Green dots for you my friend.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dirtydawg
When Al Gore stops driving around in Suburbans, I will too. Actually, I'll probably stop before he does. And I'll probably start riding a bike to work before he does, too.
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Green dots for you my friend.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dirtydawg
When Al Gore stops driving around in Suburbans, I will too. Actually, I'll probably stop before he does. And I'll probably start riding a bike to work before he does, too.
As a geologist, we were taught this many years ago at TECH as well. Years of study since has lead me to the same conclusion. The earth goes through natural timed phases of warming and cooling. Always has and always will. Now, is mankind playing a larger part to help warm it, sure. Is it a difference maker. I doubt it.
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.
That global warming has sure been kicking my a$$ lately. It's going to be around mid teens tonight and snow predicted for tomorrow night. It's been so cold in January I sure wish we'd have some global warming pretty soon so I could warm up.
Yaeh, breaking records in the northeast and northwest. And new record snowfalls in Alaska I believe. It's a just another God planned earth cycle baby. Not a political issue.Quote:
Originally Posted by ARKDAWG02
Did you guys know that the entire state of Louisiana was once under water, then tropical and then later covered by a glacier that went as far south as Leesville/Alex. This is what the earth does over very long periods of time folks. Ask any geologist you know out there and he will tell you the same.
This should not be a political issue guys.
How about the time frames for those events? If the ocean water level goes up a foot, what will that mean to Louisiana?Quote:
Originally Posted by TYLERTECHSAS
Not much for somebody in Shreveport, but anybody south of I-10 better start thinking "Western Ozarks".Quote:
Originally Posted by saltydawg
Quote:
Originally Posted by altadawg
Did you see Bill Nye the so-called science guy get his butt handed to him on Larry king Wed night? Even you left wing dems could have seen how articulately and accurately the MIT explained that global warming is little more than fear mongering. :bomb:
There are plenty of REAL climate scientists who would have put the head of that MIT professor on a silver platter.Quote:
Originally Posted by kevnazbell
What field was that MIT guy in anyway? I just saw the tail end of the show.
If you don't think GW is real, go up to Alaska and take a look.
Richard Lindzen. Seems similar to Fred Singer!!Quote:
Originally Posted by saltydawg
Takes Industry money.
Larry king needs to re-do that program but this time get a couple of climate scientists who hold the opinion of the vast majority of climate scientists that global warming is real and is caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
Let Al Goreee come intttttoooo your heart, let Al Gooooore come into your heaaaaaaaaart.
I'm hyper right now, wanting the Tech baseball game to begin in two hours!
Cousin Casey Jones won't get to play with his recuperating shoulder, but I believe he will dress out and be in the dugout.
A green dot for anyone who posts a picture of him for me this weekend. Number 29.
If anyone is interested in the relationship b/w faith and stewardship of the earth, go to this site and listen to the broadcast from January 23.
http://www.albertmohler.com/radio_list.php
Agreed. This should not be a political issue.Quote:
Originally Posted by TYLERTECHSAS
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February 2, 2007
Panel Issues Bleak Report on Climate Change
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL and ANDREW C. REVKIN
PARIS, Feb. 2 — In a bleak and powerful assessment of the future of the planet, the leading international network of climate change scientists has concluded for the first time that global warming is "unequivocal" and that human activity is the main driver, "very likely" causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950.
They said the world is already committed to centuries of warming, shifting weather patterns and rising seas, resulting from the buildup of gases in the atmosphere that trap heat. But the warming can be substantially blunted by prompt action, the panel of scientists said in a report released here today.
The report summarized the fourth assessment since 1990 by the group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations, sizing up the causes and consequences of climate change. But it is the first in which the group asserts with near certainty — more than 90 percent confidence — that carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases from human activities have been the main causes of warming since 1950.
In its last report, in 2001, the panel, consisting of hundreds of scientists and reviewers, put the confidence level at between 66 and 90 percent. Both reports are online at http://www.ipcc.ch.
If carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere reach twice their pre-industrial levels, the report said, the global climate will probably warm by 3.5 to 8 degrees. But there would be more than a 1-in-10 chance of much greater warming, a situation many earth scientists say poses an unacceptable risk.
Many energy and environment experts see such a doubling as a foregone conclusion sometime after midcentury unless there is a prompt and sustained shift away from the 20th-century pattern of unfettered burning of coal and oil, the main sources of carbon dioxide, and an aggressive quest for expanded and improved nonpolluting energy options.
Even an increased level of warming that falls in the middle of the group’s range of projections would likely cause significant stress to ecosystems and alter longstanding climate patterns that shape water supplies and agricultural production, according to many climate experts and biologists.
While the new report projected a modest rise in seas by 2100 — between 7 and 23 inches — it also concluded that seas would continue to rise, and crowded coasts retreat, for at least 1,000 years to come. By comparison, seas rose about 6 to 9 inches in the 20th century.
John P. Holdren, an energy and climate expert at Harvard University, said that the “report powerfully underscores the need for a massive effort to slow the pace of global climatic disruption before intolerable consequences become inevitable.” [Read a report by Mr. Holdren. (PDF format)]
“Since 2001 there has been a torrent of new scientific evidence on the magnitude, human origins and growing impacts of the climatic changes that are underway,” said Mr. Holdren, who is the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “In overwhelming proportions, this evidence has been in the direction of showing faster change, more danger and greater confidence about the dominant role of fossil fuel burning and tropical deforestation in causing the changes that are being observed.”
The conclusions came after a three-year review of hundreds of studies of clues illuminating past climate shifts, observations of retreating ice, warming and rising seas, and other shifts around the planet, and a greatly expanded suite of supercomputer simulations used to test how earth will respond to a building blanket of gases that hold heat in the atmosphere.
The section released today was a 20-page summary for policymakers, which was approved early this morning by teams of officials from more than 100 countries after three days and nights of wrangling over wording with the lead authors, all of whom are scientists.
It described far-flung ramifications for both humans and nature.
“It is very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent,” said the summary.
Generally, the scientists said, more precipitation will fall at higher latitudes, which are likely also to see lengthened growing seasons, while semi-arid, subtropical regions already chronically beset by drought could see a further 20-percent drop in rainfall under the midrange scenario for increases in the greenhouse gases.
The summary added a new chemical consequence of the buildup of carbon dioxide to the list of mainly climatic and biological impacts foreseen in its previous reports: a drop in the pH of seawater as oceans absorb billions of tons of carbon dioxide, which forms carbonic acid when partly dissolved. Marine biologists have said that could imperil some kinds of corals and plankton.
A vast improvement in the science of climatology — including “larges amounts of new and more comprehensive data” — has allowed the group to become far more confident and specific in its predictions, compared with its previous assessment in 2001, the authors said.
The report essentially caps a half-century-long effort to discern whether humans, through the buildup of carbon dioxide and other gases released mainly by burning fuels and forests, could influence the earth’s climate system in potentially momentous ways.
The group operates under the aegis of the United Nations and was chartered in 1988 — a year of record heat, burning forests, and the first big headlines about global warming — to provide regular reviews of climate science to governments to inform policy choices.
Government officials are involved in shaping the summary of each report, but the scientist-authors, who are unpaid, have the final say over the thousands of pages in four underlying technical reports that will be completed and published later this year.
Big questions remain about the speed and extent of some impending changes, both because of uncertainty about future population and pollution trends and the complex interrelationships of the greenhouse emissions, clouds, dusty kinds of pollution, the oceans and earth’s veneer of life, which both emits and soaks up carbon dioxide and other such gases.
But a broad array of scientists, including authors of the report and independent experts, said the latest analysis was the most sobering view yet of a century of transition — after thousands of years of relatively stable climate conditions — to a new norm of continual change.
Should greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere at even a moderate pace, average temperatures by the end of the century could match those last seen 125,000 years ago, in the previous warm spell between ice ages, the report said.
At that time, the panel said, sea levels were 12 to 20 feet higher than they are now. Muych of that extra water is now trapped in the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, which are eroding in some places.
The panel said there was no solid scientific understanding of how rapidly the vast stores of ice in polar regions will melt, so their estimates on new sea levels were based mainly on how much the warmed oceans will expand, and not on contributions from the melting of ice now on land.
Other scientists have recently reported evidence that the glaciers and ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctic could flow seaward far more quickly than estimated in the past, and they have proposed that the risks to coastal areas could be much more imminent. But the I.P.C.C. is proscribed by its charter from entering into speculation, and so could not include such possible instabilities in its assessment.
Michel Jarraud, the secretary general of the United Nations World Meteorological Organization, said the lack of clarity should offer no one comfort. “The speed with which melting ice sheets are raising sea levels is uncertain, but the report makes clear that sea levels will rise inexorably over the coming centuries,” he said. “It is a question of when and how much, and not if,” he said, adding: “While the conclusions are disturbing, decision makers are now armed with the latest facts and will be better able to respond to these realities.”
Achim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, which oversees the I.P.C.C. along with the meteorological group, said society now had plenty of information on which to act.
“The implications of global warming over the coming decades for our industrial economy, water supplies, agriculture, biological diversity and even geopolitics are massive,” he said. “This new report should spur policymakers to get off the fence and put strong and effective policies in place to tackle greenhouse gas emissions.”
The warming and other climate shifts will be highly variable around the world, with the Arctic particularly seeing much higher temperatures, said Susan Solomon, the co-leader of the team writing the summary and the section of the I.P.C.C. report on basic science. She is an atmospheric scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The kinds of vulnerabilities are very much dependent on where you are, Dr. Solomon said in a telephone interview. “If you’re living in parts of tropics and they’re getting drier and you’re a farmer there are some very acute issues associated with even small changes in rainfall — changes we’re already seeing are significant,” she said. “If you are an Inuit and you’re seeing your sea ice retreating already that’s affecting your lifestyle and culture.”
The 20-page summary is a sketch of the findings that are most germane to the public and world leaders.
The full I.P.C.C. report, thousands of pages of technical background, will be released in four sections through the year — the first on basic science, then sections on impacts and options for limiting emissions and limiting inevitable harms, and finally a synthesis of all of the findings near year’s end.
In a news conference in Paris, Dr. Solomon declined to provide her own views on how society should respond to the momentous changes projected in the study.
“I honestly believe that it would be a much better service for me to keep my personal opinions separate than what I can actually offer the world as a scientist,” she said. “My stepson, who is 29, has an utterly different view of risks than I do. People are going to have to make their own judgments.”
Some authors of the report said that no one could honestly point to any remaining uncertainties as justification for further delay.
“Policy makers paid us to do good science, and now we have high very scientific confidence in this work — this is real, this is real, this is real,” said Richard B. Alley, one of the lead authors and a professor at Penn State University. “So now act, the ball’s back in your court.”
Gee, I'm about to freeze my globally warmed a$$ off up here in Arkansas. It's only supposed to be in the mid teens tonight and in the low 40's tomorrow, that'll be like a heat wave.
Also, wonder where the gases came from millions of years ago when the earth warmed up for a period of hundreds of years. Since there weren't any humans on earth at least you can't blame that on us.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TYLERTECHSAS
Has this been posted here before?
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html
So all of these world renowned scientist have finally come out today and said that we are the main driving force behind GW, and STILL some of you guys think it's BS. I love you guys but you are Nucking Futs.:D:icon_wink: I'm sure some of you can, and will dig up another article about how GW is crap, but I will take the word of these guys over some hired gun from Exxon.:laugh: