More Snow!

[ricochet112]

Why do people believe that the temperature of the earth now is where its supposed to be when millions of years ago its was 10 degrees hotter than it is now. Just because we are here does not mean that it has to stay this way. If the planet wants to change its gonna change whether we want it to or not.

Please post a link to the data that supports your claim on the Earth's temp millions of years ago.

The planet Earth cycles from frozen to warm, not warm to desert like.
10 degrees F hotter and not much would look the same as it does now.
NYC and much of Florida would be underwater at a 10 F increase.

Nice analogy Dana, why do Conservatives not believe scientists?

[BP125V]

scientist

Al Gore is a scientist?

Dana - you, me and Ed can celebrate Earth Day in Alex by burning some 2 cycle oil in our Hot Rods

Ed - bring your shirt

Bill

[14-H]

14,

You're not actually quoting a fictional movie line to back a counter argument, are you? You wouldn't bring that into court I bet.

Sure the Earth has survived 4 1/2 billion years. That's not the issue. The issue is how long humans will be able to inhabit the planet.

"but the earth would survive our folly...only we would not."

Do your share that cavalier attitude toward the future?

As your quote proclaims, we've been here for the blink of an eye. Funny how the climate data has changed so radically in the past 150 years...coinciding with the blink of an eye the Industrial Revolution has been on the planet.

You can't be so drunk on the Indiana red state Kool-Aid as to deny science.

What kind of planet would you like your daughters and mine to live on?

By the way, congrats on your second child.

Dana: Do you ride a bike to work? Do you use natural air conditioning (ie: window) in your home or a freon-powered air conditioner in August? Do you drink bottled water that uses plastic bottles made with petroleum? Do you support nuclear power to replace the coal-burning furnaces that currently light the lights in your home? Are you giving up your dirty, two-cycle outboards to begin racing sailboats?

Just because its written in the opening of a fictional story book, does not mean it isn't the truth.

The earth's temperature has gone up one (1) degree in the last 100 years. I wouldn't call that a radical change.

BTW: to answer your last question: I hope our daughters don't live on a planet where people believe everything that gets fed to them by the left-wing, socialist nuts who run CNN. Eddie.

[14-H]

Al Gore is a scientist?

Dana - you, me and Ed can celebrate Earth Day in Alex by burning some 2 cycle oil in our Hot Rods

Ed - bring your shirt

Bill

I'm gonna celebrate early the Friday before by burning the plastic bottle heap in my back yard!

Bill: I love that shirt. It pisses Liz Bowman off when I wear it. Eddie.

[Merc1]

The one thing Al Gore and his buddies forget to mention when speaking about the so called "CRISIS" is that little known thing called the SUN! When he figures out how to control the amount of energy it puts out I'll start to listen. After all he created the internet! Don't get me wrong there is nothing wrong with cleaner living, we all can get better at it. The bottom line is the climate is constantly changing and always will be. It does not matter whether the variables are man made or natural. So get out there and buy your toxic mercury filled energy saving lightbulbs. Maybe if you buy enough of them Al "mister carbon footprint" himself will let you ride back and forth across the country in his jet spewing pollution. Somebody gave him the Nobel Prize for it.

[14-H]

So here we have thousands of scientists across the world with empirical data stating the problem and the results of said problems. And yet a great many disagree.

***!

Those are the same bozos who were crying that life, as we know it, was coming to an end in the 1970's because the earth was cooling. It's kinda like corporate governance: you gotta come up with a new theory ever so often to justify your existence (and budget).

[14-H]

***. So get out there and buy your toxic mercury filled energy saving lightbulbs. ***.

Save us from these idiots, please!

[14-H]

****
Nice analogy Dana, why do Conservatives not believe scientists?

Why do libs believe everything on CNN and NPR or that Algore says?

Dr. Roy W. Spencer–a principal research scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) on NASA’s Aqua satellite, recently wrote:

"For those scientists who value their scientific reputations, I would advise that they distance themselves from politically-motivated claims of a ’scientific consensus’ on the causes of global warming — before it is too late. Don’t let five Norwegians on the Nobel Prize committee be the arbiters of what is good science."

[14-H]

The “Collapse” of the Wilkins ice shelf

A few quick calculations put the size and effect of latest broken piece of Wilkins ice into perspective

The recent “collapse” of the Wilkins ice shelf is causing quite a stir in the blogosphere. The issue of disintegrating ice shelves is often entangled with the issue of sea level rise. The Los Angeles Times carried an AP story on March 25th that reported:

…the western peninsula, which includes the Wilkins Ice Shelf, juts out into the ocean and is warming. Scientists are most concerned about melting ice in this part of the continent triggering a rise in sea level.

The next day, CNN reported on the Wilkins ice shelf, saying:

…the poles will be the leading edge of what’s happening in the rest of the world as global warming continues. Even though they seem far away, changes in the polar regions could have an impact on both hemispheres, with sea level rise and changes in climate patterns.

Although most reports do admit that this floating ice will not raise the sea level at all, they paint an ominous picture of land bound glaciers rapidly sliding into the sea. In fact, the Wilkins ice shelf, like other ice shelves, is the product of a land glacier or ice sheet flowing over the coast and onto the water.

The piece of the ice shelf that broke off over the last month is reported to be 160 square miles (about 400 square kilometers). It is “up to” 650 feet (200 meters) thick according to the Times Online. A BBC video report corroborates the thickness by saying “Those cliffs are about 60 feet high,” when referring to the floating ice, which indicates that the total thickness is about 10 times that (because most of it is underwater), or about 600 feet (180 meters). So, lets say the ice is about 0.2 kilometers thick (200 meters). Then the total volume of the piece that broke off is about

400 km² x 0.2 km = 80 km³


One km³ of water will raise the sea level by a miniscule 2.78 microns (less than 3 millionths of a meter). So, over the course of time that it took this 80 km³ volume of ice to move from the land to the sea it contributed to the sea level by:

80 km³ x 2.78 microns/km³ = 220 microns = 0.22 millimeters = 0.009 inches


That’s not very much, considering that it took many years.

In general, it takes 360 km³ of water to raise the sea level by 1 mm. In order for the Antarctic peninsula to contribute 12 inches (about 300 mm) to the sea level in 100 years, it would have to drop 1,080 km³ of ice into the ocean (more really, because the density of the ice is less than the density of water) EVERY SINGLE YEAR FOR 100 YEARS!! If the ice at the grounding line (where the ice leaves the land) were 0.33 km thick on average, then more than 3000 km² of ice would have to move into the ocean every single year. Of course, this estimate is based on the unrealistic assumption that there would be no new ice ac***ulation on land from precipitation to offset the sea level rise. The difference in the amount of ice sliding into the sea and the amount of ice building up on land due to snowfall is call the mass balance.

Typical estimates for the ice mass balance in the Antarctic Peninsula are nowhere near the 1,080 km³ (roughly 1,080 Gt). The mass balance for the entire Antarctic continent doesn’t even come close. Estimates for the entire continent vary greatly and have huge uncertainties. Vilaconga and Wahr (2006) estimate a net ice loss of “152 ± 80 cubic kilometers of ice per year, which is equivalent to 0.4 ± 0.2 millimeters of global sea-level rise per year.” Davis (2005) estimates a net increase in Antarctic ice, which would cause a net drop in sea levels. Either way, the Antarctic is a very, very long way from any kind of catastrophic meltdown.

Then there is Greenland. Luthcke (2006) estimates the mass balance for Greenland at a loss of 101 Gigatonnes per year. This translates into a puny sea level rise of only 0.28 mm per year.

While we are at it, let’s consider James Hansen’s estimate of a 15 foot sea level rise this century.
On the average, a 15 foot sea level rise in a hundred years translates into 46 millimeters per year, requiring 16,500 km³ of additional water per year! This is about 65 times the current rate of ice melt, if we accept the mass balances of Vilaconga and Wahr for the Antarctic and Luthcke for Greenland. If the ice sliding into the ocean is a third of a kilometer thick, then Hansen’s doomsday scenario would require 50,000 square kilometers of ice to move from land to ocean every single year!!!!

The bottom line
Pictures of huge chunks of ice and making scary comparisons like “Seven times the size of Manhattan” may get people excited, but they are not very enlightening.

************************************************** *********************************
Davis, C., et. al., Snowfall-Driven Growth in East Antarctic Ice Sheet Mitigates Recent Sea-Level Rise, Science Vol. 308. no. 5730, pp. 1898 - 1901, 2005


Luthcke, et. al., Recent Greenland Ice Mass Loss by Drainage System from Satellite Gravity Observations, Science, Vol. 314. no. 5803, pp. 1286 - 1289, 2006

Velicogna, I. and Wahr, J., Measurements of Time-Variable Gravity Show Mass Loss in Antarctica, Science, Vol. 311. no. 5768, pp. 1754 - 1756, 2007

[racer121M]

Goody....

....Just when the depths of the winter were about to totally demoralize me and I was turning almost hourly to my computer for some kind of answer to the blues, Hydroracer answers my call and provides some much needed comic relief. What I can't figure out is that, even IF the arguments of the global warming group are specious, aren't the remedies they offer by and large good for the planet? Too bad we can't all hang around for the next billion years to see who is really right.

[14-H]

"The Cooling World" - by Peter Gwynne. April 28, 1975 Newsweek.

PLEASE NOTE THE DATE! Eddie.
The Cooling World
By Peter Gwynne
28 April 1975

There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production — with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas — parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia — where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to ac***ulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually.

During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree — a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic.

“A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”

A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.

To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras — and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average.

Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age” conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 — years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.

Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. “Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,” concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. “Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.”

Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases — all of which have a direct impact on food supplies.

“The world’s food-producing system,” warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA’s Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, “is much more sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago.”

Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects.

They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.

[14-H]

Algore's not a scientist, he's just filthy rich

Gore Admits Financial Stake in Pushing Global Warming HysteriaAl Gore Getting Rich Spreading Global Warming Hysteria With Media’s HelpBy Noel Sheppard | October 3, 2007 - 11:06 ET


Americans willing to look at the manmade global warming debate with any degree of impartiality and honesty are well aware that those spreading the hysteria have made a lot of money doing so, and stand to gain much more if governments mandate carbon dioxide emissions reductions.

In fact, just two months ago, ABC News.com estimated soon-to-be-Nobel Laureate Al Gore's net worth at $100 million, which isn't bad considering that he was supposedly worth about $1 million when he watched George W. Bush get sworn in as president in January 2001.

Talk about your get-rich-quick schemes, how'd you like to increase your net worth 10,000 percent in less than seven years?

Fortunately for the world's foremost warm-monger - a term I'd love to see become part of the parlance concerning what, in the long run, will likely be viewed as the greatest con ever perpetrated on the American people - his current wealth represents a mere pittance of what it will be if governments around the world are scared into all of his preposterous recommendations.

With that in mind, Deborah Corey Barnes published a marvelous piece at Human Events Wednesday that would be rather sobering for folks on both sides of the aisle if only a global warming obsessed media would be willing to share the information with the citizenry (emphasis added throughout):

Al Gore's campaign against global warming is shifting into high gear. Reporters and commentators follow his every move and bombard the public with notice of his activities and opinions. But while the mainstream media promote his ideas about the state of planet Earth, they are mostly silent about the dramatic impact his economic proposals would have on America. And journalists routinely ignore evidence that he may personally benefit from his programs. Would the romance fizzle if Gore's followers realized how much their man stands to gain?

Of course it would, Deborah. That's why media have largely been mute on this matter.

With that as pretext, Barnes addressed Gore's cap-and-trade carbon scheme, and how he is well-positioned to benefit if governments across the globe implement it:

Al Gore is chairman and founder of a private equity firm called Generation Investment Management (GIM). According to Gore, the London-based firm invests money from institutions and wealthy investors in companies that are going green. "Generation Investment Management, purchases -- but isn't a provider of -- carbon dioxide offsets," said spokesman Richard Campbell in a March 7 report by CNSNews.

GIM appears to have considerable influence over the major carbon-credit trading firms that currently exist: the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) in the U.S. and the Carbon Neutral Company (CNC) in Great Britain. CCX is the only firm in the U.S. that claims to trade carbon credits.

[...]

Clearly, GIM is poised to cash in on carbon trading. The membership of CCX is currently voluntary. But if the day ever comes when federal government regulations require greenhouse-gas emitters -- and that's almost everyone -- to participate in cap-and-trade, then those who have created a market for the exchange of carbon credits are in a position to control the outcomes. And that moves Al Gore front and center. As a politician, Gore is all for transparency. But as GIM chairman, Gore has not been forthcoming, according to Forbes magazine. Little is known about his firm's finances, where it gets funding and what projects it supports.

After addressing how intimately tied to the investment firm Goldman Sachs Gore and his GIM associates are, Barnes presented further nefarious connections that make Ken Lay's Enron network in the '90s look almost amateurish:

We do know that Goldman Sachs has commissioned the World Resources Institute (affiliated with CCX), Resources for the Future, and the Woods Hole Research Center to research policy options for U.S. regulation of greenhouse gases. In 2006, Goldman Sachs provided research grants in this area totaling $2.3 million. The firm also has committed $1 billion to carbon-assets projects, a fancy term for projects that generate energy from sources other than oil and gas. In October 2006, Morgan Stanley committed to invest $3 billion in carbon-assets projects. Citigroup entered the emissions-trading market in May, and Bank of America got in on the action in June.

Some environmentalist groups disparage Gore and his investment banker friends. They say the Gore group caters to others who share their financial interest in the carbon-exchange concept. The bulletin of the World Rainforest Movement says that members of a United Nations-sponsored group called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stand to gain by approving Gore's carbon-trading enterprise. The IPCC has devised what it says is a scientific measure of the impact of greenhouse gases on global warming. In fact, the critics charge, the IPCC sanctions a mechanism that mainly promotes the sham concept of carbon exchange.

The global non-profit organization Winrock International is an example of one IPCC panel member that seeks out groups and individuals with an interest in carbon trading. Arkansas-based Winrock provides worldwide "carbon-advisory services." Winrock has received government grants from the EPA, USAID and the Departments of Labor, State and Commerce, as well as from the Nature Conservancy (whose chairman used to be Henry Paulson). Winrock argues that cap-and-trade carbon trading is the best way to prevent a climate change crisis. But consider this: When a non-profit group takes money from oil companies and advocates drilling for oil as a solution to energy shortages, it is certain to be attacked as a tool of Big Oil. So far, the groups linked to Al Gore have avoided similar scrutiny.

Why is that? Why does everything Gore is involved in avoid government and media scrutiny?

While you ponder, there's more:

In June 2006, the World Bank announced that it, too, had joined CCX, saying that it intended to offset its greenhouse gas emissions by purchasing emission credits through CCX. The bank says its credits would contribute to restoring 4,600 hectares of degraded pastureland in Costa Rica. Somehow, CCX has figured out that this is an amount equivalent to 22,000 metric tons of emission that the bank calculates are created by its activities.

A World Bank blog called the Private Sector Development Blog regularly features items touting Al Gore and the concept of carbon credits. Its articles typically announce corporate "green" initiatives in which carbon credits are said to cancel out "bad" CO2 emissions released by a company's activities.

In fact, the World Bank now operates a Carbon Finance Unit that conducts research on how to develop and trade carbon credits. The bank works with Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark and Spain to set up carbon-credit funds in each country to purchase emission credits from firms for use in developing countries. In addition, it runs the Carbon Fund for Europe helping countries meet their Kyoto Protocol requirements. These funds are traded on the ECX (half of which is owned by CCX, itself a creature of Al Gore's firm, Generation Investment Management). Can we connect the dots?

[...]

So it seems banks and investment houses are going green, eager to enter an emerging emissions market. Meanwhile, environmentalists are discovering new ways to get rich while believing they are saving polar bears and rainforests.

Add it all up, Al Gore really is perpetrating a scheme that could end up being much more costly to Americans than anything Ken Lay did. As if that's not bad enough, our media are totally complicit rather than doing their jobs exposing the scam.

I don't know about you, but suddenly I need another shower.

[Cameraboy]

Ed, are billing somebody for this

[Merc1]

I wonder if Al used his time machine to go back in time with Daniel Fahrenheit, Anders Celsius and Galileo Galilei to hand out thermometers to the cavemen so they could start to collect data for BIG AL's theory? He must have!

[dholt]

14,

For the record, I do not ride my bike to work. Don't drink bottled water. I do have an old school AC unit...but use Mother Nature as well.

I do support Nukes...and am not yet ready to race sail boats.

Never proclaimed to live a totally green life. But I can't argue with the science and logic that there are ways to improve the world we're living in and our kids will live in.


BP....I will share that beer with you and 14 at Alex....celebrating whatever we wish to call it.