b-b-but global warming is a myth! the baby jebus told me so
Posted by gay veteran at March 26, 2008 06:37 PMIt just boggles my mind that you could be a candidate for President of the United States, read these reports, and not just say "Holy Flying Fuck! This needs to be Priority Numero Uno!"
Posted by space at March 26, 2008 07:02 PMLOL, JAY! You are a fucking IDIOT.
The fact that I went 10,000-0 as a tennis player wearing tennis sneakers and 0-50 wearing scuba fins does not prove a correlation between footwear and athletic success. Post hoc ergo propter hoc! Post hoc ergo propter hoc! Logical Fallacy! Nyah-Nyah!
Actually, humor me. Just so I know what flavor of fucking idiot you are, answer the following. Which of the following are true:
(a) Global Warming is not occurring. Reports such as the one cited above are either fake or the media simply does not report other regions where massive expansion of glaciers is occuring canceling any melting.
(b) Global Warming is occurring, but it is not man-made. Since it is not man-made it is not a problem. If large chunks of the polar ice caps are melting and raise sea-levels, devastating coastal cities and villages, it is not a problem because we didn't cause global warming. BTW, any asteroids on a collision course with Earth aren't man-made and aren't a problem either.
(c) Global Warming is a problem. It is man-made. But it is the fault of...the Chinese (and, soon, India...and maybe Brazil...and Russia...and Europe).
Let me guess. You used to believe (a). You now believe (b). And you are psychologically preparing for (c).
Posted by space at March 26, 2008 07:48 PMDuffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth stillwarming?"
She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."
Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"
Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued ... This is not what you'd expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you'd expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up ... So (it's) very unexpected, not something that's being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it's very significant."
Duffy: "It's not only that it's not discussed. We never hear it, do we? Whenever there's any sort of weather event that can be linked into the global warming orthodoxy, it's put on the front page. But a fact like that, which is that global warming stopped a decade ago, is virtually never reported, which is extraordinary."
Duffy then turned to the question of how the proponents of the greenhouse gas hypothesis deal with data that doesn't support their case. "People like Kevin Rudd and Ross Garnaut are speaking as though the Earth is still warming at an alarming rate, but what is the argument from the other side? What would people associated with the IPCC say to explain the (temperature) dip?"
Marohasy: "Well, the head of the IPCC has suggested natural factors are compensating for the increasing carbon dioxide levels and I guess, to some extent, that's what sceptics have been saying for some time: that, yes, carbon dioxide will give you some warming but there are a whole lot of other factors that may compensate or that may augment the warming from elevated levels of carbon dioxide.
"There's been a lot of talk about the impact of the sun and that maybe we're going to go through or are entering a period of less intense solar activity and this could be contributing to the current cooling."
Duffy: "Can you tell us about NASA's Aqua satellite, because I understand some of the data we're now getting is quite important in our understanding of how climate works?"
Marohasy: "That's right. The satellite was only launched in 2002 and it enabled the collection of data, not just on temperature but also on cloud formation and water vapour. What all the climate models suggest is that, when you've got warming from additional carbon dioxide, this will result in increased water vapour, so you're going to get a positive feedback. That's what the models have been indicating. What this great data from the NASA Aqua satellite ... (is) actually showing is just the opposite, that with a little bit of warming, weather processes are compensating, so they're actually limiting the greenhouse effect and you're getting a negative rather than a positive feedback."
Duffy: "The climate is actually, in one way anyway, more robust than was assumed in the climate models?"
Marohasy: "That's right ... These findings actually aren't being disputed by the meteorological community. They're having trouble digesting the findings, they're acknowledging the findings, they're acknowledging that the data from NASA's Aqua satellite is not how the models predict, and I think they're about to recognise that the models really do need to be overhauled and that when they are overhauled they will probably show greatly reduced future warming projected as a consequence of carbon dioxide."
Duffy: "From what you're saying, it sounds like the implications of this could beconsiderable ..."
Marohasy: "That's right, very much so. The policy implications are enormous. The meteorological community at the moment is really just coming to terms with the output from this NASA Aqua satellite and (climate scientist) Roy Spencer's interpretation of them. His work is published, his work is accepted, but I think people are still in shock at this point."
Come on folks...don't over read this event. Someone once said "follow the money", who's invested in companies waiting for the global warming triumph. Who's going to be the new billionaires, the next Mark Cuban's in America. Not Republicans, that's for sure. This man made global warming group is all a money grab. How much mercury is going into the ground though the discarding of the new light bulbs being pushed. How much pollution from those mines providing the nickel for hybrid batteries? I hear Sudsbury in Ontario is a lovely place to vacation. Now Europe is finding problems with biofuels creating more greenhouse gases than oil.
With Project Argo we have some 3000 underwater devices set to warn us about tsunami's. They also take temperature readings, currents flows, and the like. Where are the research results based on this data. Why aren't the results given any press...maybe the press didn't like the results because they have their minds made up and the results are contrary to them.
Models used to determine the possible effects of man made global warming are not written by scientist. These models do not have the findings...the data of both satellite Aqua nor the Project Argo's devices. They are out dated formulas and calculations with outdated incomplete data. The IPCC group was made up of both scientist and politicians, with the politicians carrying the most weight in the final product.
Posted by peter at March 26, 2008 09:46 PMAn ice sheet the size of Connecticut breaks loose and we need irrefutable proof of the devastation we are doing to this planet. In a few years the main organism populating this planet will be algae. It's probably what's for dinner pretty soon as well. You destroy the environment that supports the food chain and humans will start fighting over brill.
Posted by jeter at March 26, 2008 10:47 PMHoly flying fuck? What does that even mean? LOL!
Posted by jeter at March 26, 2008 10:48 PMI heard that same news story...Connecticut, please...Connecticut is only 160 square miles? Don't think so. The city of Berlin was 365 square miles. Jeter, we're talking about a section that is 10 by 16 miles or something like that. This isn't the first time this has happened, our world has been warmer without us having all the technology.
The AP story said the ice could have been frozen some 1500 years, that aught to tell you something right there... that it has a cycle of melting. Then there's the idea...how did it melt...surface temps aren't warm enough to cause this...underwater temps, there you go. What does the Project Argo monitors tell us about water temps? They're cooler...so what's left? The sun...ozone depletion allowing the sun greater access to this area?
Posted by peter at March 27, 2008 03:31 AMOne has to wonder why the wingnuts are so invested in denying what's happening right before their eyes. Do they enjoy looking stupid? Or is it more important to be against anything a "liberal" does than to accept what is obvious? Hilarious that Jay and petey don't even know they're deadenders - the argument is over, as Colbert says, once the market has spoken. How many products have you seen advertised lately as "green?" It's the new marketing sensation, which means people have accepted that something needs to be done. I'd say it's time to invest in alternative energy companies, they're going to be the rising industry in the next 10 years.
Posted by iamcoyote at March 27, 2008 05:27 AMI'd say it's time to invest in alternative energy companies, they're going to be the rising industry in the next 10 years.
Much like the French did in water technology and Germans did in water utilities.
As usual, because of neo-con interference we will be left with crumbs while the rest of the world is eating the whole pie.
Whew! I thought maybe this ice sheet thing meant we should consider the possibility that polluting our environment was a bad thing. What with pesticides and antibiotics in our public water supply, the EPA allowing raw sewage to be dumped in our public waterways, great palls of black smoke over every major city, and our food supply being infested with previously unseen bacteria, our meats pumped full of chemicals and downer cattle in our burgers...I was worried that maybe we might should consider possibly cleaning things up a bit! Thank god for the republi-cons! It's business as usual. I still need to come to grips with the fact that only two groups comprise the republi-cons...the wealthy and suckers. But I'm sure they are correct when they say global warming is just a myth and not a problem.
Posted by phidipides at March 27, 2008 06:09 AMAs an aside, I wonder who has the best carbon footprint? McCain, Obama, Bill Clinton in NY, Hillary Clinton in Georgetown, Kerry, Edwards, Gore or George W Bush in Crawford? My money says Crawford. Geothermal technology for heating and cooling, rain water capture and brown water recycling for irrigational purposes. A quarter of what the best of the others use in utilities. Lead by example, he had this before running for president, he built it that way. What are the others excuses?
Facinating that the only responses are personal attacks...where's the science, or do we have to depend on what the MSM media tells us. Y'all seem to like that MSM, MCM, or corporate media so much, depend on them so well.
Posted by peter at March 27, 2008 06:27 AMpeter will not understand the ramifications of Global Warming unless he starts growing breasts from drinking public water.
And to think the Iraqi's would love to have pharmaceuticals in their water supply, just so they wouldn't get cholera or "Blackwater Fever' first!
Posted by Seven of Six at March 27, 2008 06:32 AM"Blackwater Fever' first!
I was wondering if someone would 'rise' to this one...this name was given to this disease back in the 19th century in the Anbar Provence. Thanks, Seven for falling for this one, it shows where your head is. Maybe you want to attack McOld's teeth next?
My buddies, who are avid hunters and outdoorsmen, who learned from their fathers and grandfathers, were the first to tell me there was something to global warming. This was 10 years ago. Simple things... like Elk not coming down from high mountain areas anymore or saltwater fish in areas they aren't supposed to be.
90% of the scientists in the world believe that global warming is caused by man.
But I'm going to listen to peter the troll because he cuts and pastes republi-con talking points at TLC. Convincing argument petie.
Thanks, Seven for falling for this one, it shows where your head is.
It shows where your head isn't. You decided to read only the neo-con talking points again didn't you. I'll quote this part but please, read the whole article
FALLUJAH, Mar 26 (IPS) - Iraqi doctors in al-Anbar province warn of a new disease they call "Blackwater" that threatens the lives of thousands. The disease is named after Blackwater Worldwide, the U.S. mercenary company operating in Iraq.Posted by Seven of Six at March 27, 2008 07:05 AM"This disease is a severe form of malarial infection caused by the parasite plasmodium falciparum, which is considered the worst type of malarial infection," Dr. Ali Hakki from Fallujah told IPS. "It is one of the complications of that infection, and not the ordinary picture of the disease. Because of its frequent and severe complications, such as Blackwater fever, and its resistance to treatment, P. falciparum can cause death within 24 hours."
What Iraqis now call Blackwater fever is really a well-known medical condition, and while it has nothing to do with Blackwater Worldwide, Iraqis in al-Anbar province have decided to make the connection between the disease and the lethal U.S.-based company which has been responsible for the death of countless Iraqis.
The disease is most prevalent in Africa and Asia. The patient suffers severe intravascular haemolysis -- the destruction of red blood cells leading to kidney and liver failure. It also leads to black or red urination, and hence perhaps the new name 'Blackwater'.
The deadly disease, never before seen in Iraq on at least this scale, seems to be spreading across the country. And Iraq lacks medicines, hospitals, and doctors to lead a campaign to fight the disease.
Some GOP talking point...not From August 4, 1951
There was this guy from the 1890's that thought we were experiencing global warming and thought it would be better for crops. Wonder what greenhouse gasses were present for his event. Then there's the November, 1922 article by George Nicolas that stated "The Arctic seems to warming up." An expedition by the Norwegian department of Commerce, lead by Dr. Adolf Hoel travelled northward in August of 1922 and took readings down to 3100 meters. He stated he first saw it getting warmer in 1918 and it had "steadily gotten warmer". He said the region he witnessed today looked "not recognizable as the same region of 1868 to 1917". "Many old landmarks are so changed as to be unrecognizable. Where formerly great masses of ice were found, there are now often moraines, accumulations of earth and stones."
What I find mind-boggling about these numb-skulls is their insisting (!) on shifting the debate to WHETHER global climate change is man-made or not. I am not going to get into a debate on this thread over the overwhelming scientific evidence (and certainly I am not going to engage trolls from a political party that can't even accept that the Earth is more than a few years old).
But, even if humans had NOTHING to do with Global Warming. Even if scientists were completely confident that human activities had little to no impact on climate changes. Even if scientists claimed that there was NOTHING that we could do to alter the path of climate change. Even if all that were true, isn't the mere fact - indeed, the mere strong possibility -- that sea levels could rise by 2, 5, 10, or 20 feet or more because of melting polar ice worth planning for those contingencies.
These climate change deniers are pathological in their refusal to act until it is too late. The fact that rising sea levels alone (leaving aside all the other problems of draughts, floods, increasingly powerful storms, etc.) would displace hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people worldwide and represent a catastrophic blow to the world economy is insufficient to motivate these people to take any action beyond making cheap rhetorical attacks on Al Gore.
Just stunning.
Posted by space at March 27, 2008 07:58 AMOh come on space, the IPCC doesn't see anything like 20 feet happening anywhere in the next century...at the most, MOST one meter. If sea level is your only focus...make plans to move people away from the coast...NYC/Manhatten Island has seen a rise from the 1800's. There's this old bar written of in many books there...used to be located right on the shore...now there's been a lot of landfill put between it and the water. It's still located at the same site...wasn't moved...the water was moved.
(leaving aside all the other problems of draughts, floods, increasingly powerful storms, etc.) You really want to go there now. Don't think so.
Posted by peter at March 27, 2008 08:10 AM"make plans to move people away from the coast..."
Good God, you are a wanker.
Posted by space at March 27, 2008 08:15 AM
Jay and Peter
Please just quit with sound reasoning and the reality of algore. The folks here get so mad that they start spitting on themselves.
Posted by jj at March 27, 2008 08:21 AMOr build up levies like the Dane's. Amazing, just amazing...
Posted by peter at March 27, 2008 08:23 AM"Or build up levies like the Dane's. Amazing, just amazing..."
I believe you mean the Dutch. You impress me more by the minute.
I see the trolls are out in force. Turkana sure hit a sore spot with this one.
Posted by space at March 27, 2008 09:14 AMI wouldn't expect to have anyone impressed by me, a mere troll. Hey, both share the North Sea exposure and are next to Germany, pardon me. And Denmark has levies too.
Posted by peter at March 27, 2008 09:19 AMI see the trolls are out in force.
If you want to call the gibbering of a buncha ignorant monkeys a "force." It's funny, though, watching jj bounce around the other trolls like that yappy dog in the cartoons that tries to suck up to the larger dog "you tell 'em George, hyuk, hyuk," hoping to get acknowledged. As we all know, even negative attention, for toddlers, is attention.
Posted by iamcoyote at March 27, 2008 09:35 AMnext up, pants pissing peter, jarjar jj, and perfesser jay explain that the Sun revolves around the Earth
dumbasses
Posted by Gay Veteran at March 27, 2008 11:17 AMWhat we're seeing is that the warming of the polar zones is proceeding much faster than was predicted, so the climate models likely have been too "conservative" in their mix of components relating to ice sheet melt/loss.
Just as the political wing of the most recent IPCC report obtained "reductions" in the scientific estimates of how high the seas will rise as the warming proceeds. A majority of climate scientists thought the recent IPCC estimate of sea level rise was too "optimistic".
And as dire as the situation is, as strong a (final) warning as the world's scientists can give, we do nothing, while the egomaniacal deadenders like petr the pinhead and jay-gomaniac troll their "conservative" garbage troughs for more denialist spinning, as though the climate scientists will be changing their minds about the basic physics of climate and the massive databases already assembled.
Interesting how governments (especially ours) downplay the crisis of global warming (which will irreversibly destroy the planet's stable climate forever), while emphasizing and encouraging outright fear about the "crisis" of "terror"---which has few long term implications for humanity, including America.
We are rapidily running out of time to do something. That's what the ice shelves are telling us, one by one, collapse by collapse.
Posted by euzoius at March 27, 2008 11:26 AMSorry to not have chimed in here sooner but we've been over a lot of the "skeptic" teritory before.
Here's global warming and Antarctica.
Here's sea level as of a year ago. I could update the numbers thanks to GRACE and some other estimates of ice sheet mass change but the basic story is the same.
Here's Arctic sea ice.
The recent event on the Wilkins Ice Shelf is not huge but it is the result of warming in the Antarctic Peninsula (which in turn is a result of global warming). It's a event that we have expected to see (I work on this topic) but perhaps not so soon.
It's swell that the Bush compound in Texas makes use of alternative energy sources and conserves water. I suppose they have the discresionary funds to invest in such things, and have done a long-range economic analysis concluding that these investments make financial sense. Too bad the effort seems to stop at the end of the driveway.
Did you just get up Vet Gay. How's the job hunt going?
Posted by jj at March 27, 2008 01:54 PMNuclear power...
UK Push for big nuclear expansion
I think if we are really serious about our climate change responsibilities, if we want Britain to be as energy-independent as possible - then I think we should be talking about a significant expansion over and above the current contribution that nuclear power makes.
"It's now about 20%. I think it should be significantly more than that, if we are really going to reap the dividend of switching quickly to a proven low-carbon technology like nuclear power."
Posted by MD at March 27, 2008 03:21 PMHere's your answer to cut CO2 emissions.
There are currently 20 nuclear power plants under construction with plans for 72 more in Russia, China, India and Japan. Over the next 10 years, China will construct as many as three new nuclear power plants each year. In the U.S., more than 30 reactor-construction applications are now pending with Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Posted by MD at March 27, 2008 03:27 PMThank you Dr. Hulbe for your input. I was wondering if you would comment on it.
Here's the science release from my colleagues at the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The high resolution image of the new icebergs is fantastic. The nice crisp white-topped ones are floating in their original orientation while the bergs with rougher exposed surfaces that look to be floating a bit lower in the ocean (and indeed are) are toppled over, exposing the innards of the ice shelf. Note how blue some of that material in the toppled-bock sections is. That's meltwater that percolated down into the firn (old snow) and refroze. Lotta water.
More about related events here and here from 2002.
The second link above is broken. It should be http://web.pdx.edu/~chulbe/science/Larsen/larsen2002.html
Hi Christina! Thanks for the links. The toppled icebergs must be a wealth of data - it's gotta be very interesting for scientists. The high-res shot is amazing!
Posted by iamcoyote at March 27, 2008 07:38 PM