The 2008 winter was the coldest in 40 years for the upper Midwest, Plains states and most of Canada. Minnesota newspapers report that this year's opening of the locks to Mississippi barge traffic, delayed by three weeks, was the latest since the modern waterway opened in 1940.
Eau Claire, where "old-fashioned winters" have been a thing of the past, recorded 43 days of below-zero temperatures, while folks down in Madison shoveled away at a 117-year record snowfall throughout the season, as did many in New England and Canada.
Rare snowfalls struck Buenos Aires, Capetown, and Sidney during their mid-year winter, while China continually battled blizzards. Even Baghdad experienced measurable snowfall.
Antarctic pack-ice far exceeded what Captain Cook saw on his 18th century voyage into the Southern Ocean. On the continent itself the miles-thick ice continues to accumulate despite peripheral melting along the Antarctic Peninsula and occasional calving of an ice block. At the opposite pole, flow-ice once again spans the entire Arctic Ocean, and by April it had extended into the Bering Strait, making up for the much heralded melt-back last summer.
From January 2007 through the end of January 2008, the average global temperature fell by nearly a degree Fahrenheit, based on data obtained by the MET Office in Great Britain and other international temperature monitoring networks.
What are we to make of this? The recent climate conference held in New York City, sponsored by the Heartland Institute, provides some answers. Several hundreds climatologists in attendance dispelled notions that the global warming debate is over. Most attendees, who readily acknowledge the existence of post-Little Ice Age warming, believe man-made emissions are unlikely to cause major climate change and signed a declaration to that effect.
Bill Gray, dean of hurricane forecasters, attributed short-term climate change to slow-moving deep ocean currents that result from variation in the salinity of water sinking near the poles and ultimately welling up again along the coast of South America. These fluctuations account for the comings and goings of the familiar El Nino/La Nina cycles and the longer Pacific Decadal Oscillation that stretches over a large area of the eastern Pacific.
Solar experts highlighted how sunspots, and associated magnetic storms on the Sun's surface, affect Earth's weather and climate. The previous (very strong) 11-year sunspot cycle, associated with the recent warmth, ended in 2007, after having peaked in 2002. The new cycle should have already begun, but hasn't yet.
In the absence of sunspots, solar flares are minimal. Flares eject massive streams of electrons and protons outward from the Sun. A portion of this stream, called the "solar wind", bathes our planet producing the aurora and interfering with communications. The solar wind, as it interacts with Earth's magnetic field, also protects us from the harmful effects of cosmic radiation.
During periods of weak solar activity - as at present - cosmic rays (high-energy protons originating in interstellar space) penetrate through the troposphere and ionize oxygen and nitrogen molecules. The ions become nucleating sites for water vapor that condenses into clouds. And when sunspots are at a minimum, more clouds form and correspondingly more sunlight is reflected back into space. The enhanced reflectance (albedo) cools the Earth. We all have experienced how quickly the temperature drops when the sun ducks behind a puffy white cloud on a warm, dry afternoon.
Past cool periods, identified with the late stages of the "Little Ice Age" and with the Maunder and Dalton climate minima, closely correlate with low sunspot numbers (astronomers have kept close tabs on sunspots since Galileo's time). Some solar-physicists are now saying if the current cycle doesn't begin to produce spots soon, we can expect a cool-down like the 19th-Century Dalton minimum - or worse. Decades-long cooling in the past brought crop failures to Europe from repeated summer frosts and restricted growing seasons.
With grain shortages already staring us in the face, we'd be advised to begin thinking about a global cool-down instead of a warming that may or may not continue. We might consider ways to transform semi-desert into arable land and to develop seed with shorter maturing cycles suitable for a sub-boreal grain belt. If cooling should begin in earnest, we will quickly forget global warming as we face the new challenges ahead.
Balgord, a consultant and writer, heads Environmental and Resources Technology in Middleton. _________________ Here Lies the United States Of America.
Joined: May 17, 2004 Posts: 1969 Location: Democratic People's Republic of Washington
Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 12:35 pm Post subject: Over 31,000 US Scientists Deny Anthropogenic Global Warming
Over 31,000 US Scientists Deny Anthropogenic Global Warming By Dennis T. Avery web posted May 26, 2008
In 1998, Dr. Arthur Robinson, Director of the Oregon Institute for Science and Medicine, posted his first Global Warming skeptic petition, on the Institute's website (oism.org). It quickly attracted the signatures of more than 17,000 Americans who held college degrees in science. Widely known as the Oregon Petition, it became a counter-weight for the "all scientists agree" mantra of the man-man Global Warming crowd.
Recently, with America being dragged toward Kyoto-style energy limits by cadres of alarmists, Robinson mailed a new copy of the petition to his original signers, asking them to recruit additional qualified scientists. Now his list includes nearly 32,000 American man-made warming skeptics with science qualifications. More than 9,000 hold scientific PhDs. Almost 32,000 thousand skeptics happens to be twelve times as many scientists as the 2,500 scientific reviewers claimed by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to form a scientific consensus.
Earlier this month Robinson held a press meeting at the National Press Club in DC, followed by a luncheon on Capital Hill, to which members of Congress and their aides were invited. Not surprisingly, attendance was low.
Robinson's petition states a truth: "There is no convincing evidence that human release of CO2, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing or will cause, in the foreseeable future, catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."
What do these approx 32,000 scientists believe has caused the earth's warming since 1850 if it isn't CO2? He points to the sun. Robinson notes that over the past 150 years the sunspot index has predicted the Earth's temperature changes—with 79 percent accuracy—about ten years before they happen. The sunspots actually predicted the 2007 global temperature decline; the index turned down in 2000. The computer models didn't foresee it.
The correlation between Earth's temperatures and CO2 is only at the "accidental" level—22 percent and declining sharply over the past decade as the temperatures have refused to increase with the CO2 levels. Robinson says the lack of correlation between CO2 levels and past Earth temperatures proves that CO2 is not dominating our climate.
The Oregon chemist warns that "no other major scientific problem has ever been tackled the way the UN has approached global warming." The UN hosted a big meeting of scientists, he says, and then a small group of "authors" summarized the discussions into a global action plan. But the UN has never produced any evidence that humans are warming our climate. The UN panel says CO2 became the culprit "by the process of elimination" but such a process is neither scientific nor admissible in a court of law.
The forecasts of desperate temperature increases all come from computer climate models, notes Robinson. But the computer models keep forecasting more warming than we get. In fact, 70 percent of the earth's recent warming occurred before 1940, while virtually all of humanity's greenhouse gas emission has occurred since that date. The Earth's net warming since 1940 is a tiny 0.2 degree C.
"If CO2 isn't causing our tiny warming, then banning all our energy will simply make people poor and helpless, says Robinson, "The cold spells and heat waves nature will always throw at us, will then indeed, threaten human lives on the planet." ESR
Dennis T. Avery is a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC and is the Director for the Center for Global Food Issues. He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years, Readers may write him at PO Box 202, Churchville, VA 2442 or email to cgfi@hughes.net. _________________ Here Lies the United States Of America.
While the former vice president is leading the charge for drastically changing the way humans do business in a bid to avert catastrophic, man-made global warming, scientists reported today there is noticeable climate change taking place on Jupiter, too.
The news follows reports as far back as three years ago that ice caps on Mars are also retreating much as some of the ice in the Earth's Arctic circle.
There's one striking difference between Earth and the other two planets, however. Neither Jupiter or Mars has any people – and no artificial activity creating so-called "greenhouse gases" like carbon dioxide.
Increased turbulence and storms first observed on Jupiter more than two years ago are still raging, according to astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley, and the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, who snapped high-resolution pictures of the planet earlier this month.
Captured with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the 10-meter Keck II telescope, this so-called "major upheaval" on Jupiter involves stunning changes in the planet's atmosphere, said lead astronomer Imke de Pater, professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley.
The new images, the first since Jupiter emerged from its passage behind the Sun, may show that Jupiter indeed is undergoing a major climate change, as predicted four years ago.
"One of the most notable changes we observe in both the Hubble and Keck images is the change from a rather bland, quiescent band surrounding the Great Red Spot just over a year ago to one that is incredibly turbulent at both sides of the spot," de Pater said. "During all previous HST observations and spacecraft encounters, starting with Voyager in 1979, such turbulence was seen only on the west or left side of the spot."
According to Philip S. Marcus, a professor of fluid dynamics at UC Berkeley, analysis of the Hubble and Keck images may support his 2004 conjecture that Jupiter is in the midst of global climate change that will alter temperatures by as much as 10 degrees Celsius, getting warmer near the equator and cooler near the south pole. He predicted that large changes would start in the southern hemisphere around 2006, causing the jet streams to become unstable and spawn new vortices.
"The appearance of the planet's cloud system from just north of the equator down to 34 degrees south latitude keeps surprising us with changes and, in particular, with new cloud features that haven't been previously observed," Marcus said. "Whether or not Jupiter's climate has changed due to a predicted warming, the cloud activity over the last two and a half years shows dramatically that something unusual has happened."
Mars, too, is being hit by rapid climate change and it is happening so fast that the red planet could lose its southern ice cap, according to scientists.
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 Mars Phoenix probe is scheduled to touch down on the red planet around 7:53 Eastern Time Sunday. If all goes well, it will land near the red planet's north pole. There, it will sample the ice that lies just beneath the surface. On-board instruments will analyze the ice and will look for signs of life.
"By landing on the northern plains, we're looking at active processes that are taking place today," says Peter Smith, the scientist in charge of the operation. "And these active processes have to do with the expansion and contraction of that ice. We're going to see climate change written into the soils." _________________ Here Lies the United States Of America.
Mars is being hit by rapid climate change and it is happening so fast that the red planet could lose its southern ice cap, writes Jonathan Leake.
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 planet. _________________ Here Lies the United States Of America.
Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 12:47 pm Post subject: Re: Over 31,000 US Scientists Deny Anthropogenic Global Warm
GW is a non-issue.
In 10 years, when people are wondering where their next meal is coming from, nobody is going to give a rat's ass about the temperature in 50 years. _________________ Massive Human Dieoff must occur as a result of Peak Oil. Many more than half will die. It will occur everywhere, including where you live. If you fail to recognize this, then your odds of living move toward the "going to die" group.
Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 12:54 pm Post subject: Re: Over 31,000 US Scientists Deny Anthropogenic Global Warm
31,000 "scientists." There is a bit of missing information here. 9000 have PhD's in what fields? How many of these scientists are practicing scientists in the fields of atmospheric physics, climatology or other relevant fields. I have a master's degree in educational psychology. That does not make me an expert in primate behavior.
May 23, 2008
31,000 Scientists Shatter the Myth of a “Scientific Consensus” on Global Warming
CFIF
Environmental extremists routinely assert a “scientific consensus” that global warming is occurring, and that human activity somehow causes it. This week, however, over 31,000 scientists spoke up and reduced that myth to a smoldering rubble. (see related articles)
The environmentalists’ alleged “scientific consensus” is much like the curtain in The Wizard of Oz, behind which the supposedly infallible wizard dictated to his minions. Beyond that curtain, however, the wizard was nothing more than an ordinary little man perpetrating a fraud upon those who worshipped his doctrine. And once Toto removed that curtain, the fraud was exposed for all to see.
Similarly, environmentalists’ mythical “scientific consensus” has served as a shroud behind which they have sought to maintain an air of infallibility. By falsely claiming a closed consensus and excoriating anyone who speaks out against their flawed orthodoxy, environmental extremists seek to prevent any objective, scientific debate that might inhibit their political agenda.
That shroud, however, was further torn this week by a 31,000-strong petition organized by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM). According to the OISM’s board of scientists, “a review of the research literature concerning the environmental consequences of increased levels of carbon dioxide leads to the conclusion that increases during the 20th Century have produced no deleterious effects upon global weather, climate, or temperature.”
To the contrary, the OISM notes that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide have actually increased plant growth rates, among other positive effects. On this basis, the OISM concludes that “predictions of harmful climatic effects due to future increases in minor greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide are in error and do not conform to current experimental knowledge.”
Accordingly, the straightforward petition reads:
We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing, or will in the foreseeable future cause, catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.
The petition itself appears alongside a letter from the late Frederick Seitz, a former President of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Seitz stated that “the United States is very close to adopting an international agreement that would ration the use of energy and technologies that depend upon coal, oil, natural gas and some other organic compounds.” He therefore warned that, “this treaty is, in our opinion, based upon flawed ideas. Research into data on climate change does not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful.”
It should be noted that the OISM’s petition effort receives absolutely no funding from the energy industry, or from anyone else with a financial interest in the ongoing climate change debate. Rather, its funding derives entirely from private, non-tax-deductible contributions from individual donors.
Global warming alarmists will nevertheless exclaim, like the “wizard” in The Wizard of Oz, “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” Their agenda simply cannot tolerate dissent, contrary evidence, or objective discussion of the matter. Instead, they cling to the claim of a false consensus, and liken any objective disagreement to flat-earth proponents. According to Al Gore, for instance, “there is as strong a consensus on this issue as science has ever had.”
Oh? Is it as strong as the supposed consensus when Newsweek announced on November 23, 1992 that “the advent of a new ice age, scientists say, appears to be guaranteed,” and that “the devastation will be astonishing?”
Gore’s comment is obviously absurd on its face. A scientific consensus does exist in well-settled scientific subjects, such as the laws of gravity or physics. But this is certainly not the case when it comes to climate change.
We can thank the OISM, its leadership and its 31,000 participating scientists for helping shatter the environmentalists’ myth. _________________ Here Lies the United States Of America.
I have always been skeptical of the religious view of scientific questions. To that end, I greatly admire The Skeptic magazine. Of late, the Skeptic has moved from debunking such inanities as intelligent design to debunking another religious view, the unshakable faith in anthropogenic global warming.
When it comes to global warming, there are two separate issues.
The first is whether it is a good idea to raise the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through human activity. All things being equal, it's probably not, as Glenn Seaborg noted way back in the 1960s.
In 1969, as the head of the Atomic Energy Commission, Seaborg said that those who opposed nuclear power "have just not considered the facts . . . nor weighed those facts in terms of realistic alternatives." According to a New York Times article on the speech, Seaborg said that although there were technologies for mitigating pollution from fossil fuels, there were "no methods known of eliminating the carbon dioxide that results from combustion."
Seaborg, who died in 1999, did not make any connection between carbon dioxide and the climate. But the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, whose discoveries are too many to list here, clearly believed that adding massive amounts of CO-2 to the atmosphere was not a good idea when there was a cleaner alternative.
So if you're opposed to adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, the single most effective way to avoid doing so is by getting our energy from nuclear power. No other solution even comes close.
The second question is whether all that CO-2 actually warms the atmosphere. It might. And it might not. Here's an interesting study from the Skeptic titled "The Climate of Belief" in which the author, Patrick Frank, that makes the argument that scientists at the moment lack the means to make that judgment.
"General Circulation Models are so terribly unreliable that there is no objectively falsifiable reason to suppose any of the current warming trend is due to human-produced CO-2, or that this CO-2 will detectably warm the climate at all," the author concludes.
This is a highly technical study and will require a long, thorough reading. It took me an hour or so, and I'm much better at this sort of thing than most people thanks to a career spent analyzing studies in general and scientific studies in particular. _________________ Here Lies the United States Of America.
Ah, just leave it alone. The AGW hysteria is dead and almost nobody bothers about it anymore. It will just be forgotten. The Nobel Prize is a mighty castration and euthanasia device - everything it touches dies or get neutered. Authors and scientists who get the Nobel get their careers completely and irrevocably trashed.
I guess that the Nobel gives an express ride to "previous" status and they suddenly belong to yesterday rather than the future, and people find it un-sexy to belong to yesterday.
The publication ”Nature - Not Human Activity - Rules the Climate” is a Summary for Policymakers of the Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change with contributions by 25 scientists and edited and published by Dr. Fred Singer and the Heartland Institute. It has a forward authored by Dr. Frederick Seitz in February 2008. Dr. Seitz was President Emeritus, Rockefeller University, Past President, National Academy of Sciences, Past President, American Physical Society and Chairman, Science and Environmental Policy Project. Dr. Seitz sadly passed away on March 2, 2008. The NIPCC is being presented in briefings throughout Europe over the next month.
After the Introductioon (Section 1), the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change focuses on two major issues: 1) The very weak evidence that the causes of the current warming are anthropogenic (Section 2) and 2) The far more robust evidence that the causes of the current warming are natural (Section 3).
The NIPCC then addresses the following issues: 3) Computer models are unreliable guides to future climate conditions (Section 4), 4) Sea-level rise is not significantly affected by rise in greenhouse gases (Section 5), 5) The data on ocean heat content have been misused to suggest anthropogenic warming. The role of greenhouse gases in the reported rise in ocean temperature is largely unknown (Section 6), 6) Understanding of the atmospheric carbon dioxide budget is incomplete (Section 7), 7) Higher concentrations of CO2 are more likely to be beneficial to plant and animal life and to human health than lower concentrations (Section , The economic effects of modest warming are likely to be positive and beneficial to human health (Section 9) and 9) the Conclusion: Our imperfect understanding of the causes and consequences of climate change means the science is far from settled. This, in turn, means proposed efforts to mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions are premature and misguided. Any attempt to influence global temperatures by reducing such emissions would be both futile and expensive (Section 10).
Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 1:28 pm Post subject: Re: Over 31,000 US Scientists Deny Anthropogenic Global Warm
Environmentalists, by definition, are well fed.
Remove that condition, and people will stop caring about anything else, for example, no more than a starving fox cares about the damage he is doing to the chicken.
Quote:
31,000 "scientists." There is a bit of missing information here. 9000 have PhD's in what fields?
It's not any more misleading than the stuff put out by GW hysterics. When they quote numbers, any ol' PhD will do.
Quote:
How many of these scientists are practicing scientists in the fields of atmospheric physics, climatology or other relevant fields.
Like all evidence, take it for what it's worth. If they are soil scientists or organic chemists, then they have a background and training that allows them to apply the scientific method.
Quote:
I have a master's degree in educational psychology. That does not make me an expert in primate behavior.
In fact, it doesn't make you an expert in anything, although it does entitle you to get paid way too much to head shrink all of the ritalin ridden, Xbox playin, ignorant and gunnuh pay, abandoned children in the idiot factories where people with bogus degrees like yours typically find employment sucking at the public tit. _________________ Massive Human Dieoff must occur as a result of Peak Oil. Many more than half will die. It will occur everywhere, including where you live. If you fail to recognize this, then your odds of living move toward the "going to die" group.
Joined: Aug 14, 2004 Posts: 2066 Location: San Diego, Ca.
Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 1:32 pm Post subject: k_semler's Anti GW extravaganza
6 different k_semler threads all rolled into one delicious bite! _________________ "Peak oil isn't more than an interesting industry factoid and doesn't have anything to do with the hysterics speculated on ad nauseum around here!" ReserveGrowthRulz
Last edited by jato on Mon May 26, 2008 1:50 pm; edited 1 time in total
Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 1:49 pm Post subject: Re: Over 31,000 US Scientists Deny Anthropogenic Global Warm
rdberg1957 wrote:
Your display of ignorant rant does not portend well for your grasp of the scientific method.
Forget about my grasp of the scientific method - I'm not making any scientific claims here.
Let's talk about you, for a second.
Here it is for you . . .
Your education is a canard that is made possible only by oil.
In fact, your entire field of endeavor exists, essentially, because we have had the luxury in the last 50 years of oil to rip off taxpayers by hiring every manner of charlatan in chronically failing attempts to improve the holocaust know as the public education system.
Since the advent of modern psychology and its infection of the public schools, the absolute best thing that could be said about educational psychologists - and I don't agree with it - is that the holocaust would be worse were it not for them.
You people are a disease. You infect school systems. You provide unneeded services that do more harm than good.
50 years ago, there were no education psychologists.
50 years from now, when people are struggling to live at a basic level, the pathogen known as the "educational psychologist" will be gone, along with SUVs and all of the other destructive excesses that are the biproducts of cheap oil.
Good riddance when the day comes that local budgets constrict sufficiently to force this particular disease out of the diseased system. _________________ Massive Human Dieoff must occur as a result of Peak Oil. Many more than half will die. It will occur everywhere, including where you live. If you fail to recognize this, then your odds of living move toward the "going to die" group.
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