Global Warming: Why Can't the Mainstr...

The Starlite Cafe » Political Discussion » Global Warming: Why Can't the Mainstream Press Get Even Basic Facts Right?

« Previous Next »

Author Message   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Friday, January 26, 2007 - 09:31 am:    BACKGROUND: The Associated Press ran a global warming story1 this past weekend that makes the following statements: "Carbon dioxide, the gas largely blamed for global warming, has reached record-high levels in the atmosphere after growing at an accelerated pace in the past year..." "Carbon dioxide, mostly from burning of coal, gasoline and other fossil fuels, traps heat that otherwise would radiate into space." "Global temperatures increased by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degrees Celsius) during the 20th century, and international panels of scientists sponsored by world governments have concluded that most of the warming probably was due to greenhouse gases." TEN SECOND RESPONSE: How many scandals does the mainstream press need before it starts routinely running stories through fact-checkers? THIRTY SECOND RESPONSE: Faulty "news" stories like this one, which mislead people all over the world, are one of many alarmist global warming reports by the news media that do not reflect a consensus of scientists. What is more alarming than what scientists genuinely know about global warming is that a media outlet as influential as the AP would run a wire story this faulty, and that so many news editors would be gullible enough to run it. DISCUSSION: A brief refutation: Quote 1: The AP said: "Carbon dioxide, the gas largely blamed for global warming, has reached record-high levels in the atmosphere after growing at an accelerated pace in the past year..." Facts: Carbon dioxide is not the major greenhouse gas (water vapor is).2 Carbon dioxide accounts for less than ten percent of the greenhouse effect, as carbon dioxide's ability to absorb heat is quite limited.3 Only about 0.03 percent of the Earth's atmosphere consists of carbon dioxide (nitrogen, oxygen, and argon constitute about 78 percent, 20 percent, and 0.93 percent of the atmosphere, respectively).4 The sun, not a gas, is primarily to "blame" for global warming -- and plays a very key role in global temperature variations as well. Quote 2: The AP said: "Carbon dioxide, mostly from burning of coal, gasoline and other fossil fuels, traps heat that otherwise would radiate into space." Fact: Most of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not come from the burning of fossil fuels. Only about 14 percent of it does.5 Quote 3: The AP said: "Global temperatures increased by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degrees Celsius) during the 20th century, and international panels of scientists sponsored by world governments have concluded that most of the warming probably was due to greenhouse gases." Facts: Most of 20th Century global warming occurred in the first few decades of that century,6 before the widespread burning of fossil fuels (and before 82 percent of the increase in atmospheric CO2 observed in the 20th Century7). The Earth does not have "world governments." It doesn't even have even one, as the United Nations is not a government, but an association of nations. If the AP is referring to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the AP should become aware that the IPCC report itself (the part written by scientists) reached no consensus on climate change. What did reach a conclusion was an IPCC "summary for policymakers" prepared by political appointees.8 Most reporters quote only the summary, being either too lazy or too undereducated to understand the actual report. This does not explain, however, why reporters don't more frequently interview scientists who helped prepare it -- scientists such as IPCC participant Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT, who says the IPCC report is typically "presented as a consensus that involves hundreds, perhaps thousands, of scientists... and none of them was asked if they agreed with anything in the report except for the one or two pages they worked on." Lindzen also draws a sharp distinction between the scientists' document and its politicized summary: "the document itself is informative; the summary is not."9 FOR MORE INFORMATION: Associated Press, "CO2 Buildup Accelerating in Atmosphere," as run by USA Today on March 21, 2004 at http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2004-03-21-co2-buildup_x.htm "Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide," Oregon Institute of Science and Health, 2001, at http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm "There Has Been No Global Warming for the Past 70 Years," The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change at http://www.co2science.org/edit/v3_edit/v3n13edit.htm John Carlisle, "Kyoto Cover-up: TV News Gives One-Sided View on Global Warming," National Center for Public Policy Research National Policy Analysis #337, May 2001, http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA337.html John Carlisle, "Cooling Off on Global Warming," National Center for Public Policy Research National Policy Analysis #284, April 2000, http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA284.html John Carlisle, "Sun to Blame for Global Warming," National Center for Public Policy Research National Policy Analysis #203, June 1998, available at http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA203.html by Amy Ridenour Contact the author at: 202-543-4110 or aridenour@nationalcenter.org The National Center for Public Policy Research 501 Capitol Court, N.E. Washington, D.C. 20002 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Footnotes: (1) Charles J. Hanley, "CO2 Buildup Accelerating in Atmosphere," Associated Press, available on various websites, including http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2004-03-21-co2-buildup_x.htm, http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/3/21/170709.shtml, http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/8241534.htm, http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0304/21climateside.html, and many, many others (note: the headline used on the story varies). (2) See "The Greenhouse Effect and Greenhouse Gases: An Overview," Energy Information Administration, U.S. Department of Energy (available at http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/pubs_html/attf94_v2/chap2.html) for a good summary of this issue understandable to the layman. (3) Gerald Marsh, "Climate Change Science? National Academy of Sciences Global Warming Report Fails to Live Up to Its Billing," National Center for Public Policy Research National Policy Analysis #349, August 2001, at http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA349.html. (4) Edward Klappenbach, "Examining the Carbon Dioxide in Our Atmosphere," About.com, downloaded from http://weather.about.com/cs/atmosphere/a/aa062003a.htm?terms=carbon+dioxide on March 21, 2004. Klappenbach gives the CO2 figure as .033 percent. Note: The Associated Press article being critiqued in this Ten Second Response alludes to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations as meaured at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. The average annual percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere determined by researchers measuring there for 2002 was .0373 percent. A chart showing average annual CO2 concentrations as measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory from 1958-2002 is available at http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/ftp/maunaloa-co2/maunaloa.co2 as of March 22, 2004. (5) "Frequently Asked Global Change Question: What percentage of the CO2 in the atmosphere has been produced by human beings through the burning of fossil fuels?," Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, March 2004, available at http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/pns/faq.html as of March 21, 2004. (6) This is based on a review of global satellite and balloon temperature measurements and high-quality U.S.-based surface temperature station measurements. For additional details understandable to laymen, we recommend the short document "There Has Been No Global Warming for the Past 70 Years," published by The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change and available online at http://www.co2science.org/edit/v3_edit/v3n13edit.htm as of March 22, 2004. (7) "Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide," Oregon Institute of Science and Health, 2001, http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm. (8) Richard S. Lindzen, PhD., "Scientists' Report Doesn't Support the Kyoto Treaty," Wall Street Journal, June 11 2001 (a copy of this article is available unofficially online at http://www.enerne.dk/lindzen_i_wall_st__j_.htm). Dr. Lindzen, who is a professor of meteorology at MIT, participated -- as a scientist -- in the preparation of the IPCC report cited above and also was a member of the National Academy of Sciences panel on climate change that summarized the IPCC report for the U.S. government. (9) Paul Georgia, "IPCC Report Criticized by One of Its Lead Authors," Environment News, Heartland Institute, June 2001, available at http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=1069   Njaeok Starlite Member Username: Njaeok Posted on Friday, January 26, 2007 - 10:39 am:    The notion of global warming has long since moved from scientific inquiry to political scramble for government grant money. Maintaining a high level of weather fear is a proven job security technique. Really, scientists are no less subject to the temptations of feeding at the public trough then are lawyers, unions. or any other organized political group. Born with the gift of laughter, aware that the world is mad. -- Jimbo   Tess Starlite Administrator Username: Tess Posted on Friday, January 26, 2007 - 09:41 pm:    Those are some old reports in your bibliography, Aimstraight. It might interst you to know that I studied climatology in graduate school. While I ended up making my living creating computer data bases, I keep in touch with many of my old friends from my climatology and geology days. I am most familiar with all the names of people doing current research in this area. I actually know many of them. Do you have a degree in the Earth Sciences or Physics? If so, I would encourage discussion with you further on this issue. However, if you do not, you are making a non-political issue political. Jimbo, what you said is simply so not true. Where did you get this information? Tess   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Friday, January 26, 2007 - 10:45 pm:    Hot off the press “Be scared, be very scared….and vote for me” Why do so many people who subscribe to the belief in global warming also subscribe to the leftist liberal viewpoint on so many matters? Why does this belief appeal to those that have a certain political view? Is the belief in “global warming” a scare tactic being used to manipulate the population so certain individuals or parties can attain political power? And why not? If you can frighten people into thinking there is a threat and you have the answer to that threat….they will vote for you!   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Friday, January 26, 2007 - 10:49 pm:    Climate of Fear Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence. BY RICHARD LINDZEN Wednesday, April 12, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT There have been repeated claims that this past year's hurricane activity was another sign of human-induced climate change. Everything from the heat wave in Paris to heavy snows in Buffalo has been blamed on people burning gasoline to fuel their cars, and coal and natural gas to heat, cool and electrify their homes. Yet how can a barely discernible, one-degree increase in the recorded global mean temperature since the late 19th century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes? The answer has much to do with misunderstanding the science of climate, plus a willingness to debase climate science into a triangle of alarmism. Ambiguous scientific statements about climate are hyped by those with a vested interest in alarm, thus raising the political stakes for policy makers who provide funds for more science research to feed more alarm to increase the political stakes. After all, who puts money into science--whether for AIDS, or space, or climate--where there is nothing really alarming? Indeed, the success of climate alarmism can be counted in the increased federal spending on climate research from a few hundred million dollars pre-1990 to $1.7 billion today. It can also be seen in heightened spending on solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol and clean coal technologies, as well as on other energy-investment decisions. But there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis. To understand the misconceptions perpetuated about climate science and the climate of intimidation, one needs to grasp some of the complex underlying scientific issues. First, let's start where there is agreement. The public, press and policy makers have been repeatedly told that three claims have widespread scientific support: Global temperature has risen about a degree since the late 19th century; levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have increased by about 30% over the same period; and CO2 should contribute to future warming. These claims are true. However, what the public fails to grasp is that the claims neither constitute support for alarm nor establish man's responsibility for the small amount of warming that has occurred. In fact, those who make the most outlandish claims of alarm are actually demonstrating skepticism of the very science they say supports them. It isn't just that the alarmists are trumpeting model results that we know must be wrong. It is that they are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn't happen even if the models were right as justifying costly policies to try to prevent global warming. If the models are correct, global warming reduces the temperature differences between the poles and the equator. When you have less difference in temperature, you have less excitation of extratropical storms, not more. And, in fact, model runs support this conclusion. Alarmists have drawn some support for increased claims of tropical storminess from a casual claim by Sir John Houghton of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that a warmer world would have more evaporation, with latent heat providing more energy for disturbances. The problem with this is that the ability of evaporation to drive tropical storms relies not only on temperature but humidity as well, and calls for drier, less humid air. Claims for starkly higher temperatures are based upon there being more humidity, not less--hardly a case for more storminess with global warming. So how is it that we don't have more scientists speaking up about this junk science? It's my belief that many scientists have been cowed not merely by money but by fear. An example: Earlier this year, Texas Rep. Joe Barton issued letters to paleoclimatologist Michael Mann and some of his co-authors seeking the details behind a taxpayer-funded analysis that claimed the 1990s were likely the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year in the last millennium. Mr. Barton's concern was based on the fact that the IPCC had singled out Mr. Mann's work as a means to encourage policy makers to take action. And they did so before his work could be replicated and tested--a task made difficult because Mr. Mann, a key IPCC author, had refused to release the details for analysis. The scientific community's defense of Mr. Mann was, nonetheless, immediate and harsh. The president of the National Academy of Sciences--as well as the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union--formally protested, saying that Rep. Barton's singling out of a scientist's work smacked of intimidation. All of which starkly contrasts to the silence of the scientific community when anti-alarmists were in the crosshairs of then-Sen. Al Gore. In 1992, he ran two congressional hearings during which he tried to bully dissenting scientists, including myself, into changing our views and supporting his climate alarmism. Nor did the scientific community complain when Mr. Gore, as vice president, tried to enlist Ted Koppel in a witch hunt to discredit anti-alarmist scientists--a request that Mr. Koppel deemed publicly inappropriate. And they were mum when subsequent articles and books by Ross Gelbspan libelously labeled scientists who differed with Mr. Gore as stooges of the fossil-fuel industry. Sadly, this is only the tip of a non-melting iceberg. In Europe, Henk Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming. Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for raising questions. And then there are the peculiar standards in place in scientific journals for articles submitted by those who raise questions about accepted climate wisdom. At Science and Nature, such papers are commonly refused without review as being without interest. However, even when such papers are published, standards shift. When I, with some colleagues at NASA, attempted to determine how clouds behave under varying temperatures, we discovered what we called an "Iris Effect," wherein upper-level cirrus clouds contracted with increased temperature, providing a very strong negative climate feedback sufficient to greatly reduce the response to increasing CO2. Normally, criticism of papers appears in the form of letters to the journal to which the original authors can respond immediately. However, in this case (and others) a flurry of hastily prepared papers appeared, claiming errors in our study, with our responses delayed months and longer. The delay permitted our paper to be commonly referred to as "discredited." Indeed, there is a strange reluctance to actually find out how climate really behaves. In 2003, when the draft of the U.S. National Climate Plan urged a high priority for improving our knowledge of climate sensitivity, the National Research Council instead urged support to look at the impacts of the warming--not whether it would actually happen.   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Saturday, January 27, 2007 - 04:58 am:    Tess,I have no degree in the Earth Sciences or Physics. I’m only a simple man with common sense – I could never compete with your educated mind so no further discussion is required but wasn’t there a time when the sophisticated thought the world was flat and didn’t a simple man with common sense prove them wrong. ________________________________________________________________________________ ___ We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason. - Edward R. Murrow   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Saturday, January 27, 2007 - 06:07 am:    A Terrifying Message from Al Gore http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BjrOi4vF24   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Saturday, January 27, 2007 - 08:21 am:    Now we're getting the picture. Mike and Bubby are swiftboating the Global Warming issue just in case Gore decides to run. Save your breath, boys, not going to happen. You can go back to your little green footballs and trashing Clinton and Obama. 3067 "...I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 (600,000)(650,00)people paid with their lives; 1600 (2952) (2954) (2964) (2969) (2972) (2980) (2983) (2987) (2989) (2990) (2993) (2996) (2998) (3000) (3002) (3003) (3024)3054) (3060) (3062) of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 (22,032) (22,401) (22,834) (47,657 non-mortal casualties)of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies." George Galloway   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Saturday, January 27, 2007 - 08:33 am:    Say Hey,Gin Jen....actually,its more like a canoe.I'll leave the swiftboats up to the Navy.Is your time out over with? Don't let the door hit you in the butt...Isn't that your favorite saying?Are you still wearing that big shirt with a bulls-eye on it? Well,hold still,woman....I'm drawing a bead on you...lol Bubz P.S. Hurry up! Its time to hit the campaign trail and you haven't even packed your bags yet.   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Saturday, January 27, 2007 - 08:35 am:    Whats litte green footballs? A game from Mars?   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Saturday, January 27, 2007 - 08:46 am:    Pretty much. "...I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 (600,000)(650,00)people paid with their lives; 1600 (2952) (2954) (2964) (2969) (2972) (2980) (2983) (2987) (2989) (2990) (2993) (2996) (2998) (3000) (3002) (3003) (3024)3054) (3060) (3062) of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 (22,032) (22,401) (22,834) (47,657 non-mortal casualties)of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies." George Galloway   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Saturday, January 27, 2007 - 08:52 am:    Speaking of Navy, where's Jimbo? And "bite me" is yours? Not a very nice thing to say to a Princess. I could have gone all pouty. "...I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 (600,000)(650,00)people paid with their lives; 1600 (2952) (2954) (2964) (2969) (2972) (2980) (2983) (2987) (2989) (2990) (2993) (2996) (2998) (3000) (3002) (3003) (3024)3054) (3060) (3062) of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 (22,032) (22,401) (22,834) (47,657 non-mortal casualties)of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies." George Galloway   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Saturday, January 27, 2007 - 10:43 am:    Bite Me!!....   Njaeok Starlite Member Username: Njaeok Posted on Saturday, January 27, 2007 - 11:17 am:    I'm around and about Jen. (Thats my activity not my profile.) Tossing good natured insults at one another can be fun but it is tax time so most of my time is spent convincing the IRS that I am not a liar. The following is my opinion. Back to global warming--- I read a study in the Scientific Daily Magazine indicating that extreme cycles in surface weather conditions has been a normal phenomena since the onset of periodic ice ages millions of years ago. The earth has just recently in geological time frames, entered a warming cycle that ended the last ice age. The surface of the earth has been gradually warming for the last ten to twelve thousand years except for a mini ice age that lasted a couple of hundred years and wiped out human occupation of Greenland and other Northern areas. The final summery of the study indicated that the process of moving from an ice age to mamximum average tempature took place at a bit less then one degree every hundred years. (Pretty fast in geological time frames.) During the warmest of the interglacial periods all the ice on both poles is melted and the polar regions become the only habitable land on the planet. The rest is under water or so arid that nothing much will grow. So in a short few hundred years we might have to start moving north and south to the polar reigons. I would hope that by then the human species has stsrted occuping other planets in the solar system. (Which by the way seem to be in a warming cycle of their own.) Born with the gift of laughter, aware that the world is mad. -- Jimbo   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Saturday, January 27, 2007 - 11:43 am:    "The Earth's climate has fluctutated many times between warmer interglacials and colder Ice Ages during the last 2 million years, driven by changes in the Earth's orbit around the Sun". I'll be headed for the South Pole myself...   Njaeok Starlite Member Username: Njaeok Posted on Saturday, January 27, 2007 - 02:14 pm:    Well Bub --- I didn't know you were a believer in reincarnation. You jus full of surprises my friend. LOL I certainly expect to be here for the big move but I am a little worried as to what form I will be. Considering my grumpy persona I will probably be a badger. Born with the gift of laughter, aware that the world is mad. -- Jimbo   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Saturday, January 27, 2007 - 02:51 pm:    or a wise ol owl...lol   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Sunday, January 28, 2007 - 07:36 am:    Al Gore’s Doomsday Countdown Our time is running out – according to Al http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/eibessential/enviro_wackos/algore10yearstodoom. Par.0002.FlashFile.swf   Njaeok Starlite Member Username: Njaeok Posted on Sunday, January 28, 2007 - 08:31 am:    "It would seem that global warming was well underway over fourteen thousand years ago." Jimbo Winds Of Change: North America's Wind Patterns Have Shifted Significantly In The Past 30,000 Years Science Daily — Dartmouth researchers have learned that the prevailing winds in the mid latitudes of North America, which now blow from the west, once blew from the east. They reached this conclusion by analyzing 14,000- to 30,000-year-old wood samples from areas in the mid-latitudes of North America (40-50°N), which represents the region north of Denver and Philadelphia and south of Winnipeg and Vancouver. The researchers report their findings online on Jan. 23 in the journal Geology, published by the Geological Society of America. "Today in the mid-latitude zone of North America, marine moisture is transported either from the west coast by westerly winds, or from both the west and east coasts by storms," says Xiahong Feng, the paper's lead author and a professor of earth sciences. "In this study, we found evidence that during the last glacial period, about 14-36 thousand years ago, the prevailing wind in this zone was easterly, and marine moisture came predominantly from the East Coast." Feng explains that global climate change is often manifested by changes in general atmospheric circulation, i.e. winds, and this results in changing temperature and precipitation patterns. Clues of past climates usually hint at temperature and precipitation changes, but this is the first time that changing continental wind patterns have been reconstructed. The researchers gathered their evidence using oxygen and hydrogen isotopic compositions of cellulose extracted from ancient wood. Feng and her team interpret the historic prevailing easterlies to be a result of a growing and intensifying northern circumpolar vortex, which was influenced by the powerful Laurentide Ice Sheet, an enormous mass of ice that covered a great deal of northern North America. Under this circulation regime, the jet stream shifted southward, and as a result, the Pacific Northwest received much less marine moisture from the Pacific. This is consistent with earlier studies of vegetation in the Pacific Northwest, indicating that the region was significantly drier during the last glaciation. "This study is likely to open up new avenues of research based on oxygen and hydrogen isotopes in old wood," says Feng. "Climate change involves interactions among temperature, precipitation, and wind, but until now research has rarely been able to observe or confirm prehistoric winds and their continental-scale patterns. In the future, studies using this methodology will be able to look into ancient climates through a new window, and test hypotheses about climate change mechanisms. Such studies can potentially lead to more realistic formulations of future climate scenarios and better evaluations of their plausibility." In addition to Xiahong Feng, who also holds the Frederick Hall Professorship in Mineralogy and Geology at Dartmouth, other authors on the paper include: Allison L. Reddington, a member of the Dartmouth Class of 2004; Anthony M. Faiia, Dartmouth research associate; Eric S. Posmentier, adjunct professor of earth sciences at Dartmouth; Yong Shu, Dartmouth PhD candidate; and Xiaomei Xu, from the Earth System Science Department at the University of California, Irvine. "This study began as Allison Reddington's undergraduate honors thesis," says Feng. "This exemplifies the extraordinary opportunities that undergraduates at Dartmouth have to become integral parts of research groups." Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Dartmouth College. Born with the gift of laughter, aware that the world is mad. -- Jimbo   Tess Starlite Administrator Username: Tess Posted on Sunday, January 28, 2007 - 07:49 pm:    Jimbo, you old grump (just kidding!), a new report is due soon. I ask you to read it when it is released. Report: Global Warming's Smoking Gun is on the Table By Seth Borenstein Associated Press posted: 23 January 2007 08:13 am ET WASHINGTON (AP)—Human-caused global warming is here, visible in the air, water and melting ice, and is destined to get much worse in the future, an authoritative global scientific report will warn next week. "The smoking gun is definitely lying on the table as we speak,'' said top U.S. climate scientist Jerry Mahlman, who reviewed all 1,600 pages of the first segment of a giant four-part report. "The evidence ... is compelling.'' Andrew Weaver, a Canadian climate scientist and study co-author, went even further: "This isn't a smoking gun; climate is a batallion of intergalactic smoking missiles.'' The first phase of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is being released in Paris next week. This segment, written by more than 600 scientists and reviewed by another 600 experts and edited by bureaucrats from 154 countries, includes "a significantly expanded discussion of observation on the climate,'' said co-chair Susan Solomon, a senior scientist for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She and other scientists held a telephone briefing on the report Monday. That report will feature an "explosion of new data'' on observations of current global warming, Solomon said. Solomon and others wouldn't go into specifics about what the report says. They said that the 12-page summary for policymakers will be edited in secret word-by-word by governments officials for several days next week and released to the public on Feb. 2. The rest of that first report from scientists will come out months later. The full report will be issued in four phases over the year, as was the case with the last IPCC report, issued in 2001. Global warming is "happening now, it's very obvious,'' said Mahlman, a former director of NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab who lives in Boulder, Colo. "When you look at the temperature of the Earth, it's pretty much a no-brainer.'' Look for an "iconic statement''—a simple but strong and unequivocal summary—on how global warming is now occurring, said one of the authors, Kevin Trenberth, director of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, also in Boulder. The February report will have "much stronger evidence now of human actions on the change in climate that's taken place,'' Rajendra K. Pachauri told the AP in November. Pachauri, an Indian climatologist, is the head of the international climate change panel. An early version of the ever-changing draft report said "observations of coherent warming in the global atmosphere, in the ocean, and in snow and ice now provide stronger joint evidence of warming.'' And the early draft adds: "An increasing body of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on other aspects of climate including sea ice, heat waves and other extremes, circulation, storm tracks and precipitation.'' The world's global average temperature has risen about 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit from 1901 to 2005. The two warmest years on record for the world were 2005 and 1998. Last year was the hottest year on record for the United States. The report will draw on already published peer-review science. Some recent scientific studies show that temperatures are the hottest in thousands of years, especially during the last 30 years; ice sheets in Greenland in the past couple years have shown a dramatic melting; and sea levels are rising and doing so at a faster rate in the past decade. Also, the second part of the international climate panel's report—to be released in April—will for the first time feature a blockbuster chapter on how global warming is already changing health, species, engineering and food production, said NASA scientist Cynthia Rosenzweig, author of that chapter. As confident as scientists are about the global warming effects that they've already documented, they are as gloomy about the future and even hotter weather and higher sea level rises. Predictions for the future of global warming in the report are based on 19 computer models, about twice as many as in the past, Solomon said. In 2001, the panel said the world's average temperature would increase somewhere between 2.5 and 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit and the sea level would rise between 4 and 35 inches by the year 2100. The 2007 report will likely have a smaller range of numbers for both predictions, Pachauri and other scientists said. The future is bleak, scientists said. "We have barely started down this path,'' said chapter co-author Richard Alley of Penn State University. AP Special Correspondent Charles J. Hanley contributed to this report. Recent News of Climate Change: Melting Alps: 'The Future Looks Rather Liquid' Ten Top CEOs to President Bush: Protect the Climate Blog: The Beginning of the End of the Global Warming Argument Hot New Study: Earth's Heat Can Power Our Future Global Warming Unites Science and Religion Record Warm Year for US in 2006   Doc_dr_wind Starlite Member Username: Doc_dr_wind Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 - 03:24 am:    Global Warming's Smoking Gun walks in carrying her Hillary sign... I am woman here me roar... it's time for the real woman to step up,,, Hi Sis... are you warm in Florida??? > Current CO2 concentrations have not been exceeded in the past 420,000 years and probably not in the past 20 million years > The global mean sea-level rose by 1-2mm annually in the 20th century. It will continue to rise due to glacial retreat on Greenland and Antarctica as well as thermal expansion of the ocean as ocean temperature increases. > Global average temperature has increased by about 0.6 degrees centigrade over the 20th century > 2005 was the warmest year on record. Of the past ten years, only 1996 does not fall in the ten warmest - its place is taken by 1995 > 110 glaciers have disappeared from Glacier National Park, Montana, in the last 150 years > 35,000 people died in the 2003 European heatwave > The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was the most active on record and included the most named storms and the most powerful hurricane   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 - 09:14 am:    Global warming is nothing more than all of the women getting much hotter and PMS is spreading like wild fire....lets put this subject to rest once and for all.Blame it on the Doctors and silicone injections.I'm going to do my part....I'm going to go jump in the pool....or take a cold shower.You people can analyze this until the cows come home,and it wont change one iota.Ohhhh,another thing...I guess when tempers FLARE up in the political discussions,that creates global warming also...so shuddup allready...I'm a busy man...   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 - 09:19 am:    WHY IT'S IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND ENGLISH When I got back from Michigan last month I had a bunch of Canadian dollars I needed to exchange, so I went to the currency exchange window at the local bank. Short line. Just one guy in front of me...an Asian guy who was trying to exchange yen for dollars and he was a little irritated! He asked the teller, "Why it change?? Yestoday, I get two huna dolla fo yen. Today I get huna eighty?? Why it change?" The teller shrugged her shoulders and said, "Fluctuations". The Asian guy says, "Fluc you white people too!" OMG...the political correct crew will be on fire again...here comes global warming....LMAO   Njaeok Starlite Member Username: Njaeok Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 - 09:59 am:    Hey Doc good to hear from you. I don't think any serious honest person denys that global warming is taking place. However it dosen't necessiarly follow that it is caused by us nasty human beings. Also it dosen't nedessiarly follow that global warming is universaly a bad thing. An old country saying states, "if you don't like the weather just hang around a while and it will change". Change is the norm. Unless you live near the equator you most likely see dramatic change every spring and fall. Here are the findings of a highly educated and serious researcher. Warmer Days and Longer Lives Thomas Gale Moore Senior Fellow Hoover Institution Stanford University History demonstrates that warmer is healthier. Since the end of the last Ice Age, the earth has enjoyed two periods that were warmer than the twentieth century. Archaeological evidence shows that people lived longer, enjoyed better nutrition, and multiplied more rapidly than during epochs of cold. That Ice Age ended about 12,000 to 10,000 years ago when the glaciers covering much of North America, Scandinavia and northern Asia began to retreat to approximately their current positions. In North America the glacial covering lasted longer than in Eurasia because of topographical features that delayed the warming. Throughout history warming and cooling in different regions of the world have not correlated exactly because of the influence of such factors as oceans, mountains, and prevailing winds. As the earth warmed with the waning of the Ice Age, the sea level rose as much as 300 feet; hunters in Europe roamed through modern Norway; agriculture developed in the Middle East, the Far East and the Americas. By 7,000 years ago and lasting for about four millenniums, the earth was more clement than today, perhaps by 4deg. Fahrenheit, about the average of the various predictions for global warming from a doubling of CO2. Although the climate cooled a bit after 3000 B.C., it stayed relatively warmer than the modern world until sometime after 1000 B.C., when chilly temperatures became more common. During the four thousand warmest years, Europe enjoyed mild winters and warm summers with a storm belt far to the north. Rainfall may have been 10 to 15 percent greater than now. Not only was the country less subject to severe storms, but the skies were less cloudy and the days, sunnier. From around 800 A.D. to 1200 or 1300, the globe warmed again considerably and civilization prospered. This warm era displays, although less distinctly, many of the same characteristics as the earlier period of clement weather. Virtually all of northern Europe, the British Isles, Scandinavia, Greenland, and Iceland were considerably warmer than at present. The Mediterranean, the Near East, and North Africa, including the Sahara, received more rainfall than they do today. During this period of the High Middle Ages, most of North America also enjoyed better weather. In the early centuries of the epoch, China experienced higher temperatures and a more clement climate. From Western Europe to China, East Asia, India, and the Americas, mankind flourished as never before. This prosperous period collapsed at the end of the thirteenth century with the advent of the "Mini Ice Age" which, at its most frigid, produced temperatures in central England for January about 4.5deg.F colder than today. Although the climate fluctuated, periods of cold damp weather lasted until the early part of the nineteenth century. During the chilliest decades, 5 to 15 percent less rain fell in Europe than does normally today; but, due to less evaporation because of the low temperatures, swampy conditions were more prevalent. As a result, in the fourteenth century the population explosion came to an abrupt halt; economic activity slowed; lives shortened as disease spread and diets deteriorated. Although the influence of climate on human activities has declined with the growth in wealth and resources, climate still has a significant effect on disease and health. A cold wet climate can confine people to close quarters, abetting contagion. In the past, a shift towards a poorer climate has led to hunger and famine, making disease more virulent. Before the industrial revolution and improved technology, a series of bad years could be devastating. If transportation were costly and slow, as was typical until very recently, even a regionalized drought or an excess of rain might lead to disaster, even though crops might be plentiful a short distance away. For people in pre-modern times, perhaps the single best measure of their health and well-being is the growth rate of the population. Over history the number of humans has been expanding at ever more rapid rates. Around 25,000 years ago, the world's population may have numbered only about 3 million. Fifteen thousand years later, around 8,000 B.C., the total had probably grown by one-third to 4 million. It took 5,000 more years to jump one more million; but, in the 1,000 years after 5000 B.C., it added another million. Except for a few periods of disaster, the number of men, women, and children has mounted with increasing rapidity. Only in the last few decades of the twentieth century has the escalation slowed. Certainly there have been good times when man did better and poor times when people suffered -- although in most cases these were regional problems. However, as the following chart shows, in propitious periods, that is, when the climate was warm, the population swelled faster than during less clement eras. Another measure of the well-being of humans is their life span. The life of the hunter-gatherer was less rosy than some have contended. Life was short -- skeletal remains from before 8000 B.C. show that the average age of death for men was about 33 and that for women, 28. Death for men was frequently violent while many women must have died in childbirth. Chart 2 below shows that the warmest periods -- the Neolithic and Bronze Ages and England in the thirteenth century -- enjoyed the longest life spans of the entire record. The rise in life expectancies during the latter warm period easily explains the population explosion that took place during the High Middle Ages. In contrast, the shortening of lives from the late thirteenth to the late fourteenth centuries with the advent of much cooler weather is particularly notable. Good childhood nutrition is reflected in taller adults. As Chart 3 indicates Icelanders must have suffered from lack of food during the Mini Ice Age: their average stature fell by 2 inches. Only in the modern world, with greatly improved food supplies and medicines, has their height risen to levels exceeding those enjoyed in the Medieval period. In summary, the evidence supports overwhelmingly the proposition that, during warm periods, humans have prospered. They multiplied more rapidly; they lived longer; and they were healthier. If the IPCC is right and the globe does warm, history suggests that human health is likely to improve. Sources: Boserup, Ester. Population and Technological Change: A Study of Long-Term Trends, Chicago: University of Chicago (1981). Kremer, Michael "Population growth and Technological Change: One Million B.C. to 1990," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 108(3) (August 1993). Lamb, Hubert H. The Changing Climate, London: Methuen (1968). Lamb, Hubert H. [1977]. Climatic History and the Future, Princeton: Princeton University Press, Vol. 2 (1985). Lamb, Hubert H. Weather, Climate & Human Affairs: A Book of Essays and Other Papers, London and New York: Routledge (1988). Moore, Thomas G. "Why Global Warming Would Be Good for You" The Public Interest, (Winter 1995): 83-99. Difference in Percentage Growth Rate of Population from the Expected Period Climate Difference in Growth Rate 5000BC-1000BC Warmest Period +5deg.F +0.050% 500BC-600AD Cooling Period -0.011% 800AD-1200 Medieval Warm Period +0.001% +3deg.F 1300-1800 Mini Ice Age -0.034% Source: Kremer 1993, table 1 and the author. Life Expectancy at Various Periods Mesolithic People in Europe -- Ice 32 Age Neolithic, Anatolia -- Warm Period 38 Bronze Age, Austria -- Warm Period 38 Classical Greece -- Cooler 35 Classical Rome -- Cooler 32 England 1276 a.d. -- Warm Period 48 England 1376-1400 -- Mini Ice Age 38 Source: Lamb [1977]: 264. Average Height of Icelandic Males Period (a.d.) Mean Height Medieval Warmth 874-1100 68" Mini Ice Age 1650-1800 66" Modern World 1952-1954 70" Source: Lamb [1977]: 264. Born with the gift of laughter, aware that the world is mad. -- Jimbo   Grendel Starlite Member Username: Grendel Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 - 10:26 am:    This thread is a non-issue. I've sat here and laughed for ten minutes. "and surely some koan suggests neglect leads to perfection"   Grendel Starlite Member Username: Grendel Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 - 10:37 am:    Oh and i resent the leftist viewpoint blah dee blah Bubby old fellah. If you're rightwing you're in love with yourself right? So screw the planet right? The right uses the same scare tactics aswell, fear the muslim remember. Or the asiatic hordes maybe. The left usually guilts you into something. The right bullies you into it. They are both crud, bring back Primitive Anarchy. How about a good natured nuclear war. Lets wipe out humanity and see if the planet earth actually cares in the end. WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE "and surely some koan suggests neglect leads to perfection"   Njaeok Starlite Member Username: Njaeok Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 - 11:29 am:    Dang Chris! You seem kind of angry about something. I appreciate a good laugh and would encourage you to point out the humor that your superior senses have detected. Born with the gift of laughter, aware that the world is mad. -- Jimbo   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 - 11:38 am:    He wants to nuke the planet Jimbo....yeehaw...shades of Slim Pickens and Dr Strangelove.I bet he wants to be strapped on the nose cone with duct tape,when its fired off. See what happens when you sniff super glue? Dang,Chris...you need to run for prezzident.Yu got my vote,you liddle whippersnapper...anyway...I'm off to see my therapist and save the planet....be back later..   Grendel Starlite Member Username: Grendel Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 - 12:20 pm:    Awwwhhhhh Tess the old fogeys get their meds mixed up. I was trying to highlight the inherent pointlessness of it all. You can't make computer models on nothing you weren't there for, nor can you make a model on something so recent. In a thousand years maybe. I say let foolish people waste time trying to save the planet and ignoring human issues, like rapists and child sex offenders. These people can waste their time, because they are hedonists, looking at the grande picture so they don't have to focus on their own imperfections. And Bubby i'm Australian. My countries been laughing at yours for the past 100 years. SO *raspberry* We don't even have nukes, just a hell of a lot of unprocessed uranium. Oh and Jimbo old bearbloke i owe you one of the biggest thanks i can ever extend to someone. 2 Years ago you gave me some things to think about.....and now all i do is think, and i have little time to contemplate killing myself. And thats in all seriuosness. Much thanks. Now i'm going to ride this here kangaroo, down to the old billabong, for a chat with Larry my local MP. LMAO "and surely some koan suggests neglect leads to perfection"   Njaeok Starlite Member Username: Njaeok Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 - 02:25 pm:    Chris, I see your intuitive intellectual focus has sharpened considerably. Thank you for the credit but I still think your own native intelligence deserves the bulk of the credit. You are right on about quantitative computer models. That is the sort of mathmatical computer models that try to predict when, where and how much in precise numbers. All of such have turned out to be pipe dreams. The serious qualitative mathmatical computer models however have proved to be quite reliable. That is the sort of models that try to figure out what is likely to happen and why. I hope that is a Big Red your riding. Don't want PETA after you and Bubby both. Bubba has done abused an Ostrich and Tess is siken PETA on him. When you see your local MP tell him I am seriously considering moving down under at least until this political madness here passes. I only need a small place, five or six sections with an aquafer under for wells and plenty of sunshine for solar power. Born with the gift of laughter, aware that the world is mad. -- Jimbo   Grendel Starlite Member Username: Grendel Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 - 03:51 pm:    Yeah well matey, moving here is moving to the only post-industrial country suffering a 1 in a 100 year drought. Don't know if you get much news on us poor aussie shlubs but most states are under water restrictions. Can't use a hose, water plants with buckets, can only wash cars at carwashes. In victoria if your caught out they put a pressure limiter on your mains water for two days and force you to ay a fine. Irrigation rights (how much water you can pull from the river systems) are a hot commodity. Thats what you get when 80 percent of the population relies on irrigation water from one river basin ("that'd be the murray darling"). Drought hurts yah. Bread goes up, wheat goes up all produce goes up in price. Coupled with high petrol prices last year and rising interest rates this country starting to hit the wall again. Recession anyone. "and surely some koan suggests neglect leads to perfection"   Grendel Starlite Member Username: Grendel Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 - 03:57 pm:    Oh and i am aware these days of the differences between quantative and qualitative methodology. It still doesn't refute the fact that qualitative modelling is basically computer aided guestimation based on weather accounts maybe 500 years old. PETA can't do anything, Eastern Greys and Reds aren't endangered and both are animals declared fit for human consumption. We are the only country in the world i believe that stocks its National coat of arms in regular supermarkets. Roo meat is pretty good for you anyway, super lean, tastes good too. Like some other game meats. "and surely some koan suggests neglect leads to perfection"   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 - 04:30 pm:    Chris,does Roo taste like chicken? I bbq'ed an ostrich last night.I rode him for several months and now Tess has PETA after me...so I consumed the evidence...Ostrich is tantamount to eating a rooster with feathers intact...)   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 - 04:38 pm:    This is the one I BBQ'd last night....   Grendel Starlite Member Username: Grendel Posted on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 - 07:31 am:    No roo tastes like roo? "and surely some koan suggests neglect leads to perfection"   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 - 09:42 am:    Hey Chris, I think Australia has always suffered from global warming.Especially in the outback....My good friend Granny Rosie is from Australia and she is good people.My favorite movie about Australia is "Quigley Down Under" with Tom Selleck.It touched briefly on the crimes against the aborigines and how they were persecuted.Your country is rich in history and tradition.....and you have great pictorial calenders...Granny Rosie sent me one..Shine on mate...Bubz   Grendel Starlite Member Username: Grendel Posted on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 - 10:16 am:    Indeed. I shall do as you say. Shine. And continue building up my "gang" the quack crew!!! "and surely some koan suggests neglect leads to perfection"   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 - 05:36 pm:    This is the major problem for Polar Bears...   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 - 05:40 pm:    In your world, maybe. “Religions are many and diverse, but reason and goodness are one” - Elbert Hubbard Let us today take a stand to end all kinds of fear and hatred of "the other." - Abdul Malik Mujahid   Caprichos Starlite Member Username: Caprichos Posted on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 - 05:49 pm:    Gotta love them Polar Bears, Bubz! You are just TOO cute for your own good! *Smiles* The local NC news frequently runs commercials to educate the public about this serious issue. I constantly hear about it on MSNBC and various other news metworks. Slowly but surely this world is coming to a 'stand-still'. "When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite." -Sir William Blake   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 - 05:52 pm:    Actually,this is the problem in my world....   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 - 05:58 pm:    and this is Jupiter...someplace Jimbo and I will someday venture to...the fishing is atrocious   Caprichos Starlite Member Username: Caprichos Posted on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 - 06:01 pm:    Hey Bubby, This is a picture I took on my pier in front of my house. There's plenty of fish in the water! "When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite." -Sir William Blake   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 - 06:03 pm:    Now here is real trouble...   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 - 06:19 pm:    "The Bush administration has decided to propose listing the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, putting the U.S. government on record as saying that global warming could drive one of the world's most recognizable animals out of existence." "...I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 (600,000)(650,00)people paid with their lives; 1600 (2952) (2954) (2964) (2969) (2972) (2980) (2983) (2987) (2989) (2990) (2993) (2996) (2998) (3000) (3002) (3003) (3024)3054) (3060) (3062) (3081) of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 (22,032) (22,401) (22,834) (47,657 non-mortal casualties)of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies." George Galloway   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 - 07:05 pm:    I'm going to Carolina in my mind....lol Fishing pole and all...   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 - 07:14 pm:    Lady Cappy,that has to be the most beautiful fishing view in Carolina.What kind of bait can you use? Polar Bears? Just kidding...   Tess Starlite Administrator Username: Tess Posted on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 - 07:48 pm:    Going to Carolina in your mind? Bubbs, that be liberal music! Conservatives surely don't listen to the James Taylor! You must be hitting the moonshine! LOL! OK, I am going with you, too. It sure looks beautiful Capri! One more thing Bubs, leave the polar bears alone. I mean it. Don't worry about PETA. Worry about the bears. Global warming is causing damage to their habitat. Some are drowning, as the polar ice melts. They are not in any mood be messed with. Plus, I hear they bite. Hard. What a beautiful animal. Hope we don't lose them all. Now, back to going to Carolina... Sing it James! "With a holy host of others standing around me Still I'm on the dark side of the moon And it seems like it goes on like this forever You must forgive me If I'm up and gone to Carolina in my mind." Agree or disagree, most of us are still friends! And welcome back Grendel! We all missed you.   Njaeok Starlite Member Username: Njaeok Posted on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 - 08:26 pm:    If a bunch of other scientists are correct global warming is the least of our worries. Put this in your goggle and smoke it. thehorizonproject.com Born with the gift of laughter, aware that the world is mad. -- Jimbo   Grendel Starlite Member Username: Grendel Posted on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 - 11:01 pm:    If scientists weren't so pessimistic maybe they would have invented something useful in the past decade. I mean really what is this decade going to be remembered for. The Iraq war, a group of countries deciding to be a fission reactor to be completed 20 years from now, and the I-POD revolution which made a failing group Apple into a going concern again. "and surely some koan suggests neglect leads to perfection"   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 - 11:07 pm:    I checked it out and there is some superb revelations there,Jimbo.Makes global warming seem like a speed bump...spooky stuff brother..and Tessie...J.T. can't help it if he's liberal...his Daddy dropped him on his head when he was just a tyke.... I've seen fire and I've seen rain...I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end....sing it T Bone....   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - 02:34 am:    Drudge Two New Books Confirm Global Warming is Natural; Not Caused By Human Activity Tue Jan 30 2007 10:02:32 ET Two powerful new books say today’s global warming is due not to human activity but primarily to a long, moderate solar-linked cycle. Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years, by physicist Fred Singer and economist Dennis Avery was released just before Christmas. The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change, by Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark and former BBC science writer Nigel Calder (Icon Books), is due out in March. Singer and Avery note that most of the earth’s recent warming occurred before 1940, and thus before much human-emitted CO2. Moreover, physical evidence shows 600 moderate warmings in the earth’s last million years. The evidence ranges from ancient Nile flood records, Chinese court documents and Roman wine grapes to modern spectral analysis of polar ice cores, deep seabed sediments, and layered cave stalagmites. Unstoppable Global Warming shows the earth’s temperatures following variations in solar intensity through centuries of sunspot records, and finds cycles of sun-linked isotopes in ice and tree rings. The book cites the work of Svensmark, who says cosmic rays vary the earth’s temperatures by creating more or fewer of the low, wet clouds that cool the earth. It notes that global climate models can’t accurately register cloud effects. The Chilling Stars relates how Svensmark’s team mimicked the chemistry of earth’s atmosphere, by putting realistic mixtures of atmospheric gases into a large reaction chamber, with ultraviolet light as a stand-in for the sun. When they turned on the UV, microscopic droplets—cloud seeds—started floating through the chamber. “We were amazed by the speed and efficiency with which the electrons [generated by cosmic rays] do their work of creating the building blocks for the cloud condensation nuclei,” says Svensmark. The Chilling Stars documents how cosmic rays amplify small changes in the sun’s irradiance fourfold, creating 1-2 degree C cycles in earth’s temperatures: Cosmic rays continually slam into the earth’s atmosphere from outer space, creating ion clusters that become seeds for small droplets of water and sulfuric acid. The droplets then form the low, wet clouds that reflect solar energy back into space. When the sun is more active, it shields the earth from some of the rays, clouds wane, and the planet warms. Unstoppable Global Warming documents the reality of a moderate, natural, 1500-year climate cycle on the earth. The Chilling Stars explains the why and how.   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - 02:50 am:    Could you share with us some of those "superb revelations", Bubby. As you've said ad nauseam, inquiring minds want to know. Did you actually buy or watch the video, Jimbo? Mike, have you read either of the two books you mentioned? Grendel, your question, what will this decade be remembered for, sent me off for a quick Google on inventions of the decade. Kind of interesting, so thanks for the bit of fun. Modern Inventions of 2000 The mystery of Ginger. Environmentally friendly transformer fluid from vegetable oils invented by T.V. Oommen. FluidSense infusion pump invented (automatic and standardized intravenous applicator). Time Magazine Modern Inventions of the Year 2000 Modern Inventions of 2001 AbioCor artificial heart invented by Abiomed - the Abiocor represents groundbreaking medical miniaturization technology. Nuvaring birth control invented by Organon. Artificial liver invented by Dr. Kenneth Matsumura and Alin Foundation. Fuel cell bike invented by Aprilia. Self-cleaning windows invented by PPG Industries. Time Magazine Modern Inventions of the Year 2001 Modern Inventions of 2002 Braille Glove invented by Ryan Patterson. Phone tooth invented by James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau. Nano-tex - nanotechnology wearable fabrics invented by Nano-tex LLC. Birth control patch invented by Ortho McNeil Pharmaceutical. Foveon Camera Chip invented by Richard Merrill. Date Rape Drug Spotter invented by Francisco Guerra. Solar Tower invented by Jorg Schlaich. Virtual keyboard invented by Canesta and VKB. ICOPOD invented by Sanford Ponder. Time Magazine Modern Inventions of the Year 2002 Modern Inventions of 2003 Optical Camouflage System invented by Susumu Tachi, Masahiko Inami, and Naoki Kawakami Toyota's Hybrid Car Ice Bike invented by Dan Hanebrink New Toy Robots Max the robotic cat invented by Omron, LUCKY, THE ROVING ROBO-RAPTOR invented by Walt Disney Imagineering, and Sony builds Aibo a companion called Orio. New Fabrics, Salmon Skin Leather invented by Claudia Escobar and Skini, and Luminex a glowing fabric invented by Luminex. Java Log a log for your fireplace made from used coffee grinds and invented by Rod Sprules Infrared Fever Screening System used in public buildings to scan for people with a high temperature from a fever or sars invented by Singapore Technologies Electronics and the Singapore Defense Science and Technology Agency The No-Contact Jacket invented by Adam Whiton and Yolita Nugent, protects the wearer by electric shocking any attackers. Time Magazine Modern Inventions of the Year 2003 Popular Science Best of What's New 2003 Modern Inventions of 2004 Adidas 1 the thinking shoes with a built in microprocessor that decides how soft or firm support the wearer needs. Chosen by Popular Science magazine as the best recreation invention of 2004. Translucent Concrete developed by Hungarian architect Aron Losonczi and called LitraCon and is based on a matrix of parallel optical glass fibers embedded into the concrete that can transmit light and color from the outside. However, this is not the only translucent concrete out there. Inventor Bill Price has been developing another variety. Ka-on or Flower Sound are plants that play music invented by the Japanese based Let's Corporation. Flowers bouquets will act as loudspeakers when placed in a special vase that has electronics hidden in the base. Intel Express Chipsets - Grantsdale and Alderwood are the code names of Intel's newest chips that will provide superior and inexpensive built-in sound and video capacities for the PC including the ability to do high definition video editing without additional computer cards. SonoPrep invented by bioengineer Robert Langer, is a device that will deliver medication by sound waves rather than injection. According to the Sontra Medical Corporation, SonoPrep's manufacturer: The small, battery-powered device applies low-frequency ultrasonic energy to the skin for 15 seconds. The ultrasound temporarily rearranges lipids in the skin, opening channels that let fluids be delivered or extracted. After about 24 hours, the skin returns to normal. "...I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 (600,000)(650,00)people paid with their lives; 1600 (2952) (2954) (2964) (2969) (2972) (2980) (2983) (2987) (2989) (2990) (2993) (2996) (2998) (3000) (3002) (3003) (3024)3054) (3060) (3062) (3081) of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 (22,032) (22,401) (22,834) (47,657 non-mortal casualties)of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies." George Galloway   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - 03:23 am:    Jen Jen - due out in March. ________________________________________________________________________________ I don't consider myself an offensive guy. I am just a harmless lovable little fuzzball. - Rush Limbaugh   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - 03:38 am:    Mikey Mikey, so then your answer is no, you haven't read the books and don't have a clue if there's anything even remotely factual in either book?   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - 09:45 am:    Mathew 24:22 and Revelations 8:12...   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - 09:49 am:    Inquiring minds want to know if you are legitimate,if so,who are you?   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - 11:22 am:    $24.99 for an Armageddon flick? Thanks for the warning, Bubby. Poor Jimbo, would have been cheaper for him to buy a copy of the latest Watchtower off a JW. "Jones asked Galloway if he thought an invasion of Iran was on the horizon. Galloway was confident that massively opposed public opinion would stop an attack from taking place, unless a staged terror attack carried out by the military industrial complex and blamed on Iran was carried out."   Grendel Starlite Member Username: Grendel Posted on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - 12:53 pm:    Everything you listed Jen only keeps Hedonists happy or alive longer and i'm not sure this over populated world needs that. Perhaps i meant scientists should invent something that will help the whole world, not just the one you live in? Oh and Jimbo, height is factored by dietary concerns + vit D levels + genetics not by warmth. Also thirty years is a long time in any study of a demographic. "and surely some koan suggests neglect leads to perfection"   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - 05:28 pm:    Hmmmmm, a very interesting reaction and I wasn’t even trying. "Jones asked Galloway if he thought an invasion of Iran was on the horizon. Galloway was confident that massively opposed public opinion would stop an attack from taking place, unless a staged terror attack carried out by the military industrial complex and blamed on Iran was carried out."   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - 05:56 pm:    "Oh and Jimbo, height is factored by dietary concerns + vit D levels + genetics not by warmth. Also thirty years is a long time in any study of a demographic." Hey Chris,I been factoring my wife for thirty three years...she use to be demographic,but I factored that out of her and now,she's only Republographic....   Njaeok Starlite Member Username: Njaeok Posted on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - 07:18 pm:    Chris--- Re: "Oh and Jimbo, height is factored by dietary concerns + vit D levels + genetics not by warmth." Exactly so Chris. So if people are living longer, growing taller and generslly prospering better in warm times they must be getting better nourishment and living less stressful lives. Re: "Also thirty years is a long time in any study of a demographic." I have no idea as to what you are reffering. In any event I don't agree that thirty years is a long time in any study of a demographic. Depends on what demographic information one is seeking. Born with the gift of laughter, aware that the world is mad. -- Jimbo   Tess Starlite Administrator Username: Tess Posted on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - 07:30 pm:    For those truly interested in hearing a panel discussion of this, both sides, tune into Larry King Live now. I have been listening off and on. Some good discussion going on.   Grendel Starlite Member Username: Grendel Posted on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - 10:16 pm:    Jimbo matey. I don't know what i was talking about either. I was more than a little drunk and had been up all night aswell. Actually i would just disregard anything i've said in this thread. I say burn the wick at both ends "and surely some koan suggests neglect leads to perfection"   Njaeok Starlite Member Username: Njaeok Posted on Thursday, February 01, 2007 - 12:03 am:    Yeah Chris--- I burned the wick at both ends for years. Now I got a really short wick. Born with the gift of laughter, aware that the world is mad. -- Jimbo   Morning_song Starlite Member Username: Morning_song Posted on Thursday, February 01, 2007 - 12:25 am:    Lawmakers hear of interference in global warming science POSTED: 4:01 a.m. EST, January 31, 2007 WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal scientists have been pressured by the White House to play down global warming, advocacy groups testified Tuesday at the Democrats' first investigative hearing since taking control of Congress. The hearing focused on allegations White House officials for years have micromanaged the government's climate programs and have closely controlled what scientists have been allowed to tell the public. "It appears there may have been an orchestrated campaign to mislead the public about climate change," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California. Waxman is chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee and a critic of the Bush administration's environmental policies, including its views on climate. (Watch White House changes to climate reports ) Climate change also was a leading topic in the Senate, where presidential contenders for 2008 lined up at a hearing called by Sen. Barbara Boxer. They expounded -- and at times tried to outdo each other -- on why they believed Congress must act to reduce heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases. "This is a problem whose time has come," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-New York, proclaimed. "This is an issue over the years whose time has come," echoed Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, said "for decades far too many have ignored the warning" about climate change. "Will we look back at today and say this was the moment we took a stand?" At the House hearing, two private advocacy groups produced a survey of 279 government climate scientists showing that many of them say they have been subjected to political pressure aimed at downplaying the climate threat. Their complaints ranged from a challenge to using the phrase "global warming" to raising uncertainty on issues on which most scientists basically agree, to keeping scientists from talking to the media. (Watch what a major new report concludes ) The survey and separate interviews with scientists "has brought to light numerous ways in which U.S. federal climate science has been filtered, suppressed and manipulated in the last five years," Francesca Grifo, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told the committee. Grifo's group, along with the Government Accountability Project, which helps whistle-blowers, produced the report. Drew Shindell, a climate scientist with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said that climate scientists frequently have been dissuaded from talking to the media about their research, though NASA's restrictions have been eased. Prior to the change, interview requests of climate scientists frequently were "routed through the White House" and then turned away or delayed, said Shindell. He described how a news release on his study forecasting a significant warming in Antarctica was "repeatedly delayed, altered and watered down" at the insistence of the White House. 'Science and politics are intermixed' Some Republican members of the committee questioned whether science and politics ever can be kept separate. "I am no climate-change denier," said Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, the top Republican on the committee, but he questioned whether "the issue of politicizing science has itself become politicized." "The mere convergence of politics and science does not itself denote interference," said Davis. Administration officials were not called to testify. In the past the White House has said it has only sought to inject balance into reports on climate change. President Bush has acknowledged concerns about global warming, but he strongly opposes mandatory caps of greenhouse gas emissions, arguing that approach would be too costly. Roger Pielke Jr., a political scientist at the University of Colorado who was invited by GOP lawmakers, said "the reality is that science and politics are intermixed." Pielke maintained that "scientific cherry picking" can be found on both sides of the climate debate. He took a swipe at the background memorandum Waxman had distributed and maintained that it exaggerated the scientific consensus over the impact of climate change on hurricanes. Waxman and Davis agreed the administration had not been forthcoming in providing documents to the committee that would shed additional light on allegations of political interference in climate science. "We know that the White House possesses documents that contain evidence of an attempt by senior administration officials to mislead the public by injecting doubt into the science of global warming and minimize the potential danger," said Waxman, adding that he is "not trying to obtain state secrets." At Boxer's Senate hearing, her predecessor as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, had his own view of the science. There is "no convincing scientific evidence" that human activity is causing global warming, declared Inhofe, who once called global warming a hoax. "We all know the Weather Channel would like to have people afraid all the time." "I'll put you down as skeptical," replied Boxer. I found this article on CNN.com Hugs.....Jeri   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Thursday, February 01, 2007 - 01:39 am:    Recently, astronomers have noticed a thinning of the polar icecaps on Mars. Is this “global warming.   Grendel Starlite Member Username: Grendel Posted on Thursday, February 01, 2007 - 02:03 am:    Recently barbers have noticed a thinning of Jimbos hair. Is this cranial warming? "and surely some koan suggests neglect leads to perfection"   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Thursday, February 01, 2007 - 02:08 am:    Good Morning, Mikey Mikey. I really don't believe you have any interest at all in global warming here or on Mars. Seems to me you're more interested in trashing what you label the MSM, or in this case, Press. But, in the off chance that you really do give a •••• about the thinning polar ice caps on Mars, I found this online article for you. Now aren't I just the sweetest person to spend my time doing your research for you? Global warming on Mars? Filed under: Climate Science Sun-earth connections Climate modelling FAQ— group @ 11:21 am - () Guest contribution by Steinn Sigurdsson. Recently, there have been some suggestions that "global warming" has been observed on Mars (e.g. here). These are based on observations of regional change around the South Polar Cap, but seem to have been extended into a "global" change, and used by some to infer an external common mechanism for global warming on Earth and Mars (e.g. here and here). But this is incorrect reasoning and based on faulty understanding of the data. A couple of basic issues first : the Martian year is about 2 Earth years (687 days). Currently it is late winter in Mars's northern hemisphere, so late summer in the southern hemisphere. Martian eccentricity is about 0.1 - over 5 times larger than Earth's, so the insolation (INcoming SOLar radiATION) variation over the orbit is substantial, and contributes significantly more to seasonality than on the Earth, although Mars's obliquity (the angle of its spin axis to the orbital plane) still dominates the seasons. The alignment of obliquity and eccentricity due to precession is a much stronger effect than for the Earth, leading to "great" summers and winters on time scales of tens of thousands of years (the precessional period is 170,000 years). Since Mars has no oceans and a thin atmosphere, the thermal inertia is low, and Martian climate is easily perturbed by external influences, including solar variations. However, solar irradiance is now well measured by satellite and has been declining slightly over the last few years as it moves towards a solar minimum. So what is causing Martian climate change now? Mars has a relatively well studied climate, going back to measurements made by Viking, and continued with the current series of orbiters, such as the Mars Global Surveyor. Complementing the measurements, NASA has a Mars General Circulation Model (GCM) based at NASA Ames. (NB. There is a good "general reader" review of modeling the Martian atmosphere by Stephen R Lewis in Astronomy and Geophysics, volume 44 issue 4. pages 6-14.) Globally, the mean temperature of the Martian atmosphere is particularly sensitive to the strength and duration of hemispheric dust storms, (see for example here and here). Large scale dust storms change the atmospheric opacity and convection; as always when comparing mean temperatures, the altitude at which the measurement is made matters, but to the extent it is sensible to speak of a mean temperature for Mars, the evidence is for significant cooling from the 1970's, when Viking made measurements, compared to current temperatures. However, this is essentially due to large scale dust storms that were common back then, compared to a lower level of storminess now. The mean temperature on Mars, averaged over the Martian year can change by many degrees from year to year, depending on how active large scale dust storms are. In 2001, Malin et al published a short article in Science (subscription required) discussing MGS data showing a rapid shrinkage of the South Polar Cap. Recently, the MGS team had a press release discussing more recent data showing the trend had continued. MGS 2001 press release MGS 2005 press release. The shrinkage of the Martian South Polar Cap is almost certainly a regional climate change, and is not any indication of global warming trends in the Martian atmosphere. Colaprete et al in Nature 2005 (subscription required) showed, using the Mars GCM, that the south polar climate is unstable due to the peculiar topography near the pole, and the current configuration is on the instability border; we therefore expect to see rapid changes in ice cover as the regional climate transits between the unstable states. Thus inferring global warming from a 3 Martian year regional trend is unwarranted. The observed regional changes in south polar ice cover are almost certainly due to a regional climate transition, not a global phenomenon, and are demonstrably unrelated to external forcing. There is a slight irony in people rushing to claim that the glacier changes on Mars are a sure sign of global warming, while not being swayed by the much more persuasive analogous phenomena here on Earth... "Jones asked Galloway if he thought an invasion of Iran was on the horizon. Galloway was confident that massively opposed public opinion would stop an attack from taking place, unless a staged terror attack carried out by the military industrial complex and blamed on Iran was carried out."   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Thursday, February 01, 2007 - 02:10 am:    More like a mild case of persimmon wine poisoning, Grendel. "Jones asked Galloway if he thought an invasion of Iran was on the horizon. Galloway was confident that massively opposed public opinion would stop an attack from taking place, unless a staged terror attack carried out by the military industrial complex and blamed on Iran was carried out."   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Thursday, February 01, 2007 - 02:27 am:    Jen Jen thank you – you’re the sweetish lump in the sugar bowl.   Grendel Starlite Member Username: Grendel Posted on Thursday, February 01, 2007 - 02:31 am:    Jen didn't you know that making suppositions makes you seem intellectual and politically savy. "and surely some koan suggests neglect leads to perfection"   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Thursday, February 01, 2007 - 02:45 am:    No, I didn't, Grendel, so thanks for letting me in on your secret. "Savy"? "Jones asked Galloway if he thought an invasion of Iran was on the horizon. Galloway was confident that massively opposed public opinion would stop an attack from taking place, unless a staged terror attack carried out by the military industrial complex and blamed on Iran was carried out."   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Thursday, February 01, 2007 - 02:51 am:    Mikey Mikey, you're such a naughty boy. Not very nice to call Princess a lump. "Jones asked Galloway if he thought an invasion of Iran was on the horizon. Galloway was confident that massively opposed public opinion would stop an attack from taking place, unless a staged terror attack carried out by the military industrial complex and blamed on Iran was carried out."   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Thursday, February 01, 2007 - 03:31 am:    Princess being the sweetish lump in the sugar bowl is a compliment. You don’t like sweet compliments - neither did my X...   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Thursday, February 01, 2007 - 03:40 am:    I don't know about Mars,but "Is There a Ring of Debris Around Uranus?"   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Thursday, February 01, 2007 - 04:02 am:    Here is a couple that I think are not totally aware of global warming... http://www.thehumorarchives.com/joke/Cheesy_Friends   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Thursday, February 01, 2007 - 09:49 am:    Harper's letter dismisses Kyoto as 'socialist scheme' Last Updated: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 | 10:15 PM ET CBC News Prime Minister Stephen Harper once called the Kyoto accord a "socialist scheme" designed to suck money out of rich countries, according to a letter leaked Tuesday by the Liberals. The letter, posted on the federal Liberal party website, was apparently written by Harper in 2002, when he was leader of the now-defunct Canadian Alliance party. He was writing to party supporters, asking for money as he prepared to fight then-prime minister Jean Chrétien on the proposed Kyoto accord. "We're gearing up now for the biggest struggle our party has faced since you entrusted me with the leadership," Harper's letter says. "I'm talking about the 'battle of Kyoto' — our campaign to block the job-killing, economy-destroying Kyoto accord." The accord is an international environmental pact that sets targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Continue Article Canada officially ratified the accord Dec. 17, 2002, under Chrétien's Liberal government. Harper's Conservative government, which took power January 2006, has since been accused of ignoring the accord. Harper's letter goes on to outline why he's against the agreement. Accord based on 'contradictory' data: Harper He writes that it's based on "tentative and contradictory scientific evidence" and it focuses on carbon dioxide, which is "essential to life." He says Kyoto requires that Canada make significant cuts in emissions, while countries like Russia, India and China face less of a burden. Under Kyoto, Canada was required to reduce emissions by six per cent by 2012, while economies in transition, like Russia, were allowed to choose different base years. As developing nations, China and India were exempted from binding targets for the first round of reductions. "Kyoto is essentially a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations," Harper's letter reads. He said the accord would cripple the oil and gas industries, which are essential to Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia. He wrote in the letter that he would do everything he could to stop Chrétien from passing the Kyoto agreement. "We will do everything we can to stop him there, but he might get it passed with the help of the socialists in the NDP and the separatists in the BQ [Bloc Québécois]." The Prime Minister's Office refused to comment about the letter on the record. In recent weeks, Harper has spoken strongly about the environment, saying he will dramatically revamp his minority government's much-criticized clean air act. His comments come as public-opinion polls indicate the environment has become the number one issue among Canadians. Liberal MP Mark Holland told the Canadian Press on Tuesday that the leaked letter shows that Harper isn't actually committed to climate change. "Now, suddenly, because he has seen the polls and realized the political opportunism of going green, the prime minister has launched a new campaign — that of trying to convince Canadians that he actually cares about the environment," Holland said. "But no one is buying it." The Kyoto Protocol went into effect Feb. 16, 2005, with 141 countries signing on, including every major industrialized country, except the United States, Australia and Monaco.   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Thursday, February 01, 2007 - 11:22 am:    It’s Not Just Hot Air: This Tu B'Shevat, Fight Global Warming Winter has finally come to the East Coast. I must admit I did not mind the sunny January days that reached into the 70s. There are benefits to global warming if you, like me, prefer sun to snow. However, there are dangers as well. The recent decision by Great Britian’s Tony Blair to mobilize his nation around global warming (for much of England will otherwise literally disappear under water) is a sobering reality check. In Genesis, God gives Adam and Eve the job not just to “conquer” the world (i.e., to tame it for productive use) but to “care” for it (to be good stewards of its resources and species). God’s command is all about balance: balancing our needs and desires with our responsibility to the larger world and to the future. It is particularly appropriate to think about our stewardship of the Earth as we begin February with Tu B’Shevat, the New Year for Trees. Like all holidays, Tu B’Shevat has its own rituals, from planting trees in Israel through the Jewish National Fund to holding a Seder based on the traditions of the ancient kabbalists. Like all Jewish holidays, Tu B’Shevat also contains lessons that are designed to change our behavior, not just one day, but every day of the year. One such lesson is that God expects us to do all we can to be responsible stewards of the earth and the environment which sustains it. There is a lovely story about a sage named Honi who, as an old man, planted a tree that would probably not bear fruit in his lifetime. When he was asked why, he explained that just as his ancestors had planted trees for him, he was planting for his descendents. We have the same responsibility as Honi to prepare the earth for future generations. It is not too late to stem global warming. Here are ten New Year’s Resolutions for Tu B’Shevat that can help: 1) Buy recycled napkins to help save one million trees, according to Newsweek magazine. 2) Turn your thermostat down two degrees in winter and up two degrees in summer to save 2,000 lbs. of CO2 a year. 3) Replace a regular light bulb with a compact fluorescent bulb to help save 1,000 lbs of CO2 per bulb. 4) Turn off lights, monitors, and other electronics when you leave a room, even for a few minutes, to cut your energy bill by up to a third. (It worked for me!) 5) Walk more, bundle errands to be gas efficient, and buy fuel efficient cars. 6) Keep your car in tune and tires at the right pressure to save up to 4% on your gas mileage (that’s 20 pounds of carbon dioxide for every gallon saved). 7) Buy food with an eye to its impact on the environment: Where possible choose locally grown, fresh rather than frozen, and organic rather than regular produce. 8) Recycle, including mail inserts and envelopes without your address. Old cell phones, PDAs, and rechargeable batteries can be recycled for free by mail through the Sierra Club. 9) Learn more. See "An Inconvenient Truth," its web site http://www.climatecrisis.net, and check out the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life. 10) Post this list and use it throughout the year. -Rabbi Susan Grossman "Jones asked Galloway if he thought an invasion of Iran was on the horizon. Galloway was confident that massively opposed public opinion would stop an attack from taking place, unless a staged terror attack carried out by the military industrial complex and blamed on Iran was carried out."   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Friday, February 02, 2007 - 07:44 am:    Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study Ian Sample, science correspondent Friday February 2, 2007 The Guardian Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today. Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered. The UN report was written by international experts and is widely regarded as the most comprehensive review yet of climate change science. It will underpin international negotiations on new emissions targets to succeed the Kyoto agreement, the first phase of which expires in 2012. World governments were given a draft last year and invited to comment. The AEI has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees. The letters, sent to scientists in Britain, the US and elsewhere, attack the UN's panel as "resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work" and ask for essays that "thoughtfully explore the limitations of climate model outputs". Climate scientists described the move yesterday as an attempt to cast doubt over the "overwhelming scientific evidence" on global warming. "It's a desperate attempt by an organisation who wants to distort science for their own political aims," said David Viner of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. "The IPCC process is probably the most thorough and open review undertaken in any discipline. This undermines the confidence of the public in the scientific community and the ability of governments to take on sound scientific advice," he said. The letters were sent by Kenneth Green, a visiting scholar at AEI, who confirmed that the organisation had approached scientists, economists and policy analysts to write articles for an independent review that would highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the IPCC report. "Right now, the whole debate is polarised," he said. "One group says that anyone with any doubts whatsoever are deniers and the other group is saying that anyone who wants to take action is alarmist. We don't think that approach has a lot of utility for intelligent policy." One American scientist turned down the offer, citing fears that the report could easily be misused for political gain. "You wouldn't know if some of the other authors might say nothing's going to happen, that we should ignore it, or that it's not our fault," said Steve Schroeder, a professor at Texas A&M university. The contents of the IPCC report have been an open secret since the Bush administration posted its draft copy on the internet in April. It says there is a 90% chance that human activity is warming the planet, and that global average temperatures will rise by another 1.5 to 5.8C this century, depending on emissions. Lord Rees of Ludlow, the president of the Royal Society, Britain's most prestigious scientific institute, said: "The IPCC is the world's leading authority on climate change and its latest report will provide a comprehensive picture of the latest scientific understanding on the issue. It is expected to stress, more convincingly than ever before, that our planet is already warming due to human actions, and that 'business as usual' would lead to unacceptable risks, underscoring the urgent need for concerted international action to reduce the worst impacts of climate change. However, yet again, there will be a vocal minority with their own agendas who will try to suggest otherwise." Ben Stewart of Greenpeace said: "The AEI is more than just a thinktank, it functions as the Bush administration's intellectual Cosa Nostra. They are White House surrogates in the last throes of their campaign of climate change denial. They lost on the science; they lost on the moral case for action. All they've got left is a suitcase full of cash." On Monday, another Exxon-funded organisation based in Canada will launch a review in London which casts doubt on the IPCC report. Among its authors are Tad Murty, a former scientist who believes human activity makes no contribution to global warming. Confirmed VIPs attending include Nigel Lawson and David Bellamy, who believes there is no link between burning fossil fuels and global warming. "Jones asked Galloway if he thought an invasion of Iran was on the horizon. Galloway was confident that massively opposed public opinion would stop an attack from taking place, unless a staged terror attack carried out by the military industrial complex and blamed on Iran was carried out."   Njaeok Starlite Member Username: Njaeok Posted on Friday, February 02, 2007 - 08:32 am:    OH NO!! We can't have that! We can't have independent thoughtful critiques of the proclamations of the Divine Scientifical UN Pontifs. That would be pure blasphemy. Yeah Right---! Born with the gift of laughter, aware that the world is mad. -- Jimbo   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Friday, February 02, 2007 - 09:43 am:    "Humans blamed for climate change"....so,we need to eliminate more humans.Can we start in your corner of the world? The more people in a room,the more heat..the more heat....the more global warming...so don't let the door hit you in the butt....   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Friday, February 02, 2007 - 10:48 am:    Independent, thoughtful scientists and economists don't usually have to be bribed into offering critique. "Jones asked Galloway if he thought an invasion of Iran was on the horizon. Galloway was confident that massively opposed public opinion would stop an attack from taking place, unless a staged terror attack carried out by the military industrial complex and blamed on Iran was carried out."   Njaeok Starlite Member Username: Njaeok Posted on Friday, February 02, 2007 - 09:04 pm:    Yeah! Right on Jen. Now isn't that the dumbest thing you ever heard of? Offering a PHd a measly thousand dollars as a bribe. One might suspect that it was an honest offer for skilled services. Naaa-- no way your beloved enemy would ever do anything honest. Born with the gift of laughter, aware that the world is mad. -- Jimbo   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Saturday, February 03, 2007 - 03:00 am:    Actually, Jimbo, according to documents posted on their own sites, Exxon has been bribing scientists since 1998 to distort the facts on global warming. They've spent millions on the project already so this last ditch effort is a mere drop in the bucket of futility, but one we'll all be paying for at the pump. (Message edited by jennifer03801 on February 03, 2007) "Jones asked Galloway if he thought an invasion of Iran was on the horizon. Galloway was confident that massively opposed public opinion would stop an attack from taking place, unless a staged terror attack carried out by the military industrial complex and blamed on Iran was carried out."   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Saturday, February 03, 2007 - 07:19 am:    Resisting Global Warming Panic By J.R. Dunn It may well turn out that George W. Bush's greatest service to the country won't involve terrorism or Iraq at all, but his steadfast refusal to be buffaloed into joining the panicky consensus on global warming. Rumor had it that Bush intended to embrace the warming thesis at last in his State of the Union address. Instead Greens nationwide went into depressed tailspins as he called for an attack on the problem by means of technical advances, a curve ball very much in the old Bush mode, of a type that we've seen too little of recently. Bush is acting in defiance of much of the civilized world, led by a former vice-president and including the media, the entertainment community, the Democrats, most of the policy elite, that peculiar and never-before-encountered group known as "mainstream scientists", and now even corporations, eager to clamber aboard the Kyoto wagon while there's still room. As James Lewis recently put it on these pages, global warming is most likely a crock. Some of us are old enough to remember similar hysterics over air pollution, overpopulation, and universal famine, none of which ever came to pass. The science behind warming is so full of lacunae, speculation, and outright fraud (e.g., the famed "hockey stick chart" purporting to show temperature levels over the past millennium while conveniently dropping both the medieval warm period and the Little Ice Age) to be in any way convincing. One curious element involves certain facts that, on first consideration, would appear to be crucial but never seem to come up in debate. I have spent several years trying to track down the actual values of two numbers - the annual amount of carbon dioxide emitted by all human activities, and the amount of carbon dioxide already present in the atmosphere. There are as many answers as there are sources, the first ranging from 3 billion to 28 billion tons, the second from 750 billion tons to 2.97 x 1012 tons, a number so large that there's no common English word for it. Variations of this size - up to three orders of magnitude - suggest a serious lack of basic knowledge. The fact that it never comes up suggests that scientists are well aware of this. (It's doubtful we'll see the question addressed in this week's IPCC report either.) So it's something of a relief to turn to history. Despite the insistence of Al Gore and friends, this is far from the first time the Earth has ever passed through a climatic warming period. In fact, one occurred relatively recently, the medieval warm period, more commonly known as the Little Climatic Optimum (LCO), a period stretching roughly from the 10th to the 13th centuries, in which the average temperature was anything from 1 to 3 degrees centigrade higher than it is today. Several years ago, I covered the LCO in an article detailing the climatic history of the last millennium. But it's worthwhile to cover the highlights once more, to help put the contemporary panic into perspective. * How warm was it during the LCO? Areas in the Midlands and Scotland that cannot grow crops today were regularly farmed. England was known for its wine exports. * The average height of Britons around A.D. 1000 was close to six feet, thanks to good nutrition. The small stature of the British lower classes (and the Irish) later in the millennium is an artifact of lower temperatures. People of the 20th century were the first Europeans in centuries to grow to their "true" stature - and most had to grow up in the USA to do it. * In fact, famine - and its partner, plague -- appears to have taken a hike for several centuries. We have records of only a handful of famines during the LCO, and few mass outbreaks of disease. The bubonic plague itself appears to have retreated to its heartland of Central Asia. * The LCO was the first age of transatlantic exploration. When not slaughtering their neighbors, the Vikings were charting new lands across the North Atlantic, one of the stormiest seas on earth (only the Southern Ocean - the Roaring 40s - is worse). If you tried the same thing today, traveling their routes in open boats of the size they used, you would drown. They discovered Iceland, and Greenland, and a new world even beyond, where they found grape vines, the same as in England. * The Agricultural Revolution is not widely known except among historians. Mild temperatures eased land clearing and lengthened growing seasons. More certain harvests encouraged experimentation among farmers involving field rotation, novel implements, and new crops such as legumes. While the thought of peas and beans may not thrill the foodies among us, they expanded an almost unbelievably bland ancient diet as well as providing new sources of nutrition. The result was a near-tripling of European population from 27 million at the end of the 7th century to 70 million in 1300. * The First Industrial Revolution is not widely known even among historians. Opening the northern German plains allowed access to easily mined iron deposits in the Ruhr and the Saarland. As a result smithies and mills became common sights throughout Europe. Then came the basic inventions without which nothing more complex can be made - the compound crank, the connecting rod, the flywheel, followed by the turbine, the compass, the mechanical clock, and eyeglasses. Our entire technical civilization, all the way down to Al Gore's hydrogenmobile, has its roots in the LCO. But in the late 13th century, it all came to an end. The climate closed down. Rains ruined crops and washed away entire seacoast towns. Far to the north, the great colonies of Iceland and Greenland faltered and began to fade away. Famine returned to Europe, and with it the plague, in one of the greatest mass deaths ever witnessed by humanity. The bright centuries were replaced by the dance of death and a dank and morbid religiosity. The focus of culture shifted to the warm Mediterranean. It remained cold, within certain broad limits, for six hundred years. The chill only lifted in the 1850s, when our current warming actually began. We look back to a world that was a far more pleasant place at the turn of the last millennium, with a milder climate, plentiful food, a healthy populace. A picture, needless to say, at some variance with the Greens' prediction of coming universal disaster. It also undermines one of one of the basic environmentalist tenets - that nature is in delicate balance that can destroyed by a hard look from any given capitalist, and that any such change leads inevitably to catastrophe. The LCO suggests that a warmer world may well be more desirable than the one we have now. To go a step further, my research implied that the planet is in fact meant to be somewhat warmer than it is today, that the life-forms we see around us are in fact adapted to a warmer climate. The earth is, after all, stuck within a three-million-year glacial epoch whose origin and cause remain a mystery. (We're now in a brief "interglacial" - a warming period! - that began only 12,000 years ago and could end tomorrow.) I brought this up with a friend, a noted NASA scientist -- who, due to the tenor of the times, shall remain nameless - and he responded, ‘Of course - there's more life at the equator than at the poles." (This, by the way, is a perfect example of how a capable scientific mind operates, an immediate, undistracted focusing on the most critical elements. It doesn't seem to work that way with the Greens' "mainstream scientists".) If warming were currently the case, we'd more than likely be seeing an LCO situation unfolding - meliorating weather, fewer storms, and moderating temperatures. But instead we're enduring massive blizzards across the Midwest, single-degree temperatures in Central Park, cold currents embracing Australia (bringing with them a plague of great white sharks), and killer storms across Europe. Not at all what we'd expect from either the medieval or the environmental scenario. Whatever is happening to the climate, it appears that the scientists, mainstream and otherwise, have not yet put their finger on it. Which is why we need to keep our options open, harboring our resources rather than blowing them on some wild-eyed Gore plan that may end up doing the exact opposite of what is required. And why GWB deserves a lot more credit than he's ever likely to get. ________________________________________________________________________________ ______ Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. Ambrose Bierce   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Saturday, February 03, 2007 - 07:42 am:    Well there you go. According to Dunn not only is there no global warming, there's no air pollution, overpopulation or famine. Another glass of Kool-Aid, Mikey Mikey?   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Saturday, February 03, 2007 - 08:00 am:    Jen Jen, your picture of the polar bear reminded me of this. RUSH: I don't know if you've checked the Drudge Report page yet today, but it's gotten to the point it's even beyond laughable, this global warming business. You've got to see this. There is a picture of two polar bears on some ice out in the ocean, which is something that happens all the time. Polar bears wander all over their environment. They can swim, and they're out there, and they're just having a good time. The deception, the deceit, the misleading tendencies of this. When you look at the headline, and the accompanying story ought to inform everybody of the utter desperation and phoniness of the entire global warming effort. The headline says: “Global Warming Sees Polar Bears Stranded on Melting Ice -- They cling precariously to the top of what is left of the ice floe, their fragile grip the perfect symbol of the tragedy of global warming. Captured on film by Canadian environmentalists, the pair of polar bears look stranded on chunks of broken ice. Although the magnificent creatures are well adapted to the water, and can swim scores of miles to solid land, the distance is getting ever greater as the Arctic ice diminishes. ‘Swimming 100 miles is not a big deal for a polar bear, especially a fat one,’ said Dr. Ian Stirling of the Canadian Wildlife Service. ‘They just kind of float along and kick. But as the ice gets farther out from shore because of warming, it’s a longer swim that costs more energy and makes them more vulnerable.’” Now, I'm just telling you that this picture is a total misrepresentation of the current state of circumstances for polar bears. It's as though they wandered out on this ice floe, and it broke off, and it's fading off now toward the equator and the polar bears cannot do anything about it and they're going to melt and they're going to die. Or, if they do jump off they may have to swim hundreds of miles and expend lots of energy because ice is all melting around them. Of course, this picture has all the ingredients of the fraud and the deception. We just went through what we went through with Barbaro. Now we've got polar bears, stranded polar bears, animals, essence of innocence, so cute, so lonely, so frightened, so panicked, bellowing out for hope from the nearest human. Meanwhile, the Canadian film crew is just content to let them float off to their deaths for the sake of grabbing the photo to mislead you and your kids, who will no doubt be shown this by a bunch of worthless teachers who are promoting a political agenda. This whole thing is totally misleading. They're not even stranded on an ice floe that's broken apart. They're just out there just playing around. They're just out there. You know, just like your cat goes to its litter box. When's the last time your cat got stranded in its litter box? Just like your pit bull attacks and kills the neighbor's baby horse, whatever, I mean these things happen. It’s called nature. The spotted owl, remember that? I'm going to go through all these scare tactics that the environmentalists have tried since the sixties to prove this to you today. What did I just say before I interrupted myself? Remember the what? You guys don't even remember, either. You're not even paying attention. No, not the pit bulls killing baby horses, documented to have happened in Pittsburgh. ________________________________________________________________________________ _____ Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage. Ambrose Bierce   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Saturday, February 03, 2007 - 08:13 am:    Can't you find even one credible source to support your ridiculous argument?   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Saturday, February 03, 2007 - 10:27 am:    Is this the report Rush was talking about? Global Warming to Continue for Centuries Feb 2, 7:04 PM (ET) By SETH BORENSTEIN PARIS (AP) - Global warming is so severe that it will "continue for centuries," leading to a far different planet in 100 years, warned a grim landmark report from the world's leading climate scientists and government officials. Yet, many of the experts are hopeful that nations will now take action to avoid the worst scenarios. They tried to warn of dire risks without scaring people so much they'd do nothing - inaction that would lead to the worst possible scenarios. "It's not too late," said Australian scientist Nathaniel Bindoff, a co-author of the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report issued Friday. The worst can be prevented by acting quickly to curb greenhouse gas emissions, he said. The worst could mean more than 1 million dead and hundreds of billions of dollars in costs by 2100, said Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, one of many study co-authors. He said that adapting will mean living with more extreme weather such as severe droughts, more hurricanes and wildfires. "It's later than we think," said panel co-chair Susan Solomon, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist who helped push through the document's strong language. Solomon, who remains optimistic about the future, said it's close to too late to alter the future for her children - but maybe it's not too late for her grandchildren. The report was the first of four to be released this year by the panel, which was created by the United Nations in 1988. It found: _Global warming is "very likely" caused by man, meaning more than 90 percent certain. That's the strongest expression of certainty to date from the panel. _If nothing is done to change current emissions patterns of greenhouse gases, global temperature could increase as much as 11 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. _But if the world does get greenhouse gas emissions under control - something scientists say they hope can be done - the best estimate is about 3 degrees Fahrenheit. _Sea levels are projected to rise 7 to 23 inches by the end of the century. Add another 4 to 8 inches if recent, surprising melting of polar ice sheets continues. Sea level rise could get worse after that. By 2100, if nothing is done to curb emissions, the melting of Greenland's ice sheet would be inevitable and the world's seas would eventually rise by more than 20 feet, Bindoff said. That amount of sea rise would take centuries, said Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in Canada, but "if you're in Florida or Louisiana, or much of western Europe or southeast Asia or Bangladesh ... or Manhattan ... you don't want that," he said. The report spurred bleak reactions from world leaders. "We are on the historic threshold of the irreversible," warned French President Jacques Chirac, who called for an economic and political "revolution" to save the planet. "While climate changes run like a rabbit, world politics move like a snail: Either we accelerate or we risk a disaster," said Italy's environment minister, Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio. And South Africa's Environmental Affairs Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said failure to act would be "indefensible." In Washington, Bush administration officials praised the report but said they still oppose mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. The problem can be addressed by better technology that will cut emissions, promote energy conservation, and hasten development of non-fossil fuels, said Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. About three-fourths of Americans say they expect global warming will get worse, according to a recent AP-AOL News poll. However, other recent polls have found they don't consider it a top priority for the U.S. government. But doing nothing about global warming could mean up to a 10-degree Fahrenheit temperature rise by the end of the century in the United States, said report co-author Jonathan Overpeck at the University of Arizona. Elsewhere, the projected effects of global warming would vary on different parts of the globe. Temperatures would spike higher near the poles, according to the report. Within 22 years - whether greenhouse gases are controlled or not - most of the Northern Hemisphere will see more high temperature extremes, the report showed. Places like Northern Africa will get even less rainfall. This climate change "is just not something you can stop," said Trenberth. "We're just going to have to live with it. If you were to come up back in 100 years time, we'll have a different climate." People experience the harshest effects of global warming through extreme weather - heat waves, droughts, floods, and hurricanes - said study co-author Philip Jones of Britain's University of East Anglia. Those have increased significantly in the past decade and will get even worse in the future, he said. Given all the dire predictions, why are scientists nearly all optimistic? They think their message is finally getting through to the people in charge. United Nations environmental leaders are talking about a global summit on climate change for world leaders and they hope President Bush will attend. "The signal that we received from the science is crystal clear," said Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a multi-national body that tries to change policy to fight global warming. "That makes it imperative that the political response that comes from this crystal-clear science is as crystal-clear as well. "I sense a growing sense of urgency to come to grips with the issue," de Boer said. "I think the major challenge is to further the negotiating agenda in a way that makes major players feel safe to step forwardly on this issue." The major player that has at times been absent is the United States, the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. "The world cannot solve the climate change problem without the United States," Achim Steiner, who heads the UN Environment Program, told The Associated Press. "The world is looking to the Bush administration and to the United States and how it has to be a key part" of solving global warming, he said. De Boer was optimistic, there too. In an interview, he said that despite U.S. greenhouse gas emissions increasing 16 percent since 1990, change is afoot. Citing congressional interest and carbon dioxide emission limits requested by top industry CEOs, de Boer said: "I see a very important momentum building throughout the country."   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Saturday, February 03, 2007 - 07:41 pm:    Wind Chill Advisory in Chicago 25 to 30 below zero. Great weather for polar bears Jen Jen   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Saturday, February 03, 2007 - 08:16 pm:      Tess Starlite Administrator Username: Tess Posted on Saturday, February 03, 2007 - 08:19 pm:    Mike, wind chill factor does not effect polar bears. It just tells us how much colder the wind makes unprotected HUMAN skin feel.   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Sunday, February 04, 2007 - 09:18 pm:    I never lied,I never cheated...just give me the chance....   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Monday, February 05, 2007 - 02:54 pm:    Global warming is setting new records A record low temperature of 54 degrees was set at Kahului today. This ties the old record of 54 set in 1993. ________________________________________________________________________________ ___ Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills. Ambrose Bierce   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Monday, February 05, 2007 - 04:22 pm:    3099   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Monday, February 05, 2007 - 07:34 pm:    Jen Jen, love the picture. Rush-By the way, do you remember last week Drudge had on his home page a picture of two polar bears? Actually, that picture goes back to 2004. I did a little research. I have found something. That picture has been totally misrepresented. It was of two polar bears on what looks like a melting glacier, a little ice floe that has split away, and they are supposedly stranded. That picture was taken back in 2004, and the caption for the original picture talks about how these polar bears, a mother and her cub, are playing around on an ice sculpture created by waves! An ice sculpture created by waves, a phenomenon that occurs when you have real cold water and cold air in the north like at the Arctic Circle. Now, nobody can tell me that waves are part of global warming, because waves have been in the ocean ever since there's been the ocean. So global warming had no impact whatsoever on where those polar bears were! They chose to be there. They swam out there, swam up on the ice floe. They can swim hundreds of miles, on top of the water, the surface, underneath. The whole thing was a fraud, and it is a great little microcosm for the entire global warming escapade. I got a whole global warming stack that we'll get to today again -- and, folks, again we've got record cold weather this week, and we don't have any broadcast news stories questioning global warming! All summer long, or in late fall, we can get really hot temperatures and they'll go banshee over the "fact" that there's global warming. Now, there's this cold front today that's going to be all week, 35 wind chill in Chicago last night, and no news about global warming whatsoever maybe being questionable. ________________________________________________________________________________ _______ I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was that all saloonkeepers are Democrats. Ambrose Bierce   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Monday, February 05, 2007 - 07:47 pm:    awwwwwww shucks Mike...I don't know about you,but it's 70 degrees out here in California and I may have to wear a windbreaker sometime tonight...   Tess Starlite Administrator Username: Tess Posted on Monday, February 05, 2007 - 08:04 pm:    Mike, I am not going to speak for Jen and her pictures, but you really need to get your science from some place other than the drudge report. I studied climatology in graduate school. The changing climate of this planet is not a political issue. Any who try to make it such, truly must have ulterior motives. It is very evident that you do not understand weather, let alone climate from your comments. One long over due cold streak is not going to change things. And again, wind chill impacts NOTHING except human beings. The only people going banshee are the ones who don't want global warming to be true for political reasons. The rest of us don't want it to be true either, but we are ready to do what ever we need to prevent this. I would suggest you go to college and do some real reading, instead of reading the drudge report. I would also suggest you post some poetry, because only people who post poetry are allowed to use the political discussion board. And this time branch out. Make it a poem about something other than how much you hate liberals. And Bubby, does this mean you now beleive in global warming? What do you call a LOM in the ice box? Make sure you wear your ear muffs if you go out. Tess   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Monday, February 05, 2007 - 09:01 pm:    Tessie Poo,It's I before E,except after C.If I told you once,I tolt ya a hunnert tymes...I not only believe in Global Warming,I believe(i before e)in Global Cooling also.Ooooh yeah,and I believe in Love,and dogs.   Njaeok Starlite Member Username: Njaeok Posted on Monday, February 05, 2007 - 09:47 pm:    (State College, PA) - The bitterly cold temperatures and heavy lake-effect snow are combining to create chaotic conditions across the eastern half of the nation. An Alberta Clipper on Tuesday will add to the weather mess, bringing snow to areas from the upper Plains to the mid-Atlantic states. Pedestrians in Times Square are bundled up against the frigid cold, Sunday, Feb. 4, 2007 in New York City. (AP Photo/Gary He) Rail and air travel has been curtailed, highway travel around the Great Lakes is treacherous, schools have been closed, water mains have burst and people and animals run the risk of exposure that could lead to frostbite or hypothermia. The coldest temperatures not only this winter but in several years has enveloped a significant part of the country. High temperatures today along the East Coast ran as much as 30° below normal for the first week of February. Strong northwest winds produced by high pressure over the northern Plains and a storm system over Eastern Canada continued to create RealFeel® temperatures that feel much colder than the actual temperatures. The bitterly cold temperatures this week could lead to frostbite after brief exposure and hypothermia from prolonged exposure to the cold air and strong winds. Pets can suffer the same effects of humans when exposed to the cold. Dogs can injure the pads on their paws while walking on the frozen ground and cats will climb onto a warm car engine to stay warm if they are left outside. City Mon. L/RF Tues. H/RF Tues. L/RF Wed. H/RF Wed. L/RF City Mon. L/RF Tues. H/RF Tues. L/RF Wed. H/RF Wed. L/RF Chicago -2/-10 10/2 4/-20 18/7 4/-10 Pittsburgh -1/-14 14/3 11/-9 20/3 10/-3 Washington D.C. 11/0 28/19 19/0 32/21 21/15 Boston 10/-9 22/4 14/-7 27/9 15/-7 Philadelphia 9/-8 22/5 14/-4 27/10 14/-3 New York City 8/-6 22/12 12/-9 26/6 16/2 Chicago -2/-10 10/2 4/-20 18/7 4/-10 Columbus 1/-5 16/10 12/-9 23/15 10/-1 Cincinnati 3/3 26/24 13/-3 26/20 10/1 Detroit 0/-17 12/-5 6/-14 19/-1 7/-11 Born with the gift of laughter, aware that the world is mad. -- Jimbo   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Monday, February 05, 2007 - 09:59 pm:    Jimbo,it's 37 degrees in Little Rock...come on out here...its 67 degrees at 8:58 PST...come on out and warm your toasties.   Njaeok Starlite Member Username: Njaeok Posted on Monday, February 05, 2007 - 10:12 pm:    I'm tempted Bubs. It's seventeen degrees here. Sea levels during several previous interglacials were about 3 to as much as 20 meters higher than current sea level. The evidence comes from two different but complementary types of studies. One line of evidence is provided by old shoreline features (fig. 2). Wave-cut terraces and beach deposits from regions as separate as the Caribbean and the North Slope of Alaska suggest higher sea levels during past interglacial times. A second line of evidence comes from sediments cored from below the existing Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. The fossils and chemical signals in the sediment cores indicate that both major ice sheets were greatly reduced from their current size or even completely melted one or more times in the recent geologic past. The precise timing and details of past sea-level history are still being debated, but there is clear evidence for past sea levels significantly higher than current sea level. I wonder if any government was handing out grants to measure the CO2 in the air back then. Born with the gift of laughter, aware that the world is mad. -- Jimbo   Morning_song Starlite Member Username: Morning_song Posted on Monday, February 05, 2007 - 10:13 pm:    Yeah but....help me out here....I may be confuzticated. Isn't this precisely what they predicted would happen with global warming? That there would be wild temperature swings and changes??? Tess....help me out here.... Where IS that dang Tess when I need her???? (sigh)   Njaeok Starlite Member Username: Njaeok Posted on Monday, February 05, 2007 - 10:36 pm:    [edit] The sedimentary record For generations, geologists have been trying to explain the obvious cyclicity of sedimentary deposits observed everywhere we look. The prevailing theories hold that this cyclicity primarily represents the response of depositional processes to the rise and fall of sea level. In the rock record, geologists see times when sea level was astoundingly low alternating with times when sea level was much higher than today, and these anomalies often appear worldwide. For instance, during the depths of the last ice age 18,000 years ago when hundreds of thousands of cubic miles of ice were stacked up on the continents as glaciers, sea level was 390 feet (120 m) lower, locations that today support coral reefs were left high and dry, and coastlines were miles farther basinward from the present-day coastline. It was during this time of very low sea level that there was a dry land connection between Asia and Alaska over which humans are believed to have migrated to North America (see Bering Land Bridge). However, for the past 6,000 years (long before mankind started keeping written records), the world's sea level has been gradually approaching the level we see today. During the previous interglacial about 120,000 years ago, sea level was for a short time about 6 m higher than today, as evidenced by wave-cut notches along cliffs in the Bahamas. There are also Pleistocene coral reefs left stranded about 3 meters above today's sea level along the southwestern coastline of West Caicos Island in the West Indies. These once-submerged reefs and nearby paleo-beach deposits are silent testimony that sea level spent enough time at that higher level to allow the reefs to grow (exactly where this extra sea water came from—Antarctica or Greenland—has not yet been determined). Similar evidence of geologically recent sea level positions is abundant around the world. No one denies that global warming is happening and has been happening for thousands of years ever since the last ice age. Thats why the mile thick sheets of ice no longer cover NY,Penn, NE, and so on. It is the United Nations attempt to make a political lever out of it to gain enough political power to transfere wealth from the free nations to the socialist nations with nonsense like the KOOKIE protocols that sensible non socialists object to. Born with the gift of laughter, aware that the world is mad. -- Jimbo   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Monday, February 05, 2007 - 11:13 pm:    and another opinion.. Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide Global Warming: The Cold, Hard Facts? By Timothy Ball Monday, February 5, 2007 Global Warming, as we think we know it, doesn’t exist. And I am not the only one trying to make people open up their eyes and see the truth. But few listen, despite the fact that I was the first Canadian Ph.D. in Climatology and I have an extensive background in climatology, especially the reconstruction of past climates and the impact of climate change on human history and the human condition.“Few listen, even though I have a Ph.D, (Doctor of Science) from the University of London, England and was a climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg.” . For some reason (actually for many), the World is not listening. Here is why. What would happen if tomorrow we were told that, after all, the Earth is flat? It would probably be the most important piece of news in the media and would generate a lot of debate. So why is it that when scientists who have studied the Global Warming phenomenon for years say that humans are not the cause nobody listens? Why does no one acknowledge that the Emperor has no clothes on? Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification. For example, Environment Canada brags about spending $3.7 billion in the last five years dealing with climate change almost all on propaganda trying to defend an indefensible scientific position while at the same time closing weather stations and failing to meet legislated pollution targets. No sensible person seeks conflict, especially with governments, but if we don’t pursue the truth, we are lost as individuals and as a society. That is why I insist on saying that there is no evidence that we are, or could ever cause global climate change. And, recently, Yuri A. Izrael, Vice President of the United Nations sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed this statement. So how has the world come to believe that something is wrong? Maybe for the same reason we believed, 30 years ago, that global cooling was the biggest threat: a matter of faith. “It is a cold fact: the Global Cooling presents humankind with the most important social, political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for ten thousand years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate importance; the survival of ourselves, our children, our species,” wrote Lowell Ponte in 1976. I was as opposed to the threats of impending doom global cooling engendered as I am to the threats made about Global Warming. Let me stress I am not denying the phenomenon has occurred. The world has warmed since 1680, the nadir of a cool period called the Little Ice Age (LIA) that has generally continued to the present. These climate changes are well within natural variability and explained quite easily by changes in the sun. But there is nothing unusual going on. Since I obtained my doctorate in climatology from the University of London, Queen Mary College, England my career has spanned two climate cycles. Temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980 and in the early 1970’s global cooling became the consensus. This proves that consensus is not a scientific fact. By the 1990’s temperatures appeared to have reversed and Global Warming became the consensus. It appears I’ll witness another cycle before retiring, as the major mechanisms and the global temperature trends now indicate a cooling. No doubt passive acceptance yields less stress, fewer personal attacks and makes career progress easier. What I have experienced in my personal life during the last years makes me understand why most people choose not to speak out; job security and fear of reprisals. Even in University, where free speech and challenge to prevailing wisdoms are supposedly encouraged, academics remain silent. I once received a three page letter that my lawyer defined as libellous, from an academic colleague, saying I had no right to say what I was saying, especially in public lectures. Sadly, my experience is that universities are the most dogmatic and oppressive places in our society. This becomes progressively worse as they receive more and more funding from governments that demand a particular viewpoint. In another instance, I was accused by Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki of being paid by oil companies. That is a lie. Apparently he thinks if the fossil fuel companies pay you have an agenda. So if Greenpeace, Sierra Club or governments pay there is no agenda and only truth and enlightenment? Personal attacks are difficult and shouldn’t occur in a debate in a civilized society. I can only consider them from what they imply. They usually indicate a person or group is losing the debate. In this case, they also indicate how political the entire Global Warming debate has become. Both underline the lack of or even contradictory nature of the evidence. I am not alone in this journey against the prevalent myth. Several well-known names have also raised their voices. Michael Crichton, the scientist, writer and filmmaker is one of them. In his latest book, “State of Fear” he takes time to explain, often in surprising detail, the flawed science behind Global Warming and other imagined environmental crises. Another cry in the wildenerness is Richard Lindzen’s. He is an atmospheric physicist and a professor of meteorology at MIT, renowned for his research in dynamic meteorology - especially atmospheric waves. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has held positions at the University of Chicago, Harvard University and MIT. Linzen frequently speaks out against the notion that significant Global Warming is caused by humans. Yet nobody seems to listen. I think it may be because most people don’t understand the scientific method which Thomas Kuhn so skilfully and briefly set out in his book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” A scientist makes certain assumptions and then produces a theory which is only as valid as the assumptions. The theory of Global Warming assumes that CO2 is an atmospheric greenhouse gas and as it increases temperatures rise. It was then theorized that since humans were producing more CO2 than before, the temperature would inevitably rise. The theory was accepted before testing had started, and effectively became a law. As Lindzen said many years ago: “the consensus was reached before the research had even begun.” Now, any scientist who dares to question the prevailing wisdom is marginalized and called a sceptic, when in fact they are simply being good scientists. This has reached frightening levels with these scientists now being called climate change denier with all the holocaust connotations of that word. The normal scientific method is effectively being thwarted. Meanwhile, politicians are being listened to, even though most of them have no knowledge or understanding of science, especially the science of climate and climate change. Hence, they are in no position to question a policy on climate change when it threatens the entire planet. Moreover, using fear and creating hysteria makes it very difficult to make calm rational decisions about issues needing attention. Until you have challenged the prevailing wisdom you have no idea how nasty people can be. Until you have re-examined any issue in an attempt to find out all the information, you cannot know how much misinformation exists in the supposed age of information. I was greatly influenced several years ago by Aaron Wildavsky’s book “Yes, but is it true?” The author taught political science at a New York University and realized how science was being influenced by and apparently misused by politics. He gave his graduate students an assignment to pursue the science behind a policy generated by a highly publicised environmental concern. To his and their surprise they found there was little scientific evidence, consensus and justification for the policy. You only realize the extent to which Wildavsky’s findings occur when you ask the question he posed. Wildavsky’s students did it in the safety of academia and with the excuse that it was an assignment. I have learned it is a difficult question to ask in the real world, however I firmly believe it is the most important question to ask if we are to advance in the right direction. Dr. Tim Ball, Chairman of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project (www.nrsp.com), is a Victoria-based environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. He can be reached at letters@canadafreepress.com   Tess Starlite Administrator Username: Tess Posted on Tuesday, February 06, 2007 - 07:37 pm:    Jeri, indeed this is what is predicted. You are on the right page, honey. As for Jimbo, at least he understands that something is a brewing! I will give him the option to argue what is causing what. I may not agree with him, but I will give him the option to debate based on science and not politics. All I can say is that I hope that if global warming really kicks in, Bubby doesn't go trotting around the site in a Speedo! If that happens, I will personally pay for more air conditioning in this part of the forum. Thank you all for your support.   Caprichos Starlite Member Username: Caprichos Posted on Tuesday, February 06, 2007 - 07:47 pm:    lol Tess @ Bubby in Speedos No doubt, Global warming is caused by human contribution. "When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite." -Sir William Blake   Caprichos Starlite Member Username: Caprichos Posted on Tuesday, February 06, 2007 - 07:49 pm:    lol. Whoa...I'll say it again...'right' this time. No doubt, Global warming is NOT caused by human contribution. Whewww. *wink* "When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite." -Sir William Blake   Morning_song Starlite Member Username: Morning_song Posted on Tuesday, February 06, 2007 - 07:49 pm:    SEE??? I TOLD YOU THERE WAS NO SUCH THING AS GLOBAL WARMING!!!! (rolling all over the floor laughing and laughing)   Caprichos Starlite Member Username: Caprichos Posted on Tuesday, February 06, 2007 - 08:00 pm:    Let's see...there's Bubby...Mikey...and Jimbo! "When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite." -Sir William Blake   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Tuesday, February 06, 2007 - 08:52 pm:    Well....they often call me Speedo,but my real name is Mr.Earl....LMAO   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Tuesday, February 06, 2007 - 08:52 pm:    And often is a word I seldom use....   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Tuesday, February 06, 2007 - 09:01 pm:    Wait a minute Caprichos -the one in the middle looks like he smelling something under his arm pit – that can’t be Mikey –   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Tuesday, February 06, 2007 - 09:36 pm:    ah tink dat cud b Jimbo...he allus smellin'....lol   Caprichos Starlite Member Username: Caprichos Posted on Tuesday, February 06, 2007 - 09:48 pm:    Y'all are absolute studs no doubt! I reckon Jimbo be the one in the middle. ...meaning I only took your word for it, Mikey. Bubz, now I hafta remember calling ya Sir Bubby Speedo Earl. *wink* "When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite." -Sir William Blake   Caprichos Starlite Member Username: Caprichos Posted on Tuesday, February 06, 2007 - 09:51 pm:    dag-nab-it! excuse me. I'm sick and I got a little miss-com-bob-you-lated...it was Bubz who said it was Jimbo in the middle bcuz he allus smellin'...lol...it was Mikey who made it plumly plain it not be he in the middul. lol. "When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite." -Sir William Blake   Njaeok Starlite Member Username: Njaeok Posted on Tuesday, February 06, 2007 - 10:47 pm:    Ats me inna middle en I ain't smellen. Ima tryna fine Kenny da crotch kricket. He dont like cold. Born with the gift of laughter, aware that the world is mad. -- Jimbo   Caprichos Starlite Member Username: Caprichos Posted on Tuesday, February 06, 2007 - 10:59 pm:    Um, well-a, have a mighty fine time a-lookin' for Kenny da crotch kricket. I reckon yu'll find him shore enuff an' ifin' ya dun't, well, I reckon Mikey and Bubby Speedo Earl will be of mighty good use to ya. *wink* "When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite." -Sir William Blake   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Friday, February 09, 2007 - 11:48 am:    I'm guessing maybe it's too late to hop aboard the Exxon Bribary Train? By KRISTEN HAYS Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle Exxon Mobil has no more doubts on warming Big Oil behemoth Exxon Mobil Corp. has dropped any pretense of questioning whether global warming is real. Now the company is seeking to position itself as an active player in efforts to lower greenhouse gases. "The appropriate debate isn't on whether climate is changing, but rather should be on what we should be doing about it," Kenneth Cohen, Exxon's vice president of public affairs, told reporters on a conference call Thursday. The call came less than a week after an international panel of hundreds of scientists said new research showed global warming was "unequivocal" and that human activity was primarily responsible for the most significant factor in temperature change — greenhouse gases. "Climate is changing. It's a serious issue. The evidence is there," Cohen said on the call, which was arranged in part to allow Exxon to state its position on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report. When pressed, Cohen said "there is no question that human activity is the source of carbon dioxide emissions," and emphasized that Exxon is working with various policy groups and universities to find ways to produce energy while lowering greenhouse gases. > "Do we actually value religious diversity, or have we determined, because of our history, to endorse a particular religious tradition to the exclusion of others?"   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Sunday, February 11, 2007 - 01:31 pm:    February 11, 2007 An experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist, says the orthodoxy must be challenged When politicians and journalists declare that the science of global warming is settled, they show a regrettable ignorance about how science works. We were treated to another dose of it recently when the experts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued the Summary for Policymakers that puts the political spin on an unfinished scientific dossier on climate change due for publication in a few months’ time. They declared that most of the rise in temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to man-made greenhouse gases. The small print explains “very likely” as meaning that the experts who made the judgment felt 90% sure about it. Older readers may recall a press conference at Harwell in 1958 when Sir John Cockcroft, Britain’s top nuclear physicist, said he was 90% certain that his lads had achieved controlled nuclear fusion. It turned out that he was wrong. More positively, a 10% uncertainty in any theory is a wide open breach for any latterday Galileo or Einstein to storm through with a better idea. That is how science really works. Twenty years ago, climate research became politicised in favour of one particular hypothesis, which redefined the subject as the study of the effect of greenhouse gases. As a result, the rebellious spirits essential for innovative and trustworthy science are greeted with impediments to their research careers. And while the media usually find mavericks at least entertaining, in this case they often imagine that anyone who doubts the hypothesis of man-made global warming must be in the pay of the oil companies. As a result, some key discoveries in climate research go almost unreported. Enthusiasm for the global-warming scare also ensures that heatwaves make headlines, while contrary symptoms, such as this winter’s billion-dollar loss of Californian crops to unusual frost, are relegated to the business pages. The early arrival of migrant birds in spring provides colourful evidence for a recent warming of the northern lands. But did anyone tell you that in east Antarctica the Adélie penguins and Cape petrels are turning up at their spring nesting sites around nine days later than they did 50 years ago? While sea-ice has diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean. So one awkward question you can ask, when you’re forking out those extra taxes for climate change, is “Why is east Antarctica getting colder?” It makes no sense at all if carbon dioxide is driving global warming. While you’re at it, you might inquire whether Gordon Brown will give you a refund if it’s confirmed that global warming has stopped. The best measurements of global air temperatures come from American weather satellites, and they show wobbles but no overall change since 1999. That levelling off is just what is expected by the chief rival hypothesis, which says that the sun drives climate changes more emphatically than greenhouse gases do. After becoming much more active during the 20th century, the sun now stands at a high but roughly level state of activity. Solar physicists warn of possible global cooling, should the sun revert to the lazier mood it was in during the Little Ice Age 300 years ago. Climate history and related archeology give solid support to the solar hypothesis. The 20th-century episode, or Modern Warming, was just the latest in a long string of similar events produced by a hyperactive sun, of which the last was the Medieval Warming. The Chinese population doubled then, while in Europe the Vikings and cathedral-builders prospered. Fascinating relics of earlier episodes come from the Swiss Alps, with the rediscovery in 2003 of a long-forgotten pass used intermittently whenever the world was warm. What does the Intergovernmental Panel do with such emphatic evidence for an alternation of warm and cold periods, linked to solar activity and going on long before human industry was a possible factor? Less than nothing. The 2007 Summary for Policymakers boasts of cutting in half a very small contribution by the sun to climate change conceded in a 2001 report. Disdain for the sun goes with a failure by the self-appointed greenhouse experts to keep up with inconvenient discoveries about how the solar variations control the climate. The sun’s brightness may change too little to account for the big swings in the climate. But more than 10 years have passed since Henrik Svensmark in Copenhagen first pointed out a much more powerful mechanism. He saw from compilations of weather satellite data that cloudiness varies according to how many atomic particles are coming in from exploded stars. More cosmic rays, more clouds. The sun’s magnetic field bats away many of the cosmic rays, and its intensification during the 20th century meant fewer cosmic rays, fewer clouds, and a warmer world. On the other hand the Little Ice Age was chilly because the lazy sun let in more cosmic rays, leaving the world cloudier and gloomier. The only trouble with Svensmark’s idea — apart from its being politically incorrect — was that meteorologists denied that cosmic rays could be involved in cloud formation. After long delays in scraping together the funds for an experiment, Svensmark and his small team at the Danish National Space Center hit the jackpot in the summer of 2005. In a box of air in the basement, they were able to show that electrons set free by cosmic rays coming through the ceiling stitched together droplets of sulphuric acid and water. These are the building blocks for cloud condensation. But journal after journal declined to publish their report; the discovery finally appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society late last year. Thanks to having written The Manic Sun, a book about Svensmark’s initial discovery published in 1997, I have been privileged to be on the inside track for reporting his struggles and successes since then. The outcome is a second book, The Chilling Stars, co-authored by the two of us and published next week by Icon books. We are not exaggerating, we believe, when we subtitle it “A new theory of climate change”. Where does all that leave the impact of greenhouse gases? Their effects are likely to be a good deal less than advertised, but nobody can really say until the implications of the new theory of climate change are more fully worked out. The reappraisal starts with Antarctica, where those contradictory temperature trends are directly predicted by Svensmark’s scenario, because the snow there is whiter than the cloud-tops. Meanwhile humility in face of Nature’s marvels seems more appropriate than arrogant assertions that we can forecast and even control a climate ruled by the sun and the stars.   Morning_song Starlite Member Username: Morning_song Posted on Sunday, February 11, 2007 - 01:48 pm:    Yeah but.... WHO WROTE THIS, BUBS???? I want to research him and see if HE has stock in the oil companies.   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Sunday, February 11, 2007 - 04:11 pm:    I think it might have been written by Rush, Jeri. He's an expert on global warming. Anyway, a little history on the spin offered by skeptics: Responding to Global Warming Skeptics —Prominent Skeptics Organizations Global Climate Coalition Founded in 1989 by 46 corporations and trade associations representing all major elements of US industry, the GCC presents itself as a "voice for business in the global warming debate." The group funded several flawed studies on the economics of the cost of mitigating climate change, which formed the basis of their 1997/1998 multi-million dollar advertising campaign against the Kyoto Protocol. The GCC began to unravel in 1997 when British Petroleum withdrew its membership. Since then many other corporations have followed BP s lead and left the coalition. This exodus reached a fevered pitch in the early months of 2000 when DaimlerChrysler, Texaco and General Motors all announced their exodus from the GCC. Since these desertions, the GCC restructured and remains a powerful and well-funded force focused on obstructing meaningful efforts to mitigate climate change. Spin: Global Warming is real, but it is too expensive to do anything about. The Kyoto Protocol is fundamentally flawed. Funding: Corporate members (industries, trade associations etc.) George Marshall Institute This conservative think tank shifted its focus from Star Wars to climate change in the late 1980s. In 1989, the Marshall Institute released a report claiming that "cyclical variations in the intensity of the sun would offset any climate change associated with elevated greenhouse gases." Though refuted by the IPCC, the report was very influential in influencing the Bush Sr. Administration s climate change policy. The Marshall Institute has since published numerous reports downplaying the severity of global climate change. Spin: Blame the Sun. The Kyoto Protocol is fatally flawed. Affiliated Individuals: Sallie Baliunas, an astrophysicist from Harvard; and Frederick Seitz. Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine The Marshall Institute co-sponsored with the OISM a deceptive campaign -- known as the Petition Project -- to undermine and discredit the scientific authority of the IPCC and to oppose the Kyoto Protocol. Early in the spring of 1998, thousands of scientists around the country received a mass mailing urging them to sign a petition calling on the government to reject the Kyoto Protocol. The petition was accompanied by other pieces including an article formatted to mimic the journal of the National Academy of Sciences. Subsequent research revealed that the article had not been peer-reviewed, nor published, nor even accepted for publication in that journal and the Academy released a strong statement disclaiming any connection to this effort and reaffirming the reality of climate change. The Petition resurfaced in 2001. Spin: There is no scientific basis for claims about global warming. IPCC is a hoax. Kyoto is flawed. Funding: Petition was funded by private sources. Affiliated Individuals: Arthur B. Robinson, Sallie L. Baliunas, Frederick Seitz Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) Founded in 1990 by widely publicized climate skeptic S. Fred Singer, SEPP s stated purpose is to "document the relationship between scientific data and the development of federal environmental policy." SEPP has mounted a sizeable media campaign -- publishing articles, letters to the editor, and a large number of press releases -- to discredit the issues of global warming, ozone depletion, and acid rain. Spin: Moreover, climate change won t be bad for us anyway. Action on climate change is not warranted because of shaky science and flawed policy approaches. Funding: Conservative foundations including Bradley, Smith Richardson, and Forbes. SEPP has also been directly tied to ultra right-wing mogul Reverend Sung Myung Moon s Unification Church, including receipt of a year s free office space from a Moon-funded group and the participation of SEPP s director in church-sponsored conferences and on the board of a Moon-funded magazine. Affiliated Individuals:S. Fred Singer,Frederick Seitz Greening Earth Society The Greening Earth Society (GES) was founded on Earth Day 1998 by the Western Fuels Association to promote the view that increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 are good for humanity. GES and Western Fuels are essentially the same organization. Both used to be located at the same office suite in Arlington, VA. Until December 2000, Fred Palmer chaired both institutions. The GES is now chaired by Bob Norrgard, another long-term Western Fuels associate. The Western Fuels Assocation (WFA) is a cooperative of coal-dependent utilities in the western states that works in part to discredit climate change science and to prevent regulations that might damage coal-related industries. Spin: CO2 emissions are good for the planet; coal is the best energy source we have. Affiliated Individuals: Patrick Michaels, Robert Balling, David Wojick, Sallie Baliunas, Sylvan Wittwer, John Daley, Sherwood Idso Funding: The Greening Earth Society receives its funding from the Western Fuels Association, which in turn receives its funding from its coal and utility company members. Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide & Global Change The Center claims to "disseminate factual reports and sound commentary on new developments in the world-wide scientific quest to determine the climactic and biological consequences of the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content." The Center is led by two brothers, Craig and Keith Idso. Their father, Sherwood Idso, is affiliated with the Greening Earth Society; the Center also shares a board member (Sylvan Wittwer) with GES. Both Idso brothers have been on the Western Fuels payroll at one time or another. Spin: Increased levels of CO2 will help plants, and that's good. Funding: The Center is extremely secretive of its funding sources, stating that it is their policy not to divulge it funders. There is evidence for a strong connection to the Greening Earth Society (ergo Western Fuels Association). Affiliated Individuals: Craig Idso, Keith Idso, Sylvan Wittwer (Message edited by jennifer03801 on February 11, 2007) "Do we actually value religious diversity, or have we determined, because of our history, to endorse a particular religious tradition to the exclusion of others?"   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Sunday, February 11, 2007 - 04:43 pm:    Nigel Calder is the author,dear Jeri...his name is in the first sentence...better go research him....Who's funding all of the other opinions?The DNC?...   Morning_song Starlite Member Username: Morning_song Posted on Sunday, February 11, 2007 - 04:49 pm:    TOUCHE!!!! Score one for the BUBS. ROFL   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Sunday, February 11, 2007 - 06:13 pm:    http://www.worldclimatereport.com/ __________________________________________________________________________ The difference between Los Angeles and yogurt is that yogurt comes with less fruit. - Rush Limbaugh   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Sunday, February 11, 2007 - 06:15 pm:    Calder is a writer. He makes his living by writing books and selling books. I'm really surprised Bubby would quote something from the MSM. Desperate strokes for desperate folks? "Do we actually value religious diversity, or have we determined, because of our history, to endorse a particular religious tradition to the exclusion of others?"   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Sunday, February 11, 2007 - 06:21 pm:    Mikey Mikey, you really need to pay more careful attention. Check out the staff on World Climate Report. See any familiar names? Here's a hint: "The Greening Earth Society (GES) was founded on Earth Day 1998 by the Western Fuels Association to promote the view that increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 are good for humanity." "Do we actually value religious diversity, or have we determined, because of our history, to endorse a particular religious tradition to the exclusion of others?"   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Sunday, February 11, 2007 - 07:32 pm:    Benjamin Franklin was a writer too..I guess all writers are full of it by that premise...so any writer that's opposing the Greenhouse effect is essentially a moot point rendered.I wasn't quoting him as a MSM...just a writer that makes sense....and I'm a long way from desperate. That's your village,not mine.   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Sunday, February 11, 2007 - 08:11 pm:    Don't you think that maybe you should read at least a chapter or two from the book before giving it the Bubby stamp of approval? All you read was a quote promoting a book that's not even out yet and from that you determined the writer makes sense about a topic as complex as global warming? Quite right, a lot of writers are full of it. "Do we actually value religious diversity, or have we determined, because of our history, to endorse a particular religious tradition to the exclusion of others?"   Morning_song Starlite Member Username: Morning_song Posted on Sunday, February 11, 2007 - 08:43 pm:      Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Sunday, February 11, 2007 - 09:03 pm:    Nightpiece Gaunt in gloom, The pale stars their torches, Enshrouded, wave. Ghostfires from heaven’s far verges faint illume, Arches on soaring arches, Night’s sindark nave. Seraphim, The lost hosts awaken To service till In moonless gloom each lapses muted, dim, Raised when she has and shaken Her thurible. And long and loud, To night’s nave upsoaring, A starknell tolls As the bleak incense surges, cloud on cloud, Voidward from the adoring Waste of souls. - James Joyce "Do we actually value religious diversity, or have we determined, because of our history, to endorse a particular religious tradition to the exclusion of others?"   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Sunday, February 11, 2007 - 10:29 pm:    The Learned Man To phrase one day of wonderment To live one hour for love A poet must die a thousand deaths and find the below of above To trade with souls of broken dreams and set sail a sea of fire The poet must find invisible thoughts that captures your very ire He blends and bends a nurtured verse to retain the breath of new and all the while he entertains you think he’s speaking of you you think he’s speaking of you love you think he’s speaking of you maybe I am if maybe is an option and my words can heal the night By Bubby © 2003 Bubby (All rights reserved)   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Sunday, February 11, 2007 - 10:33 pm:    Joyce and his starknell is still voidward in rigidarity..   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 - 06:58 am:    "Do we actually value religious diversity, or have we determined, because of our history, to endorse a particular religious tradition to the exclusion of others?"   Caprichos Starlite Member Username: Caprichos Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 - 08:14 am:    ~ Sir Bubby, Your poem, "The Learned Man" is absolutely brilliant. Love, Capri "When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite." -Sir William Blake   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 - 09:47 am:    President of Czech Republic Calls Man-Made Global Warming a 'Myth' - Questions Gore's Sanity Mon Feb 12 2007 09:10:09 ET Czech president Vaclav Klaus has criticized the UN panel on global warming, claiming that it was a political authority without any scientific basis. In an interview with "Hospodárské noviny", a Czech economics daily, Klaus answered a few questions: Q: IPCC has released its report and you say that the global warming is a false myth. How did you get this idea, Mr President?• A: It's not my idea. Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It's neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment. Also, it's an undignified slapstick that people don't wait for the full report in May 2007 but instead respond, in such a serious way, to the summary for policymakers where all the "but's" are scratched, removed, and replaced by oversimplified theses.• This is clearly such an incredible failure of so many people, from journalists to politicians. If the European Commission is instantly going to buy such a trick, we have another very good reason to think that the countries themselves, not the Commission, should be deciding about similar issues.• Q: How do you explain that there is no other comparably senior statesman in Europe who would advocate this viewpoint? No one else has such strong opinions...• A: My opinions about this issue simply are strong. Other top-level politicians do not express their global warming doubts because a whip of political correctness strangles their voice. • Q: But you're not a climate scientist. Do you have a sufficient knowledge and enough information?• A: Environmentalism as a metaphysical ideology and as a worldview has absolutely nothing to do with natural sciences or with the climate. Sadly, it has nothing to do with social sciences either. Still, it is becoming fashionable and this fact scares me. The second part of the sentence should be: we also have lots of reports, studies, and books of climatologists whose conclusions are diametrally opposite.• Indeed, I never measure the thickness of ice in Antarctica. I really don't know how to do it and don't plan to learn it. However, as a scientifically oriented person, I know how to read science reports about these questions, for example about ice in Antarctica. I don't have to be a climate scientist myself to read them. And inside the papers I have read, the conclusions we may see in the media simply don't appear. But let me promise you something: this topic troubles me which is why I started to write an article about it last Christmas. The article expanded and became a book. In a couple of months, it will be published. One chapter out of seven will organize my opinions about the climate change.• Environmentalism and green ideology is something very different from climate science. Various findings and screams of scientists are abused by this ideology.• Q: How do you explain that conservative media are skeptical while the left-wing media view the global warming as a done deal?• A: It is not quite exactly divided to the left-wingers and right-wingers. Nevertheless it's obvious that environmentalism is a new incarnation of modern leftism.• Q: If you look at all these things, even if you were right ...• A: ...I am right...• Q: Isn't there enough empirical evidence and facts we can see with our eyes that imply that Man is demolishing the planet and himself?• A: It's such a nonsense that I have probably not heard a bigger nonsense yet.• Q: Don't you believe that we're ruining our planet?• A: I will pretend that I haven't heard you. Perhaps only Mr Al Gore may be saying something along these lines: a sane person can't. I don't see any ruining of the planet, I have never seen it, and I don't think that a reasonable and serious person could say such a thing. Look: you represent the economic media so I expect a certain economical erudition from you. My book will answer these questions. For example, we know that there exists a huge correlation between the care we give to the environment on one side and the wealth and technological prowess on the other side. It's clear that the poorer the society is, the more brutally it behaves with respect to Nature, and vice versa.• It's also true that there exist social systems that are damaging Nature - by eliminating private ownership and similar things - much more than the freer societies. These tendencies become important in the long run. They unambiguously imply that today, on February 8th, 2007, Nature is protected uncomparably more than on February 8th ten years ago or fifty years ago or one hundred years ago.• That's why I ask: how can you pronounce the sentence you said? Perhaps if you're unconscious? Or did you mean it as a provocation only? And maybe I am just too naive and I allowed you to provoke me to give you all these answers, am I not? It is more likely that you actually believe what you say. [English translation from Harvard Professor Lubos Motl] Developing... ________________________________________________________________________________ ___ With half my brain tied behind my back,just to make it fair! - Rush Limbaugh   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 - 10:22 am:    http://video.google.com:80/videoplay?docid=-2487638612433437293&q=Veterans   Caprichos Starlite Member Username: Caprichos Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 - 10:53 am:    ~ Mikey, A very interesting article. I do believe Religion and Science have together in our day in age. ~ Bubz, The video is so very cool. At first, I was amused and in the later I found my heart sinking while tears were streaming down my cheeks. My Uncle Oscar served in WWII and fought in Normandy, France. He belonged to the 101 Airborne Division. He was a Paratrooper. At age 78, he was in a parade in Washington, DC. He and some of his old comrades parachuted down over the parade route in D.C. My Uncle Oscar and his commanding officer, Bill, became the best of friends throughout the years. My Uncle has passed on. He did it in style while at a party dancing and when my Aunt Aurora did a little twirl and when she looked for my uncle, he was on the floor lifeless. He loved to dance and sing and most of all, he loved his military buddies who he was so tight with since WWII. Bill and his wife, Anna are still alive and reside in Cherry Valley, CA. My Aunt Aurora and my mom travel all around the United States and Europe to attend the 101st Airborne (Screaming Eagles) reunions. They are up in their 80's but they sure love life and know how to have a good time. I attended on in Myrtle Beach, SC. I found out then they know how to party and live life to its fullest. I've E-mailed the video to my sisters and to other family members who have also been in the United States Armed Forces. Kudos to you, Sir Bubby, I stand and salute you for posting this heartwarming video. It's most certainly a 'must see'. Love, Capri "When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite." -Sir William Blake   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 - 11:20 am:    The grave is set among birches and greenery in a quiet corner of this meticulously maintained cemetery. The zoo is close by and it comforted Nora in a childlike way to think of Jim buried within hearing distance of the roars of the lions. Of all the strange, often beautiful sculptures placed on the graves in Fluntern, the American sculptor Milton Hebald’s evocative statue of Joyce (inaugurated on Bloomsday, 1966, twenty-five years after his death), has a special grace. Joyce is depicted in characteristic pose, deep in conversation, head tilted, one leg resting on the other knee, cigarette poised, slim cane delicately balanced. The politely worded sign requesting visitors not to walk on the surrounding grass is an indicator of the volume of visitors who come to pay their respects to an artist who used the broken ‘heaventalk’ of an Irish city to articulate ‘all the sorrow and muddle which pertains to life and death. ’   Caprichos Starlite Member Username: Caprichos Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 - 11:36 am:    James Joyce - The Urban Genius http://www.meganobeirne.com/joyce-2004.htm "When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite." -Sir William Blake   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 - 07:47 pm:    HOUSE HEARING ON 'WARMING OF THE PLANET' CANCELED AFTER SNOW/ICE STORM HEARING NOTICE Tue Feb 13 2007 19:31:25 ET The Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality hearing scheduled for Wednesday, February 14, 2007, at 10:00 a.m. in room 2123 Rayburn House Office Building has been postponed due to inclement weather. The hearing is entitled “Climate Change: Are Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Human Activities Contributing to a Warming of the Planet?” The hearing will be rescheduled to a date and time to be announced later. DC WEATHER REPORT: Wednesday: Freezing rain in the morning...then a chance of snow in the afternoon. Ice accumulation of less than one quarter of an inch. Highs in the mid 30s. Northwest winds around 20 mph. Chance of precipitation 80 percent. Wednesday Night: Partly cloudy. Lows around 18. Northwest winds around 20 mph. ________________________________________________________________________________ _______   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 - 09:47 pm:    Well Mike,it sounds like "Global Cooling" to me...I could be wrong though.Maybe they should postpone it until the hottest day of summer and then go at it again.Typical government folderol. Its 8:44 P.M. PST and I am at 59 degrees and partly cloudy.Wanna know how much your house is worth? Go to Zottila.com and type in your address.Amazing stuff.It will even give you an aerial shot of your house.Stay Cool Hombre...Bub   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 - 12:05 am:    "Do we actually value religious diversity, or have we determined, because of our history, to endorse a particular religious tradition to the exclusion of others?"   Caprichos Starlite Member Username: Caprichos Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 - 12:46 am:    http://www.nationalcenter.org/Kyoto.html "When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite." -Sir William Blake   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 - 12:54 am:    Bubby,Global Cooling it is, 16 degrees here- going down to 3 tonight. Global warming is freezing me to death. Zottila.com didn't work.   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 - 06:36 am:    "Do we actually value religious diversity, or have we determined, because of our history, to endorse a particular religious tradition to the exclusion of others?"   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 - 06:45 am:    I can't read it Jen Jen, the words are to small could you decipher it for me. _____________________________________________________________________________ Some folks look at me and see a certain swagger, which in Texas is called "walking." George W.   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 - 07:40 am:    that's too small Mike...not to small..that's a nice looking duck though.Do you think Bill Gates is a (rich democrat)?They want you to think those two words are an oxymoron,but if I had Kerry and kennedys money,I could buy half of Europe. Actually I think he donates to both sides of the aisle.   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 - 07:47 am:    Mike,Zottila only works in massive populated areas.If you would move into the city,you would know these things...lol.Where are all the drive by scientists this morning? I haven't had my daily dose of cut n paste...I wonder whose funding Jenn?   Caprichos Starlite Member Username: Caprichos Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 - 07:51 am:    He plays the role of a diplomat in order to continue his flow of revenue. Are there such people who are rich democrats? *wink* "When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite." -Sir William Blake   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 - 12:33 pm:    "Do we actually value religious diversity, or have we determined, because of our history, to endorse a particular religious tradition to the exclusion of others?"   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 - 01:04 pm:    If that is art,then Jimbo is Chinese...I know there is a message there somewhere...like..."get the heck off my •••"...you shouldn't clutter this area with artistic folderol.It looks like someone is frozen to her butt.Must be the global cooling effect.Mike probably knows.   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 - 02:11 pm:    If a picture paints a thousand words here’s a couple. It looks like two liberals, who believe in Global warming went outside with no cloths on in a snow storm. ______________________________________________________________________________ Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." ~ John Adams   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 - 04:00 pm:    Total Fatalities - 3,127 Total Wounded - 23,417 Diseases Medical Air Transport Required - 18,704 Total Medical Air Transported - 32,544 Total Non-Mortal Casualties - 54,910   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 - 07:41 pm:    Hands that are open Is an offering of hope To the dove of peace   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 - 10:46 pm:    http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2f8af_4307   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 06:09 am:    3131 Total Fatalities - 3,131 Total Wounded - 23,417 Diseases Medical Air Transport Required - 18,704 Total Medical Air Transported - 32,544 Total Non-Mortal Casualties - 54,910   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 - 02:29 am:    Antarctic temperatures disagree with climate model predictions COLUMBUS , Ohio – A new report on climate over the world's southernmost continent shows that temperatures during the late 20th century did not climb as had been predicted by many global climate models. This comes soon after the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that strongly supports the conclusion that the Earth's climate as a whole is warming, largely due to human activity. It also follows a similar finding from last summer by the same research group that showed no increase in precipitation over Antarctica in the last 50 years. Most models predict that both precipitation and temperature will increase over Antarctica with a warming of the planet. David Bromwich, professor of professor of atmospheric sciences in the Department of Geography, and researcher with the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, reported on this work at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at San Francisco. "It's hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now," he said. "Part of the reason is that there is a lot of variability there. It's very hard in these polar latitudes to demonstrate a global warming signal. This is in marked contrast to the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula that is one of the most rapidly warming parts of the Earth." Bromwich says that the problem rises from several complications. The continent is vast, as large as the United States and Mexico combined. Only a small amount of detailed data is available – there are perhaps only 100 weather stations on that continent compared to the thousands spread across the U.S. and Europe . And the records that we have only date back a half-century. "The best we can say right now is that the climate models are somewhat inconsistent with the evidence that we have for the last 50 years from continental Antarctica . "We're looking for a small signal that represents the impact of human activity and it is hard to find it at the moment," he said. Last year, Bromwich's research group reported in the journal Science that Antarctic snowfall hadn't increased in the last 50 years. "What we see now is that the temperature regime is broadly similar to what we saw before with snowfall. In the last decade or so, both have gone down," he said. In addition to the new temperature records and earlier precipitation records, Bromwich's team also looked at the behavior of the circumpolar westerlies, the broad system of winds that surround the Antarctic continent. "The westerlies have intensified over the last four decades of so, increasing in strength by as much as perhaps 10 to 20 percent," he said. "This is a huge amount of ocean north of Antarctica and we're only now understanding just how important the winds are for things like mixing in the Southern Ocean." The ocean mixing both dissipates heat and absorbs carbon dioxide, one of the key greenhouse gases linked to global warming. Some researchers are suggesting that the strengthening of the westerlies may be playing a role in the collapse of ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula. "The peninsula is the most northern point of Antarctica and it sticks out into the westerlies," Bromwich says. "If there is an increase in the westerly winds, it will have a warming impact on that part of the continent, thus helping to break up the ice shelves, he said. "Farther south, the impact would be modest, or even non-existent." Bromwich said that the increase in the ozone hole above the central Antarctic continent may also be affecting temperatures on the mainland. "If you have less ozone, there's less absorption of the ultraviolet light and the stratosphere doesn't warm as much." That would mean that winter-like conditions would remain later in the spring than normal, lowering temperatures. "In some sense, we might have competing effects going on in Antarctica where there is low-level CO2 warming but that may be swamped by the effects of ozone depletion," he said. "The year 2006 was the all-time maximum for ozone depletion over the Antarctic." Bromwich said the disagreement between climate model predictions and the snowfall and temperature records doesn't necessarily mean that the models are wrong. "It isn't surprising that these models are not doing as well in these remote parts of the world. These are global models and shouldn't be expected to be equally exact for all locations," he said. ### Contact: David Bromwich Bromwich.1@osu.edu   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 - 05:41 am:    Herro, Mooji-bar here...I workie for Mr Gates..yu have problim? If yu Conservative,no hold time...if yu Liberal...45 minit wait...   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Sunday, February 25, 2007 - 10:27 pm:    What a wuss...   Jennifer03801 Starlite Member Username: Jennifer03801 Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 - 04:42 am:    http://homepage.mac.com/juanwilson/islandbreath/%20Year%202005/a05-03-enviroment/0503-16-GlobalWawmingBush.jpg (Message edited by jennifer03801 on February 26, 2007)   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 - 09:10 am:    another Wuss...Morning Tess!!   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 - 10:40 am:      Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 - 11:14 am:      Caprichos Starlite Member Username: Caprichos Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 - 11:32 am:    "When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite." -Sir William Blake   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 - 11:57 am:    lmao...ol Monte Wolverton always was a card...horrible cartoonist though...you'll never see Al Gore with his sleeves rolled up.....now there's some research for you...   Caprichos Starlite Member Username: Caprichos Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 - 12:06 pm:    Another *E-smack* for you, Bubz. Sweet! Rip the man apart, after all, one's man opinion is most certainly his own, thus, meaning you, Mr. Earl. *smile* "When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite." -Sir William Blake   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 - 12:41 pm:      Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 - 12:43 pm:    E Smack? Is that a kiss,or whut?   Caprichos Starlite Member Username: Caprichos Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 - 03:12 pm:    *E-Smack* is very much a kiss! "When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite." -Sir William Blake   Caprichos Starlite Member Username: Caprichos Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 - 03:14 pm:    Oh, and Sir Bubby, 'thank you' immensely for enlightening me. You rate! "When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite." -Sir William Blake   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 - 05:30 pm:    Muslim Sues To Use Quran For Court Oath A North Carolina appeals court has reversed a trial judge’s decision to dismiss a Muslim woman’s lawsuit demanding the Quran be used for courtroom oaths. The woman, Syidah Mateen, initially filed the lawsuit in 2005 because she was denied placing her hand on the Quran as a witness in a trial. State law allows witnesses preparing to testify in court to take their oath by laying a hand on the Holy Bible, by saying “so help me God” without the use of a religious book or with an affirmation using no religious symbols. The options led a trial judge to dismiss the suit, determining that there was no actual controversy warranting litigation since the woman was not forced to use the Bible. But this week, a three-judge appellate court panel unanimously reversed that decision, allowing the lawsuit to continue. The judges wrote that the complaint was sufficient to entitle litigation and the state must now waste taxpayer dollars to defend the case. A Muslim center in Greensboro is also involved because its offer to donate copies of the Quran to Guilford County’s two courthouses was declined by judges who said an oath on the Quran is not a legal oath under state law. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), well-known for its support of terrorism worldwide, also joined the case by demanding a statewide policy permitting use of the Quran and other religious texts in courtrooms. Additionally, a group of North Carolina religious leaders sent a letter to one of the county judges who said an oath on the Quran was not lawful. It said, in part, that North Carolina is no longer a Bible Belt state but rather a “Bible-Talmud-Quran, Veda-Dhammapada-Guru Granth Sahib-Kitabiiqan Belt state.” Posted by at January 18, 2007 11:15 AM Comments Just what America needs---the Quran in official government proceedings! Let's just keep giving and giving and giving until we have nothing left to give. ---TM   Caprichos Starlite Member Username: Caprichos Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 - 09:26 pm:    "When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite." -Sir William Blake   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 - 09:42 pm:      Morning_song Starlite Member Username: Morning_song Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 - 09:59 pm:    Dang, Bubs, How did you ever happen to overlook posting this one????   Caprichos Starlite Member Username: Caprichos Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 - 11:10 pm:    "When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite." -Sir William Blake   Caprichos Starlite Member Username: Caprichos Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 - 11:15 pm:    "When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite." -Sir William Blake   Caprichos Starlite Member Username: Caprichos Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 - 11:20 pm:    "When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite." -Sir William Blake   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 - 11:23 pm:    Dang Jeri,I think George looks real good,all dressed up like a woman.....I wonder if he kiss's on the first date.Let's take a poll...everyone loves polls.   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 - 11:42 pm:    America the beautiful....   Morning_song Starlite Member Username: Morning_song Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 - 11:43 pm:    O.K. Bubby's Poll (everybody likes 'em) Does Georgietta kiss on the first date??? ( ) yes ( ) no ( ) don't care ( X ) don't want to find out...ROFL   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 - 12:06 am:    Hey Jeri Berry,Ah writ a pom too-nite.. now,I'm incognito for the night...lol zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz   Caprichos Starlite Member Username: Caprichos Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 - 12:09 am:    Bubby's Poll (everybody likes 'em) Does Georgietta kiss on the first date??? (X) yes ( ) no ( ) don't care ( ) don't want to find out...ROFL ( ) does she-he E-ven know how? Back in the day Georgietta could hold several glasses of Cognac and I imagine she-he still does discreetly and this alone will pucker up the old lips! No pun intended...*hahh* It's been noted these two kitty kats have been seen visiting Georgietta's apartment across from the crib on the hill many times. I take it Georgietta must know how to kiss the she-he playmates. ...ONLY IN AMERICA, FOLKS, THE LAND OF THE FREE! "When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite." -Sir William Blake   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 - 01:32 pm:    hhhhmmmm the couple in the middle look interesting ....I hope my hubby,Bill C doesn't see them first...   Caprichos Starlite Member Username: Caprichos Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 - 02:47 pm:    LOL. Last I heard, Bill was off in the Virgin Islands with Lou Bega thinking about a little bit of Monica in his life...and so the song goes... Wow...THE VIRGIN ISLANDS...wonder WHAT Bill would want to be doing there? "When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite." -Sir William Blake   Njaeok Starlite Member Username: Njaeok Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 - 05:26 pm:    (Just ran across this. Thought it would be nice to share. Jimbo) Home » National » Article Greenhouse sceptics to congregate Katharine Murphy and Brendan Nicholson, Canberra and Richard Baker February 28, 2007 Latest related coverage After hot, dry Sizzler, prepare for the Drizzler Act now on climate change, says diplomat Advertisement AdvertisementHARD-CORE global warming sceptics will descend on Canberra today for the release of a book claiming environmentalism is the new religion. Former mining executive Arvi Parbo will launch Ray Evans' new publication, Nine Facts About Climate Change, at a function at Parliament House. The book claims climate change is nothing new and declares Howard Government investments in solar power and in cleaning up coal a "complete waste of taxpayers' money". "Environmentalism has largely superseded Christianity as the religion of the upper classes in Europe and to a lesser extent in the United States," Mr Evans says in the publication. "It is a form of religious belief which fosters a sense of moral superiority in the believer, but which places no importance on telling the truth," he says. "The global warming scam has been, arguably, the most extraordinary example of scientific fraud in the postwar period." The function is organised by the Lavoisier Group, founded in 2000 by Ray Evans and former mining executive Hugh Morgan to test claims that global warming is the result of human activity. Mr Evans is a longstanding friend and colleague of Mr Morgan and a committed activist on issues such as workplace reform through the HR Nicholls Society, which he founded with federal Treasurer Peter Costello. Former Labor minister Peter Walsh also will attend today's function, and the group will hold a dinner to be addressed by climate-change sceptic Chris de Freitas, Associate Professor in the School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science at Auckland University. Liberal MP Dennis Jensen has organised the function on behalf of the Lavoisier Group and expects about 50 people to attend the dinner. Dr Jensen, a nuclear physicist, has said he is not convinced that human activity is responsible for global warming. In an interview with The Age last month, Mr Evans acknowledged that last September's visit by former US vice-president Al Gore to promote his Oscar-winning global-warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth had helped generate a lot of publicity on climate change. But he described Mr Gore's film as "bullshit from beginning to end". "The science from the anthropology point of view has collapsed. The carbon-dioxide link is increasingly recognised as irrelevant," Mr Evans said. "But the Government's frightened. "Cabinet, from what I understand, is by and large still sceptical of climate change, but it is scared of the drought and worried about how Labor will make use of it." Born with the gift of laughter, aware that the world is mad. -- Jimbo   Morning_song Starlite Member Username: Morning_song Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 - 06:10 pm:    The Lavoisier Group is a global warming skeptic organisation, based in Australia. It argues that the evidence for global warming is based on inexact science and that any policy responses, such as signing the Kyoto Protocol, would be too expensive for Australia's industry. The group is closely associated with the Australian mining industry, and was founded in 2000 by Ray Evans, then an executive at Western Mining Corporation (WMC), who was also involved in founding the HR Nicholls Society and the Bennelong Society. Hugh Morgan, former WMC boss and head of the Business Council of Australia until 2005, delivered the group's inaugural speech. Lavoisier is a fairly small operation, with under 100 members and an annual budget of around $10,000. [1] In 2001 Australian economist John Quiggin wrote that the Lavoisier Group is "devoted to the proposition that basic principles of physics...cease to apply when they come into conflict with the interests of the Australian coal industry." Did you catch that last paragraph, Jimbo?   Njaeok Starlite Member Username: Njaeok Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 - 07:00 pm:    Yeah I caught it Jeri. I've been away for a while and came back to discover that the global warming discussion had kind of got off track. Thought that bit of pseudo info might get it back. I'm not all that impressed with the Lavoisier Group's bonifieds myself. I had to go on a hunting trip and came back to the introduction of a new great grand daughter into the clan. So I'm slowly catching up. Born with the gift of laughter, aware that the world is mad. -- Jimbo   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 - 07:05 pm:    You can blame it on the Bossa Nova too,Jeri Berri...nice looking bug from the outback?   Morning_song Starlite Member Username: Morning_song Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 - 07:35 pm:    Awwwww....... CONGRATS, great grandpa!!! And I hope your back is better, Bubs Hugs Me   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Thursday, March 01, 2007 - 06:18 pm:    Hey Jimbo, I tolt thiz feller ta gitz rid uh dis hyar greenhouse,cuz Al Gore wuz uh lookin' fer 'em...he sed he didn't keep no gas inside...just fertylizer... Sed he wuz knot uhware of any greenhouse gas problim,but his ol basset hound had sum flatulence on uh-kasions...Maybe Gorey will take him instead...   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Thursday, March 01, 2007 - 07:17 pm:    ah don't know why Bub insists on spreadin' the news about my flatulence...harruuuuummmpppp!!   Njaeok Starlite Member Username: Njaeok Posted on Saturday, March 03, 2007 - 01:13 pm:    Hey Bubs-- There is a red headed step child that has already solved the problem of getting us free from the oil addiction. Just go to prove that it is ok to let the kids play in the trash. The Prophet of Garbage Joseph Longo's Plasma Converter turns our most vile and toxic trash into clean energy—and promises to make a relic of the landfill By Michael Behar | March 2007 It sounds as if someone just dropped a tricycle into a meat grinder. I’m sitting inside a narrow conference room at a research facility in Bristol, Connecticut, chatting with Joseph Longo, the founder and CEO of Startech Environmental Corporation. As we munch on takeout Subway sandwiches, a plate-glass window is the only thing separating us from the adjacent lab, which contains a glowing caldera of “plasma” three times as hot as the surface of the sun. Every few minutes there’s a horrific clanking noise—grinding followed by a thunderous voomp, like the sound a gas barbecue makes when it first ignites. “Is it supposed to do that?” I ask Longo nervously. “Yup,” he says. “That’s normal.” Despite his 74 years, Longo bears an unnerving resemblance to the longtime cover boy of Mad magazine, Alfred E. Neuman, who shrugs off nuclear Armageddon with the glib catchphrase “What, me worry?” Both share red hair, a smattering of freckles and a toothy grin. When such a man tells me I’m perfectly safe from a 30,000˚F arc of man-made lightning heating a vat of plasma that his employees are “controlling” in the next room—well, I’m not completely reassured. To put me at ease, Longo calls in David Lynch, who manages the demonstration facility. “There’s no flame or fire inside. It’s just electricity,” Lynch assures me of the multimillion-dollar system that took Longo almost two decades to design and build. Then the two usher me into the lab, where the gleaming 15-foot-tall machine they’ve named the Plasma Converter stands in the center of the room. The entire thing takes up about as much space as a two-car garage, surprisingly compact for a machine that can consume nearly any type of waste—from dirty diapers to chemical weapons—by annihilating toxic materials in a process as old as the universe itself. Called plasma gasification, it works a little like the big bang, only backward (you get nothing from something). Inside a sealed vessel made of stainless steel and filled with a stable gas—either pure nitrogen or, as in this case, ordinary air—a 650-volt current passing between two electrodes rips electrons from the air, converting the gas into plasma. Current flows continuously through this newly formed plasma, creating a field of extremely intense energy very much like lightning. The radiant energy of the plasma arc is so powerful, it disintegrates trash into its constituent elements by tearing apart molecular bonds. The system is capable of breaking down pretty much anything except nuclear waste, the isotopes of which are indestructible. The only by-products are an obsidian-like glass used as a raw material for numerous applications, including bathroom tiles and high-strength asphalt, and a synthesis gas, or “syngas”—a mixture of primarily hydrogen and carbon monoxide that can be converted into a variety of marketable fuels, including ethanol, natural gas and hydrogen. Perhaps the most amazing part of the process is that it’s self-sustaining. Just like your toaster, Startech’s Plasma Converter draws its power from the electrical grid to get started. The initial voltage is about equal to the zap from a police stun gun. But once the cycle is under way, the 2,200˚F syngas is fed into a cooling system, generating steam that drives turbines to produce electricity. About two thirds of the power is siphoned off to run the converter; the rest can be used on-site for heating or electricity, or sold back to the utility grid. “Even a blackout would not stop the operation of the facility,” Longo says. It all sounds far too good to be true. But the technology works. Over the past decade, half a dozen companies have been developing plasma technology to turn garbage into energy. “The best renewable energy is the one we complain about the most: municipal solid waste,” says Louis Circeo, the director of plasma research at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “It will prove cheaper to take garbage to a plasma plant than it is to dump it on a landfill.” A Startech machine that costs roughly $250 million could handle 2,000 tons of waste daily, approximately what a city of a million people amasses in that time span. Large municipalities typically haul their trash to landfills, where the operator charges a “tipping fee” to dump the waste. The national average is $35 a ton, although the cost can be more than twice that in the Northeast (where land is scarce, tipping fees are higher). And the tipping fee a city pays doesn’t include the price of trucking the garbage often hundreds of miles to a landfill or the cost of capturing leaky methane—a greenhouse gas—from the decomposing waste. In a city with an average tipping fee, a $250-million converter could pay for itself in about 10 years, and that’s without factoring in the money made from selling the excess electricity and syngas. After that break-even point, it’s pure profit. Someday very soon, cities might actually make money from garbage. Born with the gift of laughter, aware that the world is mad. -- Jimbo   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Sunday, March 04, 2007 - 07:24 am:    DR. Samuel Pinkner - Global Warming http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5CL8SbPRVc   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Sunday, March 04, 2007 - 11:28 am:    Jimbo, this procedure or sonething similar to it has been around for awhile.There is a golf course in Duarte,California that was built over a dump site back in the 80's.There is also a plant situated next to the golf course that pumps out all the toxic gas'es from the land fill,and converts it to energy;which it then sells to the local Edison company.Works great and they make a tremendous amount of money.   Njaeok Starlite Member Username: Njaeok Posted on Sunday, March 04, 2007 - 04:59 pm:    Bubs--- Yes, there is a number of such sites around the country where the terrain is suitable for recovering escaping gasses. The remarkable thing about the unit I posted is that it is self sustaining. As long as they feed it trash it produces three times as much electicity as is needed to keep it going. I only posted part of the article. The rest of it is on the Popular Science web page if you want to read it. Born with the gift of laughter, aware that the world is mad. -- Jimbo   Bubby Starlite Member Username: Bubby Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 - 11:10 pm:    Al Gore Challenged to International TV Debate on Global Warming PERTH, Scotland, March 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In a formal invitation sent to former Vice-President Al Gore's Tennessee address and released to the public, Lord Monckton has thrown down the gauntlet to challenge Gore to what he terms "the Second Great Debate," an internationally televised, head-to-head, nation-unto-nation confrontation on the question, "That our effect on climate is not dangerous." (http://ff.org/centers/cssp p/docs/20070316_monckton.html) Monckton, a former policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher during her years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, said, "A careful study of the substantial corpus of peer-reviewed science reveals that Mr. Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, is a foofaraw of pseudo-science, exaggerations, and errors, now being peddled to innocent schoolchildren worldwide."   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Saturday, April 07, 2007 - 01:50 pm:    I wish Global Warming would hurry it up- I’m freezing to death in Ohio.   Caprichos Starlite Member Username: Caprichos Posted on Saturday, April 07, 2007 - 10:17 pm:    Dear Mikey, I shall add you to my prayer list. I'm so sorry you are freezing to death in Ohio. I'll be sending God's angels your way to encamp you with their warmth and protection from the cold. Last night, here, in NC, came an artic blast with ghastly high winds. Eastern NC temps went down to the mid-to high 20's last night. Burrrr! God be with you, Mikey! We should all give peace a chance and pray reverently for our world leaders and our men and women in the armed forces and for the orphanes and the Widows and Widowers and for the homeless and for the disabled bodies. ((((Mikey)))) May the lord be with you. Take care. Love, Capri Love the art, poor as it may be, which thou hast learned, and be content with it; and pass through the rest of life like one who has intrusted to the gods with his whole soul all that he has, making thyself neither the tyrant nor the slave of any man. -Marcus Arelius   Njaeok Starlite Member Username: Njaeok Posted on Monday, April 30, 2007 - 03:17 pm:    Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period. Since there is no known life on Mars it suggests rapid changes in planetary climates could be natural phenomena. The mechanism at work on Mars appears, however, to be different from that on Earth. One of the researchers, Lori Fenton, believes variations in radiation and temperature across the surface of the Red Planet are generating strong winds. In a paper published in the journal Nature, she suggests that such winds can stir up giant dust storms, trapping heat and raising the planet’s temperature. Fenton’s team unearthed heat maps of the Martian surface from Nasa’s Viking mission in the 1970s and compared them with maps gathered more than two decades later by Mars Global Surveyor. They found there had been widespread changes, with some areas becoming darker. When a surface darkens it absorbs more heat, eventually radiating that heat back to warm the thin Martian atmosphere: lighter surfaces have the opposite effect. The temperature differences between the two are thought to be stirring up more winds, and dust, creating a cycle that is warming the plane Born with the gift of laughter, aware that the world is mad. -- Jimbo   Aimstraight Starlite Member Username: Aimstraight Posted on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 - 09:23 am:    The average temperature in April 2007 was 51.7 F. This was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the 47th coolest April in 113 years. The temperature trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit per decade. ________________________________________________________________________ Hurry Global Warming- it's cold

Add Your Message Here Post: -Color- Black Red Green Blue Yellow Purple Orange Cyan Gray White -Font- Arial Courier Symbol Times Verdana -Size- Smallest (-2) Small (-1) Normal Large (+1) Largest (+2) Username: Posting Information: This is a private posting area. Only registered users and moderators may post messages here. Password: Options: Enable HTML code in message Automatically activate URLs in message Action: