Global Warming Cont...

Hey Dawgbitten, I'm with you on global warming and all...I just wish it would hurry up.

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Originally Posted by Soonerdawg

Jim Henson has staked his entire career on his stance on global warming. He better hope there is global warming or he will be disgraced. Well, perhaps not, because the chicken littles have framed the argument so that no matter what happens, there is global warming, even if it gets colder.

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Sooner, CO2 levels are going up, year after year, because we are burning huge amounts of fossil fuels. This CO2 gas is a greenhouse gas in that it makes the planet surface warmer because heat cannot radiate back into space as it did when CO2 levels were lower. The average surface temperature of the planet is getting warmer. Sea levels are rising and our oceans are becoming more acidic because of their absorption of CO2. Check out the Gulf of Mexico water temperatures.

This is not Chicken Little stuff. We can sing "Don't worry. Be Happy!!" all day long but eventually our grand-children and great-grandchildren will have to pay the piper. If you are not concerned about them, then party like it's 1999..

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Originally Posted by TYLERTECHSAS

New source of global warming gas found: plants

Wed Jan 11, 1:06 PM ET


LONDON (Reuters) - German scientists have discovered a new source of methane, a greenhouse gas that is second only to carbon dioxide in its impact on climate change.
The culprits are plants.
They produce about 10 to 30 percent of the annual methane found in the atmosphere, according to researchers at the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany.
The scientists measured the amount of methane released by plants in controlled experiments. They found it increases with rising temperatures and exposure to sunlight.
"Significant methane emissions from both intact plants and detached leaves were observed ... in the laboratory and in the field," Dr Frank Keppler and his team said in a report in the journal Nature.
Methane, which is produced by city rubbish dumps, coal mining, flatulent animals, rice cultivation and peat bogs, is one of the most potent greenhouse gases in terms of its ability to trap heat.
Concentrations of the gas in the atmosphere have almost tripled in the last 150 years. About 600 million tonnes worldwide are produced annually.
The scientists said their finding is important for understanding the link between global warming and a rise in greenhouse gases.
It could also have implications for the Kyoto Protocol, which calls for developed countries to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.
Keppler and his colleagues discovered that living plants emit 10 to 100 times more methane than dead plants.
Scientists had previously thought that plants could only emit methane in the absence of oxygen.
David Lowe, of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand, said the findings are startling and controversial.
"Keppler and colleagues' finding helps to account for observations from space of incredibly large plumes of methane above tropical forests," he said in a commentary on the research.
But the study also poses questions, such as how such a potentially large source of methane could have been overlooked and how plants produced it.
"There will be a lively scramble among researchers for the answers to these and other questions," Lowe added.

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Bump for Salty's last comments:icon_wink

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Originally Posted by Dawgbitten

ARbob, I haven't seen you debunk anything. Please point me to where you have done this?

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i don't have time to repeat the same old arguments (although you apparently do). i have given my reply to every argument put forth on this thread and the previous three. if you have something new, i will respond -- otherwise, i'm through.

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Originally Posted by arkansasbob

i don't have time to repeat the same old arguments (although you apparently do). i have given my reply to every argument put forth on this thread and the previous three. if you have something new, i will respond -- otherwise, i'm through.

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The level of the Planetary Ocean is slowly increasing, as well as the quantity of free water in the atmosphere. And this is due partly to the fact that the loss of ice from Greenland doubled between 1996 and 2005, as its glaciers flowed faster into the ocean in response to a generally warmer climate, according to a NASA/University of Kansas study.

According to a press release by NASA, the study will be published tomorrow in the journal Science. It concludes the changes to Greenland's glaciers in the past decade are widespread, large and sustained over time. They are progressively affecting the entire ice sheet and increasing its contribution to global sea level rise.

Researchers Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Pannir Kanagaratnam of the University of Kansas Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets, Lawrence, used data from Canadian and European satellites. They conducted a nearly comprehensive survey of Greenland glacial ice discharge rates at different times during the past 10 years.

"The Greenland ice sheet's contribution to sea level is an issue of considerable societal and scientific importance," Rignot said. "These findings call into question predictions of the future of Greenland in a warmer climate from computer models that do not include variations in glacier as a component of change. Actual changes will likely be much larger than predicted by these models."

The evolution of Greenland's ice sheet is being driven by several factors. These include accumulation of snow in its interior, which adds mass and lowers sea level; melting of ice along its edges, which decreases mass and raises sea level; and the flow of ice into the sea from outlet glaciers along its edges, which also decreases mass and raises sea level. This study focuses on the least well known component of change, which is glacial ice flow. Its results are combined with estimates of changes in snow accumulation and ice melt from an independent study to determine the total change in mass of the Greenland ice sheet.

Rignot said this study offers a comprehensive assessment of the role of enhanced glacier flow, whereas prior studies of this nature had significant coverage gaps. Estimates of mass loss from areas without coverage relied upon models that assumed no change in ice flow rates over time. The researchers theorized if glacier acceleration is an important factor in the evolution of the Greenland ice sheet, its contribution to sea level rise was being underestimated.

To test this theory, the scientists measured ice velocity with interferometric synthetic-aperture radar data collected by the European Space Agency's Earth Remote Sensing Satellites 1 and 2 in 1996; the Canadian Space Agency's Radarsat-1 in 2000 and 2005; and the European Space Agency's Envisat Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar in 2005. They combined the ice velocity data with ice sheet thickness data from airborne measurements made between 1997 and 2005, covering almost Greenland's entire coast, to calculate the volumes of ice transported to the ocean by glaciers and how these volumes changed over time. The glaciers surveyed by those satellite and airborne instrument data drain a sector encompassing nearly 1.2 million square kilometers (463,000 square miles), or 75 percent of the Greenland ice sheet total area.

From 1996 to 2000, widespread glacial acceleration was found at latitudes below 66 degrees north. This acceleration extended to 70 degrees north by 2005. The researchers estimated the ice mass loss resulting from enhanced glacier flow increased from 63 cubic kilometers in 1996 to 162 cubic kilometers in 2005. Combined with the increase in ice melt and in snow accumulation over that same time period, they determined the total ice loss from the ice sheet increased from 96 cubic kilometers in 1996 to 220 cubic kilometers in 2005. To put this into perspective, a cubic kilometer is one trillion liters (approximately 264 billion gallons of water), about a quarter more than Los Angeles uses in one year.

Glacier acceleration has been the dominant mode of mass loss of the ice sheet in the last decade. From 1996 to 2000, the largest acceleration and mass loss came from southeast Greenland. From 2000 to 2005, the trend extended to include central east and west Greenland.

"In the future, as warming around Greenland progresses further north, we expect additional losses from northwest Greenland glaciers, which will then increase Greenland's contribution to sea level rise," Rignot said.

It is hard to imagine anyone doesn't want to decrease pollution and attempt to maintain earth's sustainable environment.

Seek first to understand then to be understood.

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Originally Posted by aubunique

It is hard to imagine anyone doesn't want to decrease pollution and attempt to maintain earth's sustainable environment.

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I agree and I think both parties want the same thing. Republicans that I know would agree that we should work hard on both of those isues. The methods are probably different at times. But all should want the same results.

Think Dubya knows which side his bread is buttered on?


One big supporter of climate science research is the Bush administration, spending $5 billion a year. But Mr. Bush refuses to sign a treaty forcing cuts in greenhouse gases. The White House also declined 60 Minutes' request for an interview.



http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/...n1323169.shtml

Tech88, good report.

I watched the report last night. The very last statement made by the guy told the tail.......The climate is changing and the reduction of greenhouse gases will help a small amount.

I'm sure 60mins. chose not to elaborate on the other causes (likely natural) of climate changes. They do have a platform after all..... Reduce Greenhouse Gases at All Costs. Just guessing here, but I don't think Bush wants to wreck the entire world economy for something that will only help a small amount.

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Originally Posted by aubunique

It is hard to imagine anyone doesn't want to decrease pollution and attempt to maintain earth's sustainable environment.

Seek first to understand then to be understood.

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I could not agree with that statement any more.

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Originally Posted by maddawg

I watched the report last night. The very last statement made by the guy told the tail.......The climate is changing and the reduction of greenhouse gases will help a small amount.

I'm sure 60mins. chose not to elaborate on the other causes (likely natural) of climate changes. They do have a platform after all..... Reduce Greenhouse Gases at All Costs. Just guessing here, but I don't think Bush wants to wreck the entire world economy for something that will only help a small amount.

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So we're all in agreement there is such a thing as global warming?

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Originally Posted by TECH88

So we're all in agreement there is such a thing as global warming?

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Don't hold your breath. There are a certain number here who think that global warming is a hoax.

They are all humming, "Don't worry, be happy!!"

Yep. They are just like GW and Michael Crichton. They get their information from Fictional works.

Has anyone read this book?


Bush's Chat With Novelist Alarms Environmentalists

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http://view.atdmt.com/ORG/view/nwyrk...org/direct/01/



By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
Published: February 19, 2006
WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 — One of the perquisites of being president is the ability to have the author of a book you enjoyed pop into the White House for a chat.
Over the years, a number of writers have visited President Bush, including Natan Sharansky, Bernard Lewis and John Lewis Gaddis. And while the meetings are usually private, they rarely ruffle feathers.
Now, one has.
In his new book about Mr. Bush, "Rebel in Chief: Inside the Bold and Controversial Presidency of George W. Bush," Fred Barnes recalls a visit to the White House last year by Michael Crichton, whose 2004 best-selling novel, "State of Fear," suggests that global warming is an unproven theory and an overstated threat.
Mr. Barnes, who describes Mr. Bush as "a dissenter on the theory of global warming," writes that the president "avidly read" the novel and met the author after Karl Rove, his chief political adviser, arranged it. He says Mr. Bush and his guest "talked for an hour and were in near-total agreement."
"The visit was not made public for fear of outraging environmentalists all the more," he adds.
And so it has, fueling a common perception among environmental groups that Mr. Crichton's dismissal of global warming, coupled with his popularity as a novelist and screenwriter, has undermined efforts to pass legislation intended to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas that leading scientists say causes climate change.
Mr. Crichton, whose views in "State of Fear" helped him win the American Association of Petroleum Geologists' annual journalism award this month, has been a leading doubter of global warming and last September appeared before a Senate committee to argue that the supporting science was mixed, at best.
"This shows the president is more interested in science fiction than science," Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, said after learning of the White House meeting. Mr. O'Donnell's group monitors environmental policy.
"This administration has put no limit on global warming pollution and has consistently rebuffed any suggestion to do so," he said.
Not so, according to the White House, which said Mr. Barnes's book left a false impression of Mr. Bush's views on global warming.
Michele St. Martin, a spokeswoman for the Council on Environmental Quality, a White House advisory agency, pointed to several speeches in which Mr. Bush had acknowledged the impact of global warming and the need to confront it, even if he questioned the degree to which humans contribute to it.

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Originally Posted by TECH88

So we're all in agreement there is such a thing as global warming?

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Would science have labled it "Global Warming" if they knew it wasn't caused by man?