted to vote for that!)

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: jpk
Date: 01 Aug 05 - 05:17 PM

i died with a smile in my gas hog corvett

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 01 Aug 05 - 05:59 PM

Aren't them Philistines the CUTEST thangs? I want one to hang on my tree.


A

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: DougR
Date: 01 Aug 05 - 07:31 PM

I believe, in spite of all the "factual" refrences Amos provided, the jury is still out on global warming. It could be a problem, but I believe were you to gather a thousand experts in one room you could get a consensus on the subject with the evidence at hand.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Ebbie
Date: 01 Aug 05 - 07:55 PM

I'm curious, Doug R- did you mean to say you believe "they could NOT reach a consensus"? That would seem to be more in tune with your opening line.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 01 Aug 05 - 10:36 PM

"The jury is still out"? DougR, let me point out to you that this is phenomenology based on facts, not on which smartass lawyers can sway opinions. There ain't no jury. This is a case where the solar system and thermodynamics are judge and jury.

Suggest pull head out from sand, amigo.

A

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Bobert
Date: 01 Aug 05 - 10:55 PM

Well, the scientists say
It'll all wash away
but we don't believe in them any more
'cuase we got our recruits
an' out green mohair suits
so please pay covers at the door...

Hey, I don't mind a good scientific debate on global warmin' but when you have 90% of the scientists being shouted down by the 10% on the Bush payroll, somehtin' is wrong...

No, Dougie, the jury isn't exactly out... 9 out 10 scientists say that there is a problem..... Okay, I grant you that 1 in 10 can prolly make a hung jury but yer guys scientists are in such a minority that they are hardly a blip on the sciene radar screen...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 02:10 PM

A large group of respected scientists of all relevant disciplines, with no particular ax to grind except finding out the facts, and after years of studying the problem, come to the conclusion that pouring hydrocarbons into the atmosphere the way humans have been doing within the past century and a half is causing global warming to the extent that it is altering the climate radically, and that if it continues it could possibly cause a runaway greenhouse effect that would end all life on the planet, and that it already may be too late—and then a couple of scientists employed by those very industries that do most of the atmospheric hydrocarbon dumping say, "That's just being alarmist. We don't really know that," who would an intelligent reasoning person tend to believe?

At the very least, a rational society would err on the side of caution and take steps to stop the atmospheric pollution, if for no other reason than that, as Doug insists, "the jury is still out" If such a disaster is even remotely possible. . . .

Nah! Screw it! So a couple hundred years from now the earth is so hot that life as we know it no longer exists, so what? We won't be around and I gotta keep the stock holders happy!

By the way, how's the weather in Phoenix been lately?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: DougR
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 03:05 PM

Very hot, Don, but I've lived her almost fifty years, and it's no hotter than our usual summers.

Seems to me some experts were conderned back in the seventies that the world was going to face another ice age. Anybody remember that?

And Bobert, my friend, I suppose you can support your claim that 9 out of ten experts on global warming and particularly what our present society contributes to it would agree that the concern is a proven, right?

And Ebbie, yes you are correct. I did mean to type, "would not."

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 03:10 PM

Doug:

What dio you suppose accounts for the unprecedented calving of icebergs in the Antarctic which hyave been intact and growing for thousands of years?

How do you explain the softening of permafrost layers which have been solid ice for thousands of years?

How about the gradual disappearance of real estate from the edges of low-lying islands in the near-Arctic regions?

Or, perhaps you have an explanation for the dramatic reduction of firm ice which is disrupting the economy of hunters of Eskimo tribes in certain regions which are usually solid enough to hunt on byut have now become so mushy year-round that they are having to give up practices that have kept their tribes alive for centuries?

All these phenomena and more are carefully documented in the New Yorker series to which I offered a pointer. I am sure your library in Pheonix has the back issues.

Just in case you want to arm yourself with the facts.

A

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Ebbie
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 03:48 PM

And polar bears are having to wait longer and longer before they can go out on the ice to hunt. In the meantime they scavenge village landfills and garbage cans.

In Alaska there is no doubt at all that there is severe warming already well along. How much of it is due to the world's policies is still not fully determined, of course. But wouldn't you agree, Doug - and others- that we should control or minimize or at least, address, the warming that we know that we are responsible for, that we already know the effects of?

Say that it is raining and has been raining for days. The ground is saturated, the streams are full. Then someone gets the bright idea of getting rid of our excess water because "the water is already running, what can be the harm?" and we start dipping water by the tanker load and dumping it by helicopter on the ground that is already being bombarded by the 'natural' forces.

No harm, right?

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 04:22 PM

Yeah, Doug, I remember the prediction of a new ice age. There was an article about it in Smithsonian Magazine some years back. Rather than due to alterations in atmospheric conditions, it was an astronomical phenomenon—the procession of the equinox, which is a 26,000 year cycle. If nothing intervenes (which is bloody unlikely, unless we can figure out a way to change the 23 degree inclination of the earth's axis, which wouldn't really be a good idea, considering the other effects this could produce), we can expect the onset of a new ice age in approximately 6,000 years. With than much advanced notice, we should be able to make more than adequate provisions for the eventuality. Provided we don't just sit around for the next six millennia saying, "The jury is still out."   

But the current evidence for global warming is manifest, and if allowed to continue unabated, the inevitable result is the runaway greenhouse effect. The questions are, how much momentum has it got so far, and can it even be stopped if we take immediate action?

I recall an animated cartoon I saw some decades back:   I think if was pre-Roadrunner, but it definitely had the Chuck Jones touch. The protagonist was Bugs Bunny, and the villain was either Wile. E. Coyote or his twin brother. The coyote is sitting in a dynamite shack, preparing booby traps for Bugs. He's hollowing out a bunch of carrots and he's stuffing them with dynamite. So intent on his task is he that he doesn't notice that, outside, Bugs has hitch a tractor to the shack and is dragging it into a position where it's sitting on railroad tracks. As the coyote bores a hole in another carrot and prepares to stuff a stick of dynamite into it, he hears a train whistle. Close. Very close! He goes to the window, looks out, sees the headlight of a locomotive bearing down on him very, very fast! He looks out at the audience with a wimpy little expression as beads of perspiration pop out on his forehead, then he reaches over and pulls the blind down. KA-BOOM!!!

Some folks are very much like that coyote.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: DougR
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 04:32 PM

Gee, Amos, you surprise me. I felt sure you blamed all such happenings on George W. Bush!

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 04:56 PM

Don Firth, The procession of the equinox was probably not always at its current tilt. I would speculate that a sufficient impact could change the tilt.

.........

I just surfed onto Fox news and they had a kid who was testifying that global warming is a hoax, junk science and a scandal that makes the oil for food scandal tiny in proportion. He said the CO2 in the atmoshere is only a tenth of one percent.

The interviewer did make the point that everything is warmer and glaciers have receded etc. The kid said that we are just in a warming period following the little ice age during the dark ages.


The kid went further to say that insurance companies just want to get richer along with fat cat lawyers who try to use the invention of green house gases to pull a fast one.

He did make allowence for REAL science to effect insurence rates for hurricanes and the like.

Speaking of real science, George Bush today said that Intelligent Design should be taught in all public schools.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 05:18 PM

DougR:

That was beneath you -- do you really think you are discussing the issues or the facts when you fall back on such snide remarks? George Bush is not the cause of global warming, and I hope you know I am not quite that dense. He is however, the most ham-fisted and meat-headed blundering idiot to take over the White House in many years, and something of a psychopath, technically subliterate and intentionally and abusively ignorant.

A

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 05:18 PM

Either I mis-remembered the figures in the Smithsonian article (it was sometime in the Eighties) or they've refined them since. Here's a mess of info:   Blicky.

On Fox News, eh? Fox, coyote, pretty similar in a lot of ways.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Ebbie
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 05:19 PM

It must simply lovely to have such faith in mankind. Never a frown to wrinkle A.E. Newman's brow.

Here are some snippets from a disturbing report:

"SAN FRANCISCO - (Monday, August 1, 2005) Marine biologists are seeing mysterious and disturbing things along the Pacific Coast this year: higher water temperatures, plummeting catches of fish, lots of dead birds on the beaches, and perhaps most worrisome, very little plankton — the tiny organisms that are a vital link in the ocean food chain.

"Is this just one freak year? Or is this global warming?

"There are strange things happening, but we don't really understand how all the pieces fit together," said Jane Lubchenco, a zoologist and climate change expert at Oregon State University. "It's hard to say whether any single event is just an anomaly or a real indication of something serious happening."

"Scientists say things could very well swing back to normal next year. But if the phenomenon proves to be long-lasting, the consequences could be serious for birds, fish and other wildlife.

"This much is known: From California to British Columbia, unusual weather patterns have disrupted the marine ecosystem.

"Off Oregon, for example, the waters near the shore are 5 to 7 degrees warmer than normal and have yielded about one-fourth the usual amount of phytoplankton, said Bill Peterson, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Newport, Ore.

"The bottom has fallen out of the coastal food chain, and there's just not enough food out there," said Julia Parrish, a seabird ecologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Yes, Doug, I realize that the article says that most scientists are not willing to attribute this particular phenomenom to 'global warming', based on a "single incident". (Although I do fail to see why this is called a single incident when it appears to be simultaneous but multi-faceted.)

Much More

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 06:23 PM

When I was a teen-ager back the Forties, my dad and I used to go fishing a lot. Dad had an outboard motor and we'd rent a boat and go out and hunt the wily salmon. I recall one day—a weird day, when we were fishing off the mouth of a river north of Seattle (Skagit, I think, but I'm not sure now). We came back fishless because the salmon weren't biting. The reason they weren't biting was that they had already fattened up and were headed up-river to spawn. Their minds were on things other than chasing a bit of herring with a hook buried in it.

But it was a sight I'll never forget. There were big salmon, two and a half to three feet long, rolling all around the boat. They were densely packed, only a few feet apart, all swimming toward the river mouth. For as far as we could see, there were salmon. Millions of them. It was awe inspiring.

But no more. The salmon have dwindled to a minuscule percentage of what they used to number. What's killing them? Human activity. Clear-cut logging allows erosion, and the run-off from logged over land silts up the rivers that the salmon use for spawning, we've commercially over-fished like crazy, we've used the rivers and oceans as septic systems (including toxic chemicals that are killing off the plankton, which is the base of the marine food chain), and warming the ocean's waters with our atmospheric pollution.

The end result of all this is that man himself may cease to exist, and this may very well be the earth's way of protecting itself. No matter how smug we grow in our presumed omnipotence, Nature always wins in the end.

Earth abides.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: jpk
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 06:24 PM

mostly fear tactics to advance a personal agenda,let us work at getting the courts to shut down all the volcainos first.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: jpk
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 06:26 PM

oh i forgot to mention that ed daines and art bell said all this would come to pass[tounge in cheek]his radio show is cood entertainment,to bad to many people take it so serious.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 06:29 PM

Shut down the volcanoes? Simple, jpk. Stuff a cork in it!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: jpk
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 06:44 PM

well my dad thought that the one in japland would have made a good test target for a nuc when he got back in the world after the first two fell,needless to say they did'nt treat him to well after batan.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Ebbie
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 06:51 PM

Ah, I see. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, does it.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 07:32 PM

I can't imagine anyony taking Art Bell's program seriously. Last I heard, he was promoting the idea of alien civilizations building crystal palaces on the moon. Kind of like Richard S. Shaver back in the Forties with his "hollow earth" stuff. Tried to pass it off as true, but it wasn't even good science fiction. Nor fantasy. I don't know who the other guy is.

Anyone who thinks--or tries to get others to think--that those who are concerned about global warming are in the same catagory as people who believe the stuff that Art Bell's program peddles is either an idiot or working for Karl Rove.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: pdq
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 07:35 PM

Back the line a bit, Donuel said...

"I just surfed onto Fox news and they had a kid who was testifying that global warming is a hoax, junk science and a scandal that makes the oil for food scandal tiny in proportion. He said the CO2 in the atmoshere is only a tenth of one percent."

The 'kid' being quoted is off a bit. The generally accepted figures are 0.29% CO2 before the Industrial Revolution in the mid 1800's. Now it is 0.38%. These figures are also expressed as PPM or 'parts per million', an unfortunate term for a folk music forum where 'Peter, Paul & Mary' are more likely the topic!

Will 0.38% CO2 cause a significant increase in global temperature over the previous 0.29%? Very unlikely.

One benefit is an increase in plant growth and vigor, since plants take in CO2 and return oxygen. More plants, healthier plants, more O2 is returned the the atmosphere. Also more food for starving people around the world. Sounds good, actually.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 08:49 PM

... which simple explanation cleverly ignores the physics of energy entrapment and retention in gaseous mixtures on a planetary scale.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 09:12 PM

"He is however, the most ham-fisted and meat-headed blundering idiot to take over the White House in many years, and something of a psychopath, technically subliterate and intentionally and abusively ignorant."

Succinct and to the point.


True story:

A goverment science commitee in Turkey had just gotten a long lecture about an earthquake fault that posed a danger to Turkey and was advised to various but expensive architectural changes that needed to be made.

The commitee recessed and when they returned they asked if the fault line could be moved.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: jpk
Date: 03 Aug 05 - 05:51 PM

oh hell,just blame it on the phlogistic nature of the elements.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: jpk
Date: 03 Aug 05 - 06:01 PM

ed dains,supposed to be ex mil[a major in something]trained by the cia to be a,remote veiwer/mind reader,or some such,100% govt trained for spying,btw he has some school or such and will teach you to be too,for a price.he is a big shot on the show

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 03 Aug 05 - 07:38 PM

Oh stop already with the fringe stuff, wouldja?


A

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: beardedbruce
Date: 03 Aug 05 - 07:51 PM

Amos,


"If all glaciers and ice caps melt, the projected rise in sea-level will be around 0.5 m. If the melting includes the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets (both of which contain ice above sea level), then the rise is a more drastic 68.8 m. [3] "


from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise



I do not dispute any of the facts you have presented- BUT I would differ as to the cause of the effects you note. You ignore the recent volcanic eruptions, and place the blame for ALL changes on human activity. I am not so sure, though I agree there should be HONEST study of the problem- the impact of man on the environment.


"The sea level has risen more than 120 metres since the peak of the last ice age about 18,000 years ago. The bulk of that occurred before 6000 years ago. "   ... about the same time period as the deforestation of the Sahara region by humans introducing goats to the then savana.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: TIA
Date: 03 Aug 05 - 09:31 PM

There has been HONEST study of the problem. It is CLEARLY not due in any significant way to recent volcanic activity. There is widespread (essentially unanimous) agreement among scientists that man's activites have contributed significantly to global warming. Fox and the Bush administration have scoured the globe for people with a hint of credentials to dispute this, but for each semi-pseudo-scientist they can trot out (e.g. Fox interviewed an MD the other morning...shall I have a climatologist take my tonsils out?), there are thousands of scientists who agree.

No one has claimed that ALL warming is due to man. But everyone HONEST scientist agrees that man's activities are causing major climate changes with as-yet unknown consequences. Shall we just wait and see how bad it gets?

Yes, sea level has risen significantly since the Wisconsinan glaciation. But before we use that fact to make a politically-motivated "see its natural and no big deal argument", perhaps we should compare human populations (both number and distribution), lifestyles, and infrastructure between today and 18,000 years ago. Also, you might want to compare the modern and early Holocene RATES of warming and sea level rise.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: DougR
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 01:01 AM

Run for your life, Freda!

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 01:39 PM

In the absence of facts, DougR, your retreat into cynical sarcasm is unbecoming and unarticulate.

Which of the factual representations from the series I pointed to do you wish to rebut?

A

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: DougR
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 01:52 PM

Factual from whose point of view, Amos? I'm waiting to see what Molly Ivens or Maureen Dowd has to say about it before I make up my mind.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 02:42 PM

Facts is facts, Doug. Viewpoints enter in when interpretation is added, but that is not what I am talking about.

The melting of permafrost is a fact, as far as I know. The enormous calving of icebergs is a fact. I assume the reports of rising water-levels and weaker ice seasons is also factual. I have to take it on authority that these are historically unusual as I haven't been measuring myself.

But these facts, and this history, are being reported by people who are professionals at gathering physical universe information in a rigorous way.

By imputing that it is all opinion, you again duck into the obscurity of non-substance and avoid the question.

Which facts do you wish to rebut? Or haven't you gotten around to reading the source material being cited?

A

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Don Firth
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 03:24 PM

Recently, one of the biggest tourist attractions in Europe suffered what amounts to a major disaster. Between a rising mean sea level and an especially high tide (a recurring event, depending on the relative positions of the sun and moon), St. Mark's Square in Venice (you know--all the tourists and the pigeons) suddenly found itself under four feet of water.

The rising mean sea level is turning out to be a major problem in Venice. Hip-waders have become an essential part of local dress. Centuries-old buildings are being undermined by the rising sea level, inundation of areas of the city are becoming a chronic problem there, and they're considering building a massive sea-wall to keep the water out. Problem:   prohibitively expensive.

A harbinger of things to come?

Beach property is not a really good long-term investment.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 03:34 PM

Except in Pheonix....maybe DOug has a scheme!! :)


A

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: dianavan
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 05:27 PM

I saw a group of dolphins in the inland waters of B.C. a few days ago. This is very unusual as they prefer colder water. I keep wondering if it has something to do with melting glaciers. I also noticed that although its nearly mid-August, the water is still icy cold and the nights are nippy.

George Bush?

I think he reads too much of the book of Revelations. He figures he can do whatever in the now because we're heading for Armegeddon anyway. He simply doesn't care.

Why would anyone vote for such an ignorant tyrant?

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: jpk
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 06:08 PM

funny man was heading us down thwe road to another ice age when i was a kid.seems that it is always some fad to scare people with.been happing for years,before you know it will be something new/old to replace it.they come and go like diets,maybe why it is popular in holly wood.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 06:51 PM

MELTING OF FLOATING ICE WILL RAISE SEA LEVEL, August 04

When ice on land slides into the ocean, it displaces ocean water and causes sea level to rise. People believe that when this floating ice melts, water level doesn‚t rise an additional amount because the freshwater ice displaces the same volume of water as it would contribute once it melts. Similarly, people also think that when ocean water freezes to form sea ice and then melts, the water is merely going through a change of state, so it won‚t affect sea level. However, in a visit to NSIDC in May, Dr. Peter Noerdlinger, a professor at St. Mary‚s University in Nova Scotia, Canada, suggested otherwise.
In a paper titled "The Melting of Floating Ice will Raise the Ocean Level" submitted to Geophysical Journal International, Noerdlinger demonstrates that melt water from sea ice and floating ice shelves could add 2.6% more water to the ocean than the water displaced by the ice, or the equivalent of approximately 4 centimeters (1.57 inches) of sea-level rise.

The common misconception that floating ice won't increase sea level when it melts occurs because the difference in density between fresh water and salt water is not taken into consideration. Archimedes' Principle states that an object immersed in a fluid is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid it displaces. However, Noerdlinger notes that because freshwater is not as dense as saltwater, freshwater actually has greater volume than an equivalent weight of saltwater. Thus, when freshwater ice melts in the ocean, it contributes a greater volume of melt water than it originally displaced.

(From PhysOrg.com -- see link above).

A

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: TIA
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 01:49 PM

Actually, we were heading towards an ice age 40 years ago. Guess what is contributing to the trend reversal. If you think most earth scientists are driven by ideology, you are sadly mistaken.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: jpk
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 04:55 PM

dear amos, the ice bit is cock ca do a simple exoeriment at home.
fill a bucket with water,mix in the amount of salt you want,add large ice block,mark level, let ice melt and copare,bet there is no change.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 05:15 PM

jpk, that's a crock. Rush Limberger tried to get away with that one several years ago.

The two situations are not the same. The block of ice in the bucket of water displaces its own weight, so what you say works in the bucket. But the melting glaciers are not floating and displacing their own weight, they are sitting on land, NOT displacing any water in the oceans. So their mass, when melted, would flow into the oceans and raise the level.

I was just waiting for someone to try to pull that one off.

GOTCHA!!!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: John Hardly
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 05:30 PM

Don,

1. You are WAY above the "Limberger" thing.

2. jpk misread the evidence that Amos was pointing out -- that there is a difference in density between the water of freshwater ice that floats in salt water, such that when fresh water ice melts into salt water, it does actually raise the water level even though freshwater ice melting into freshwater would not.

Though I believe that jpk ignored the salient (had to slip a salty word into the freshwater discussion *BG*) point of Amos' post, they were both, in fact, discussing the melt limited to floating ice. They were not discussing the ice that sits on land.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 06:27 PM

Sorry. I just popped back onto this thread from another one, saw what jpk had written, and without checking further back, assumed that he was trying to get away with Rush's little scam (sort of "Archimedean screwing" around with displacement). I'm afraid I knee-jerked. As I said, I was just waiting for someone to try to pull that one.

I'm try not be so precipitous in the future.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Ebbie
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 07:18 PM

One of the oddities is that all glaciers and icebergs are made of fresh water. Something to remember the next time you are stranded.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 07:22 PM

JPK:

I don't believe you are interpreting the post I offered correctly -- you might want to go read the original.

A

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Don Firth
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 01:54 PM

A book worth reading:    Collapse : How Societies Chose to Fail or Succeed   by Jared Diamond. Here's a quote from a review.

In Collapse, Jared makes a case for how civilizations died out as a consequence of conflict between the lifestyle they had to uphold in order to ensure their social survival and the lifestyle they should have adopted in order to ensure their biological survival, i.e. he points out how it was a lack of flexibility on the one hand (unwillingness to change their ways) and ignorance on the other that lead whole civilizations to commit a slow suicide by taxing the eco-system beyond the breaking point.

In the first part of the book Jared focuses in on civilizations of the past:   the Norse colonies in Greenland, the Easter Islanders, the Anasazi of the American Southwest and the Mayans. And in the second part on the modern-day Rwandans.

Throughout the book Jared takes great care to explain everything in great detail (history, ecological factors, geography and archeology) in order to make his case. But besides explaining how ignorance led whole civilizations to commit an involuntary suicide, he takes things one step further and reminds the reader that in a first world country that same ignorance prevails. Which makes the book into more than just an interesting read, it makes it a necessary read. Necessary because just as many civilizations in the past we too are now at the brink of causing more ecological damage to our environment than that environment can handle, i.e. we too are taxing our eco-system to the breaking point. The later is something that Jared rightly brings to our attention with this excellent comparative study.

If you want to read a bit more about it, here's an article in The New Yorker.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 02:46 PM

Many thanks for the lead, Don -- I have been meaning to get my hands on this book for some time. I will have to wait until I finish Dawkins and also your other recommendation, First Democracy(Woodruff) before I bring it into the house, though -- I get in trouble if my current books stacks get too high because they get misinterpreted as never-to-be-finished. :D

A

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: jpk
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 07:10 PM

dear mr firth,i belive the operative statement in amos thread was "when this floating ice melts"and the paper sited was titled"the melting of floating ice etc".
the only changes taking place is the salinity of the liquid water do to the change in amount,oh yes and the temp.
have a good day.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 07:43 PM

Actually, fresh water (like any material on the macro scale) contracts as it gets colder, but it has this peculiar anomaly: it expands when it actually goes through the phase-shift from liquid to ice, because of the particular ordering of the molecules when crystallizing. This is a very important fact in our life-systems. For example, it keeps the ice on the top of deep fresh lakes, so fish can survive down below.

Anyway, jpk, your rebuttal is not with me, but with Dr. Noerdlinger. Perhaps if you look into what he says it will be clearer why he says it.

A

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: John Hardly
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 07:51 PM

This might be a very good time to do some experimenting. I think I'll see if ice will raise the level in a glass of scotch. Anyone else in an experimental mood?

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: pdq
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 08:16 PM

A slight caution, John Hardly. Don't use ice cubes made from salt water.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 08:28 PM

Ya ruins more darn Scotch that way.


A

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: GUEST,G
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 08:32 PM

......maybe for Margaritas?

However, I digress - if one looks at the origin of this thread, almost 9 months ago, it is easy to understand why we drift off onto tangents.

The thrust of the opening post was towards Bush and his not signing the Treaty. Why not explain the reason for WJC not signing it (he was there) and Algore being agasinst it. Had everyone paid attention to posts #2 and #3, much time and effort would have been saved.

Ah, the life of sheep is not easily understood.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 10:23 AM

August 05, 2005
      
A noted geosciences professor says the Antarctic Peninsula is undergoing greater warming than nearly anywhere on Earth.
        
Professor Eugene Domack of Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. -- writing in a cover article for the current issue of the journal Nature -- said the Antarctic warming may be associated with human-induced greenhouse effects.

Domack says the spectacular collapse of the Antarctica's Larson B Ice Shelf -- an area roughly the size of Rhode Island -- is unprecedented in 10,000 years.

He said his paper provides evidence the break-up of the ice shelf was caused by thinning during thousands of years, as well as short term (multi-decade) cumulative increases in surface air temperature exceeding the natural variation of regional climate during the Holocene period -- the last 10,000 years.

The recent collapse is attributed to climate warming in the Antarctic Peninsula, which is more pronounced than elsewhere in the world. In recent years, Domack said, the Antarctic Peninsula has lost ice shelves totaling more than 4,825 square miles.

---

Wal, G, what were their reasons? Or are you just trying to politicize the discussion with your condescending remarks?




A

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: jpk
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 05:47 PM

was that glen livet,or glen devro, i prefer the later but like both better than the rest,no blends allowed thank you.

ps the addition of ice to said scotch[discovered by experimention]ah simnlikke thhhhat.well it lowers the vol. in the beaker,at the hint of melting,the scotch having an adversion to dilution.

or is it the observer's adversion to the dilution of the observed.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 08:16 PM

Drinking Scotch, even with ice in it, certainly warms my globes...

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 08:36 PM

Another thread shredded by belligerent ignorance and dedicated know-nothingism. Plus ça change, plus ç'est la meme chose.

A

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: freda underhill
Date: 09 Aug 05 - 07:30 AM

Oil has always been top of Bush's foreign-policy agenda
October 7 2002; Sydney Morning Herald

The White House decided that diplomacy was not an option in the Middle East, writes Ritt Goldstein. As the United States prepares for war with Iraq, a report commissioned early in George Bush's presidency has surfaced, showing that the US knew it was running out of oil and foreshadowing the possible need for military intervention to secure supplies. The report forecasts an end to cheap and plentiful fuel, with the energy industry facing "the beginning of capacity limitations". Prepared by the influential Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations and the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, it urged the Bush Administration to admit "these agonising truths to the American people".

"Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century", written early last year, was a policy document used to shape the new administration's energy policy.

It applauded the creation of Vice-President Dick Cheney's energy task force to address the creation of specific energy plans, and suggested it consider including representation from the Department of Defence. Saying "there is no alternative" and "there is no time to waste", the document projects periods of exploding US energy prices, economic recession and social unrest unless answers are found. It suggests that a minimum three to five years is needed to find a solution, and says a "reassessment of the role of energy in American foreign policy" is called for, with access to oil repeatedly cited as a "security imperative". The involvement of the Council of Foreign Relations in the report's preparation adds weight to its findings. The council ranks as one of the most influential groups in US political circles, with members including Mr Cheney and the former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and James Baker.

...It has been said repeatedly that the US objective is the construction of trans-Afghan pipelines allowing access to Caspian oil and gas. According to the authors and an article in Le Monde Diplomatique in January, US attempts to bribe and threaten the Taliban had preceded the September 11 attacks. Notably, the IPS article quoted the French authors as saying that, faced with the Taliban's refusal to co-operate, the rationale of energy security changed into a military one, reflecting what the report advocated as a valid option.

...It also suggests diplomatic alternatives - but policy since the September 11 attacks appears in keeping only with the military intervention option. Ideas such as defusing the Arab-Israeli conflict, an easing of Iraqi sanctions and "reducing the restrictions on oil investments inside Iraq" are at odds with the policies the Administration is pursuing. While the US now presses for "regime change" in Iraq, more than 18 months ago the report repeatedly emphasised its importance as an oil producer and the need to expand Iraqi production as soon as possible to meet projected oil shortages - shortages it said could be avoided only through increased production or conservation in the near-term.

In essence, the report sees the nature of Persian Gulf politics as a significant threat and obstacle to increased energy supplies. Implicit in the substantive concerns - that "Gulf allies are finding their domestic and foreign policy interests increasingly at odds with US strategic considerations", and that "evidence suggests that investment is not being made in a timely enough manner" to meet global needs - is the seed of what has now become an almost openly adversarial position.

During the northern summer, news reports began to paint Saudi Arabia as a possible adversary to the US. Rhetoric regarding Iraq has also been steadily ratcheted up, creating what amounts to an allegation du jour scenario. US military circles have watched as Iraq became "the tactical pivot", Saudi Arabia "the strategic pivot", and an agenda of "not just a new regime in Iraq" but a "new Middle East" has been increasingly discussed.

…………………….

And..

http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m1295/6_66/87855086/p1/article.jhtml

And http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/EnronaoAEp2.html

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: freda underhill
Date: 09 Aug 05 - 07:33 AM

Five months before September 11, the US advocated using force against Iraq ... to secure control of its oil. Neil Mackay on the document which casts doubt on the hawks

IT is a document that fundamentally questions the motives behind the Bush administration's desire to take out Saddam Hussein and go to war with Iraq. Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century describes how America is facing the biggest energy crisis in its history. It targets Saddam as a threat to American interests because of his control of Iraqi oilfields and recommends the use of 'military intervention' as a means to fix the US energy crisis.

The report is linked to a veritable who's who of US hawks, oilmen and corporate bigwigs. It was commissioned by James Baker, the former US Secretary of State under George Bush Snr, and submitted to Vice-President Dick Cheney in April 2001 -- a full five months before September 11. Yet it advocates a policy of using military force against an enemy such as Iraq to secure US access to, and control of, Middle Eastern oil fields.

One of the most telling passages in the document reads: 'Iraq remains a destabilising influence to ... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export programme to manipulate oil markets. 'This would display his personal power, enhance his image as a pan-Arab leader ... and pressure others for a lifting of economic sanctions against his regime. The United States should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/diplomatic assessments.

'The United States should then develop an integrated strategy with key allies in Europe and Asia, and with key countries in the Middle East, to restate goals with respect to Iraqi policy and to restore a cohesive coalition of key allies.'

At the moment, UN sanctions allow Iraq to export some oil. Indeed, the US imports almost a million barrels of Iraqi oil a day, even though American firms are forbidden from direct involvement with the regime's oil industry. In 1999, Iraq was exporting around 2.5 million barrels a day across the world.

The US document recommends using UN weapons inspectors as a means of controlling Iraqi oil. On one hand, 'military intervention' is supported; but the report also backs 'de-fanging' Saddam through weapons inspectors and then moving in to take control of Iraqi oil.

'Once an arms-control program is in place, the US could consider reducing restrictions [sanctions] on oil investment inside Iraq,' it reads. The reason for this is that 'Iraqi [oil] reserves represent a major asset that can quickly add capacity to world oil markets and inject a more competitive tenor to oil trade'.

This, however, may not be as effective as simply taking out Saddam. The report admits that an arms-control policy will be ' quite costly' as it will 'encourage Saddam Hussein to boast of his 'victory' against the United States, fuel his ambition and potentially strengthen his regime'. It adds: 'Once so encouraged, and if his access to oil revenues was to be increased by adjustments in oil sanctions, Saddam Hussein could be a greater security threat to US allies in the region if weapons of mass destruction, sanctions, weapons regimes and the coalition against him are not strengthened.'

The document also points out that 'the United States remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma', and that one of the 'consequences' of this is a 'need for military intervention'. At the heart of the decision to target Iraq over oil lies dire mismanagement of the US energy policy over decades by consecutive administrations. The report refers to the huge power cuts that have affected California in recent years and warns of 'more Californias' ahead. It says the 'central dilemma' for the US administration is that 'the American people continue to demand plentiful and cheap energy without sacrifice or inconvenience'. With the 'energy sector in critical condition, a crisis could erupt at any time [which] could have potentially enormous impact on the US ... and would affect US national security and foreign policy in dramatic ways.''

The main cause of a crisis, according to the document's authors, is 'Middle East tension', which means the 'chances are greater than at any point in the last two decades of an oil supply disruption'. The report says the US will never be 'energy independent' and is becoming too reliant on foreign powers supplying it with oil and gas. The response is to put oil at the heart of the administration -- 'a reassessment of the role of energy in American foreign policy'.

The US energy crisis is exacerbated by growing anti-American feeling in the oil-rich Gulf states. 'Gulf allies are finding their domestic and foreign policy interests increasingly at odds with US strategic considerations, especially as Arab-Israeli tensions flare,' says the report. 'They have become less inclined to lower oil prices ... A trend towards anti-Americanism could affect regional leaders' ability to co-operate with the US in the energy area. The resulting tight markets have increased US vulnerability to disruption and provided adversaries undue political influence over the price of oil.''

Iraq is described as the world's 'key swing producer ... turning its taps on and off when it has felt such action was in its strategic interest''. The report also says there is a 'possibility that Saddam may remove Iraqi oil from the market for an extended period of time', creating a volatile market.

While the report alone seems to build a compelling case that oil is one of the central issues fuelling the war against Iraq, there are also other, circumstantial pieces of the jigsaw that show disturbing connections between 'black gold' and the Bush administration's desire to wage war on Saddam. In 1998 the oil equipment company Halliburton, of which Dick Cheney was chief executive, sold parts to Iraq so Saddam could repair an infrastructure that had been terribly damaged during the 1991 Gulf war. Cheney's firm did £15 million of business with Saddam -- a man Cheney now calls a 'murderous dictator'. Halliburton is one of the firms thought by analysts to be in line to make a killing in any clean-up operation after another US-led war on Iraq.

All five permanent members of the UN Security Council -- the UK, France, China, Russia and the US -- have international oil companies that would benefit from huge windfalls in the event of regime change in Baghdad. The best chance for US firms to make billions would come if Bush installed a pro-US Iraqi opposition member as the head of a new government.

Representatives of foreign oil firms have already met with leaders of the Iraqi opposition. Ahmed Chalabi, the London-based leader of the Iraqi National Congress, said: 'American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil.'

Web report: Iraq 06 October 2002 http://www.sundayherald.com/28224

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 12 Aug 05 - 10:54 PM

Warming hits 'tipping point'

Siberia feels the heat It's a frozen peat bog the size of France and Germany combined, contains billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas and, for the first time since the ice age, it is melting

Ian Sample, science correspondent
Thursday August 11, 2005
The Guardian

A vast expanse of western Sibera is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming, climate scientists warn today.
Researchers who have recently returned from the region found that an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres - the size of France and Germany combined - has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.

The area, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia, is the world's largest frozen peat bog and scientists fear that as it thaws, it will release billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.
It is a scenario climate scientists have feared since first identifying "tipping points" - delicate thresholds where a slight rise in the Earth's temperature can cause a dramatic change in the environment that itself triggers a far greater increase in global temperatures.

The discovery was made by Sergei Kirpotin at Tomsk State University in western Siberia and Judith Marquand at Oxford University and is reported in New Scientist today.

The researchers found that what was until recently a barren expanse of frozen peat is turning into a broken landscape of mud and lakes, some more than a kilometre across.

Dr Kirpotin told the magazine the situation was an "ecological landslide that is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming". He added that the thaw had probably begun in the past three or four years.

Climate scientists yesterday reacted with alarm to the finding, and warned that predictions of future global temperatures would have to be revised upwards.

"When you start messing around with these natural systems, you can end up in situations where it's unstoppable. There are no brakes you can apply," said David Viner, a senior scientist at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

"This is a big deal because you can't put the permafrost back once it's gone. The causal effect is human activity and it will ramp up temperatures even more than our emissions are doing."

In its last major report in 2001, the intergovernmental panel on climate change predicted a rise in global temperatures of 1.4C-5.8C between 1990 and 2100, but the estimate only takes account of global warming driven by known greenhouse gas emissions.

"These positive feedbacks with landmasses weren't known about then. They had no idea how much they would add to global warming," said Dr Viner.

Western Siberia is heating up faster than anywhere else in the world, having experienced a rise of some 3C in the past 40 years. Scientists are particularly concerned about the permafrost, because as it thaws, it reveals bare ground which warms up more quickly than ice and snow, and so accelerates the rate at which the permafrost thaws.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Don Firth
Date: 12 Aug 05 - 11:18 PM

'Twouldn't be a bad idea to start building generation star ships and hope to hell there are habitable planets out there somewhere. It's beginning to look like we've buggered this one.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Ebbie
Date: 13 Aug 05 - 04:32 AM

This is not good news, although if it helps people wake up a tad faster there will be some benefit.

It seems that for years there has been a puzzling discrepancy between ground temperature taking versus weather balloon temperatures. The difference between the two has been one of the anomolies that scoffers have used as ammunition for their thesis pooh poohing the notion of global warming. Today it is reported that there has been a good reason for the discrepancy - and the difference is not in the scoffers' favor.

They end up by saying:

"After correcting for the problem, the researchers estimate there has been a global temperature increase of 0.4 degree Fahrenheit, per decade, for the last 30 years.

"Unfortunately, the warming is in an accelerating trend — the climate has not yet caught up with what we've already put into the atmosphere," said lead author Steven Sherwood, associate professor of geology and geophysics at Yale. "This has muddied the interpretation. "There are steps we should take, but it seems that shaking people out of complacency will take a strong incentive."

Not Good News

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 24 Jan 06 - 01:53 PM

Notes from the current issue of Sea Technologty magazine:

1. UK National OCeanographic Center, SOuthhampton reports findings indicating that the Atlantic "overturning" current, responsible for the moderate climate of Europe, has slowed by 30% comparing records as far back as 1957; a rapid decline began in 2004.

2. The top three meters of permafrodt across the Northern Hemisphere coul dbe 50% gone by 2050 and 100% melted by 21000, according to simulations from the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

3. According to Rutgers professor Kenneth G. Miller, global ocean levels are rising at twice the rate they did 150 years ago -- two mm. per year versus several thousands of years of one mm./yr. The most dramatic change has been since the 19th century.

A

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Troll
Date: 24 Jan 06 - 07:25 PM

Can someone explain to me how "a global temperature increase of 0.4 degree Fahrenheit, per decade, for the last 30 years." (Ebbie, 13 Aug. 05), is caused by present-day policies.

It may be being exacerbated by what's going on in the world right now but it certainly didn't start last week. While I can agree that the actions of man have had some adverse affect on the climate, I cannot agree that man, and the US in particular, is wholly at fault.

There have been studies that point to sun spots, it was just reported that plants give off a lot of methane, and the beat goes on.

On the other hand, there are those who ascribe the whole thing to Bush, the Republicans, Industry (but not in third world countries), Big Oil, America, and the Human Race.

No one has all the answers, with the possible exception of those who crusade for one single cause, with one single group at fault.

troll

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: curmudgeon
Date: 24 Jan 06 - 07:59 PM

Those who think that there is no global warming would be well advised to consider       this story - Tom

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Wolfgang
Date: 25 Jan 06 - 12:03 PM

Yesterday, the lowest ever temperature was recorded in Austria.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: TIA
Date: 03 Jul 08 - 02:34 PM

"A ruling by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that details both the threat of global warming and our ability to address the problem has been suppressed by the White House since December. This document, produced in response to a "monumental" Supreme Court mandate, includes a "multimillion-dollar study conducted over two years" that finds "the net benefit to society could be in excess of $2 trillion" if strong carbon dioxide emissions standards for the automotive industry are issued. The proposal to increase today's fuel economy standards by 50 percent from 25 miles per gallon to 38.3 mpg by 2020 is stronger than those included in the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, which called for a 40 percent increase. EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson used the signing of the act as the public excuse to reject the findings of his staff and block California's proposal to regulate greenhouse tailpipe emissions. In fact, congressional investigations have revealed that officials in the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) refused to open the email containing the EPA plan and that Johnson has been stonewalling to prevent disclosure of President Bush's role."

source and references

Until late next January, politics will triumph over science every time - usually to the detriment of not just americans, but all people on the planet.

Asshole.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: GUEST,The Ancient Mariner
Date: 03 Jul 08 - 02:52 PM

We live in a media-driven age in which self-fulfilling prophesies are often promulgated by agenda-driven people. Whether it is "the sky is falling" doomsday prognosticators in economics or the same "dark side" forces at work in predicting a global climate armageddon just past the next dawn, just follow the money or the politics. There is an abundance of bad science on both sides.

Mankind produces only a small portion of all of the methane produced daily. So, shouldn't we kill all the other vegetation eating animals in the world because their farts cause global warming? All the humans in the world who involuntarily exhale produce many metric tons of carbon dioxide daily. Do we all need to stop breathing?

What about a rational view? I can agree that we need to have clean air and clean water for reasons of health and safety alone. It would be preferable, and it will be inevitable, that we find a substitute for fossil fuels. But, we can't stop the world and go back to the dark ages in order to satisfy the zealots among us who buy into the insupportable doomsday predictions.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: TIA
Date: 03 Jul 08 - 03:12 PM

If one wishes to understand the true current state of the science and discriminate the junk, there is no better place to start than...

here.

There are plenty of references to the origianl journal articles and data. I encourage everyone to form your opinions from data, not blog entries or bloviators.

Instead of killing all the farting animals, how about we require higher emissions standards for automobiles (for one little example)? And why do we not? As the Ancient Mariner says, follow the money trail.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: TIA
Date: 03 Jul 08 - 03:20 PM

In fact, links to the methane data are here.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 03 Jul 08 - 03:57 PM

I recommend to those who wonder how this puzzle fits together a bbook called Common Wealth, recently released, which details intelligently the vectors of the problem, the hard numbers associated with it, and paths toward remediation.

A

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 03 Jul 08 - 06:53 PM

19:00 03 July 2008
NewScientist.com news service
Michael Reilly
PrintSendFeeds
Advertisement

Much noise has been made about how water lubricates the base of Greenland's ice sheet, accelerating its slide into the oceans. In a rare "good news" announcement, climatologists now say the ice may not be in such a hurry to throw itself into the water after all. Mother Nature, it seems, has given it brakes.
Since 1991, the western edge of Greenland's ice sheet has actually slowed its ocean-bound progress by 10%, say the team, who have studied the longest available record of ice and water flow in the region.
Greenland's mighty ice sheet has enough water locked away to raise global sea level 6.5 metres were it to melt. Each summer, vast lakes of meltwater form on its surface. The water seeps through cracks in the kilometer-thick ice to bedrock, where it acts as a lubricant. The sheet can move up to twice as fast in the summer, when meltwater is flowing, as when it is not.
Many fear a positive feedback loop, whereby the accelerating flow will bring more ice down out of the mountains and toward warmer temperatures near sea level. Roderik Van De Waal and colleagues at Utrecht University in the Netherlands now say there is no evidence this will happen.
Daily changes
They looked at how meltwater has correlated with the speed of ice flow at the western edge of the sheet, just north of the Arctic Circle, since 1991. They found that meltwater pouring down holes in the ice Ð called "moulins" Ð did indeed cause ice velocities to skyrocket, from their typical 100m per year to up to 400m per year, within days or weeks.
But the acceleration was short-lived, and ice velocities usually returned to normal within a week after the waters began draining. Over the course of the 17 years, the flow of the ice sheet actually decreased slightly, in some parts by as much as 10%.
"For some time, glaciologists believed that more meltwater equaled higher ice speeds," Van de Waal says. "This would be kind of disastrous, but apparently it is not happening."
Van de Waal believes that the channels that carry the meltwater out to sea freeze up during the winter months. In summer, pulses of water rushing down the moulins to the bedrock overwhelm the narrowed channels, and the increased pressure lifts the ice sheet off the rock, enabling it to move faster.
However, after a few days the channels are forced open by the water, and it drains away from the glacier. As a result, the ice grinds back down against the bedrock and the lubricant effect is lost.
No lubrication
Van De Waal says this indicates that, overall, meltwater has a negligible effect on the rate at which the ice sheet moves.
Not all scientists agree. Jay Zwally of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, US, says that averaging data over the last 17 years does not make sense because the most rapid melting at the edges of the ice sheet did not start until recently.
"It's only in the last five years or so that the warming signal has really been visible," he says.
Zwally told New Scientist that unpublished data from the eastern edge of the ice sheet suggests between 3% and 5% more ice is being lost because of lubrication than would otherwise happen. That is less than the 25% that was previously calculated, but still significant, he says.

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: Stringsinger
Date: 03 Jul 08 - 07:10 PM

The science is there. Most throughout the world agree that this is a real problem.
In this era, religion in the US has done damage to science. The political will in this country is not favorable to the acceptance of science or the findings of reputable scientists. The rejection of Evolution is a case in point.

The politics is such that the religious right is given too much credence over science.
Anti-Choice, anti-stem cell research, anti-birth control and other misguided superstitious
ideas have taken hold to the detriment of the protection of our planet.

Polar ice caps are melting. The planet is heating up because the oceans are absorbing
more rays of sunlight which cut through ozone layers that protect us. The world
is becoming more prone to deserts in Australia and Africa. The water table is rising
and the hydrologic cycle is creating cloud turbulence with flooding and radical shifts
in weather. Humans are causing this through CO2 emissions.

Most Americans are asleep on this issue. Humans have had a pretty good run in the
geologic age but may be digging the grave of their own extinction.

Frank Hamilton

Subject: RE: BS: US Politics and Global Warming
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 06:24 PM

Aust Emissions trading scheme, Garnaut review – FAQ

The scheme is due to start in 2010.

Lincoln Archer
Thursday, July 03, 2008 at 02:03pm

Learn what an emissions trading scheme is and how it will affect you with our FAQ that gives you the lowdown on what you need to know.

What is an emissions trading scheme?
Why do we need it?
Who is included in it?
How will it work?
But why should polluters play along?
How will I be affected?
So I'm stuffed?
Who else is affected?
So what now? Is this it?
Where can I learn more?
~~~~~~~~~~~
Links include:

Where can I learn more?

For further information on an ETS and the Garnaut report and for full explanations of the issues and modelling involved, check out:

- Garnaut review official website
- Garnaut review interim report - February 2008 (.pdf file)
- Garnaut review EST discussion paper - March 2008 (.pdf file)
- IPCC report on the science of climate change
- IPCC report on what needs to be done