Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomGuy
There are thousands (yes thousands) of scientists that are skeptical of AGW theory, but don't worry, Obama's spending the money anyway, so you can sleep well at night now.
Printable View
Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomGuy
There are thousands (yes thousands) of scientists that are skeptical of AGW theory, but don't worry, Obama's spending the money anyway, so you can sleep well at night now.
I will. Because spending to combat global warming will make our economy stronger, and that is a very good thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by DarrinS
There are thousands (yes thousands) of scientists who believe AGW is the most likely explanation.Quote:
Originally Posted by DarrinS
Now what?
I noticed you didn't comment on the new study. :p:
For reference:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/...n4745503.shtml
Antarctica Not Immune From Global Warming
New Study Finds South Pole Getting Warmer - Reversing Idea That It Was Not Affected
WASHINGTON, Jan. 21, 2009
ntarctica, the only place that had oddly seemed immune from climate change, is warming after all, according to a new study.
For years, Antarctica was an enigma to scientists who track the effects of global warming. Temperatures on much of the continent at the bottom of the world were staying the same or slightly cooling, previous research indicated.
The new study went back further than earlier work and filled in a massive gap in data with satellite information to find that Antarctica too is getting warmer, like the Earth's other six continents.
The findings were published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.
"Contrarians have sometime grabbed on to this idea that the entire continent of Antarctica is cooling, so how could we be talking about global warming?," said study co-author Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University. "Now we can say: no, it's not true ... It is not bucking the trend."
The study does not point to man-made climate change as the cause of the Antarctic warming - doing so is a highly intricate scientific process - but a different and smaller study out late last year did make that connection.
"We can't pin it down, but it certainly is consistent with the influence of greenhouse gases," said NASA scientist Drew Shindell, another study co-author. Some of the effects also could be natural variability, he said.
The study showed that Antarctica - about one-and-a-half times bigger than the United States - remains a complicated weather picture, especially with only a handful of monitoring stations in its vast interior.
The researchers used satellite data and mathematical formulas to fill in missing information. That made outside scientists queasy about making large conclusions with such sparse information.
"This looks like a pretty good analysis, but I have to say I remain somewhat skeptical," Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said in an e-mail. "It is hard to make data where none exist."
Shindell said it was more comprehensive than past studies and jibed with computer models.
The research found that since 1957, the annual temperature for the entire continent of Antarctica has warmed by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.55 degrees Celsius) but still is 50 degrees below zero (-46 Celsius). West Antarctica, which is about 20 degrees (11 degrees Celsius) warmer than the east, has warmed nearly twice as fast, said study lead author Eric Steig of the University of Washington.
East Antarctica, which scientists had long thought to be cooling, is warming slightly when yearly averages are looked at over the past 50 years, said Steig.
However, autumn temperatures in east Antarctica are cooling over the long term. And east Antarctica from the late 1970s through the 1990s, cooled slightly, Steig said.
Some researchers skeptical about the magnitude of global warming overall said that the new study didn't match their measurements from satellites and that there appears to be no warming in Antarctica since 1980.
"It overstates what they have obtained from their analysis," said Roger Pielke Sr., a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado.
Steig said a different and independent study using ice cores drilled in west Antarctica found the same thing as his paper. And recent satellite data also confirms what this paper has found, Steig added.
The study has major ramifications for sea level rise, said Andrew Weaver at the University of Victoria in Canada. Most major sea level rise projections for the future counted on a cooling - not warming - Antarctica. This will make sea level rise much worse, Weaver said.
Oddly enough, the scientist who did the study pointed out a couple of things:
Anarctica is a very big place. The "eastern" part (his word) was trending colder due to the hole in the ozone layer (ozone is a greenhouse gas, btw), while the western part was warming.
Most of the readings of temperature were done on the part that was cooling, and the new study is, to my understanding, taking into account a lot more data from the entire continent, not just the colder eastern part.
Hole in the OZONE LAYER? I thought that bullshit was over in the 90's.Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomGuy
Co-authored by Michael Mann, a.k.a. "hockeystick boy", but I digress.
Emphasis added by me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomGuy
From http://www.indystar.com/article/2009...1/1002/OPINION
Quote:
So-called "global warming" has shrunk from problem to punch-line. And now, Leftists are laughing, too. It's hard not to chuckle at the idea of Earth boiling in a carbon cauldron when the news won't cooperate.
Nearly 4 inches of snow blanketed the United Arab Emirates' Jebel Jais region for just the second time in recorded history on January 24. Citizens were speechless. The local dialect has no word for snowfall.
Dutchmen on ice skates sped past windmills as canals in Holland froze in mid-January for the first time since 1997. Defense Minister Eimert van Middelkoop, who inhabits a renovated 17th Century windmill, stumbled on the ice and fractured his wrist.
January saw northern Minnesota's temperatures plunge to 38 below zero, forcing ski-resort closures. A Frazee, Minn., dog-sled race was canceled, due to excessive snow. Snow whitened Surf City, North Carolina's beaches. Days ago, ice glazed Florida's citrus groves.
As Earth faces global cooling, both troglodyte Right-wingers and lachrymose Left-wingers find Albert Gore's simmering-planet hypothesis increasingly hilarious.
"In terms of [global warming's] capacity to cause the human species harm, I don't think it makes it into the top 10," Robert Giegengack, former chairman of University of Pennsylvania's Earth and Environmental Sciences Department, told the Pennsylvania Gazette. Giegengack voted for Gore in 2000, and says he likely would again.
Commentator Harold Ambler declared Jan. 3 on HuffingtonPost.com that he voted for Barack Obama "for a thousand times a thousand reasons." He added that Gore "owes the world an apology for his actions regarding global warming." He called Gore's assertion that "the science is in" on this issue "the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of mankind."
"Not only is it false that human activity has any significant effect on global warming or the weather in general, but for the record, global warming is over," retired Navy meteorologist Martin Hertzberg wrote on carbon-sense.com. The physical chemist and self-described "scientist and life-long liberal Democrat" added: "The average temperature of Earth's atmosphere has declined over the last 10 years. From the El Niño Year of 1998 until January 2007, it dropped 1/4 C [0.45 degrees Fahrenheit]. From Jan 2007 to the spring of 2008, it dropped a whopping 3/4 C [1.35 degrees Fahrenheit]. Those data further prove that the fear-mongering hysteria about human-caused global warming is completely unjustified and is totally counterproductive to our Nation's essential needs and security."
"It is a tribute to the scientific ignorance of politicians and journalists that they keep regurgitating the nonsense about human-caused global warming," veteran left-wing commentator and Nation magazine columnist Alexander Cockburn wrote. "The greenhouse fear mongers rely on unverified, crudely oversimplified models to finger mankind's sinful contribution -- and carbon trafficking, just like the old indulgences, is powered by guilt, credulity, cynicism, and greed."
Some leftists believe the collective hallucination of warmism distracts from what they consider urgent progressive priorities.
"The most destructive force on the planet is power-driven financiers and profit-driven corporations and their cartels backed by military might," University of Ottawa physics professor Denis Rancourt has written. "The global warming myth is a red herring that contributes to hiding this truth."
Social historian David Noble of Canada's York University concurs. He has lamented that warmism is "diverting attention from the radical challenges of the global justice movements."
Geophysicist Claude Allegre, previously Education Minister in France's late 1990s Socialist government, denounced the "prophets of doom of global warming." He sounded amused in a September 2006 L'Express article. "The ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people."
"The so-called 'consensus' on man-made global warming is not holding up," Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla.), told his colleagues Jan. 8. "It is becoming increasingly clear that skepticism about man-made global warming fear is not a partisan left vs. right issue."
So-called "global warming" has accomplished the impossible: It has united liberals and conservatives in laughter.
Over 30,000 scientists have signed the Global Warming Petition, over 9000 of them PhD's. 15 times more PhD's than involved in the IPCC process.
For you alarmists....
There are finally sunspots!
A new sunspot cycle may be beginning, and indication the sun is warming up. Now you can go back to blaming CO2 in a few years, unless it's as weak as predicted. Then we will still cool down rather than warm up!
Solar Cycle 24 has officially started
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpre...pot_010408.jpg
Not only that, but Climatologists by title are not qualified as global warming experts. It takes a great deal more sciences than what their degree requires.Quote:
Originally Posted by DarrinS
Geosciences people...
The Earth warms...the Earth cools...
Animals thrive, and animals go extinct...
Been happening since the dawn of, well...everything.
Until now...
Stop animal extinction, and stop climate change...cuz nature cannot be allowed to run amuck any longer.
Thank you...that'll be $800,000,000,000.00 please.
We'll send someone by to pick it up.
anonomoose
How many of those have degrees in food science?Quote:
Originally Posted by DarrinS
Does this mean the IPCC should have nutritionists contributing to their reports too? :wow
Indeed. I noted that stuff too. Astonishingly enough the liberal media actually gave some time to the skeptics.Quote:
Originally Posted by DarrinS
Someone must be asleep at the switch in the Liberal Media Headquarters.
How many people who signed that petition would you say are actually qualified to make some educated determination?Quote:
Originally Posted by Wild Cobra
Just curious.
The Liberal Media Elite are at pains to demonstrate there is actually enough opposition to them to justify the line item in their budget for their ongoing suppression of the truth.Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomGuy
Therefore, the appearance of a coordinated opposition to them only serves to strengthen the hand of our liberal media masters against the unorthodox.
A one-dimensional society needs a credible illusion of an adversary as a pretext for its transgressions, past and intended.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomGuy
Research in this field would be greatly improved if they had more mathematicians and statisticians. Evidently, a principal components analysis is not the strong suit of a paleoclimatologist.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RandomGuy
I think you need to look into who are the lead authors of IPCC's reports. You'll be surprised.
it's snowing!
-Mars
(shrugs)Quote:
Originally Posted by DarrinS
Whatever produces better science, I am all for. Quite frankly though, I was not quite impressed with the "peer-reviewed" science that WC presented in support of the "CO2 isn't the principle component of recent warming trends" bit.
Sooner or later we will get to the bottom of it in a way that is fairly concrete. I just hope that we don't have to lose coastal cities to provide a level of proof that WC would accept, and have it be a bit late to do anything about it.
When they can get tomorrows, next weeks, next months, or next years forecasts right...I'll start paying attention to these morons who think they know what's gonna happen in the decades to come.
When they can get tomorrows, next weeks, next months, or next years' forecast for the stock market, I will start investing.Quote:
Originally Posted by SouthernFried
A trend is a trend. One doesn't have to be able to give you the exact temperature in Barcelona on February 20th, 2015 to be able to say that the world will be slightly warmer.
"A trend is a trend"
Stock Markets have trends too. You wanna bet 1 Trillion dollars that the market is gonna keep going down?
But, you'll bet that the earth's warming trend will continue to go up?
As long as your betting your own money, be my guest. Gambling and smoking are two vices I've been known to indulge in myself.
But, don't demand my money to do it with. One should gamble with one own's money.
Well, unless your really sneaky smart, and can get other folks to back your gamble...and give you their money.
And that folks...is what "man made" global warming con men are all about.
What are you gonna give? :)
Australia Faces Collapse as Climate Change Kicks in: Are the Southwest and California Next?
By Joseph Romm, Climate Progress
Posted on February 2, 2009, Printed on February 2, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/124689/
Australia has been suffering its worst heatwave on record, the first time temperatures exceeded 110 F for 3 days running. It’s been so hot that on Thursday, the low at Melbourne airport was 87 F.
Australia is the canary in the coal mine for climate-driven desertification. The astonishing decade-long drought in southern Australia was declared ‘worst on record’ last year. My headline quote is from the UK’s Independent story, which notes:
Australia, the driest inhabited continent on earth, is regarded as highly vulnerable. A study by the country’s blue-chip Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation identified its ecosystems as "potentially the most fragile" on earth in the face of the threat.
Australia is but the first and most seriously impacted of the arid sub-tropical (and near-sub-tropical) climates that are facing horrific desertification from climate change. For instance, Lester Snow, Director of California’s Department of Water Resources said Friday
We may be at the start of the worst California drought in modern history.
Two years ago, Science (subs. req’d) published research that "predicted a permanent drought by 2050 throughout the Southwest" -- levels of aridity comparable to the 1930s Dust Bowl would stretch from Kansas to California. The UK’s Hadley Center warned in November 2006 that their research predicted multiple permanent Dust Bowls around the planet on our current emissions path:
Extreme drought is likely to increase from under 3% of the globe today to 30% by 2100 -- areas affected by severe drought could see a five-fold increase from 8% to 40%.
Extreme drought means desertification, especially if it lasts for hundreds of years, as the recent NOAA-led study found (see NOAA stunner: Climate change "largely irreversible for 1000 years," with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe). The regions that NOAA identifies as facing permanent Dust Bowls:
* U.S. Southwest
* Southeast Asia
* Eastern South America
* Southern Europe
* Southern Africa
* Northern Africa
* Western Australia
Again, since Western Australia is the most sensitive, since Australia is already the driest of the habitable continents, it’s no surprise that Australia is the first to see such climate change driven decadal drought:
Most of the south of the country is gripped by unprecedented 12-year drought. The Australian Alps have had their driest three years ever, and the water from the vast Murray-Darling river system now fails to reach the sea 40 per cent of the time. Harvests have fallen sharply.
It will get worse as global warming increases. Even modest temperature rises, now seen as unavoidable, are expected to increase drought by 70 per cent in New South Wales, cut Melbourne’s water supplies by more than a third, and dry up the Murray-Darling system by another 25 per cent.
When you throw a brutal heat wave on top of the desertification, then all hell breaks loose:
Ministers are blaming the heat -- which follows a record drought -- on global warming. Experts worry that Australia, which emits more carbon dioxide per head than any nation on earth, may also be the first to implode under the impact of climate change.
At times last week it seemed as if that was happening already. Chaos ruled in Melbourne on Friday after an electricity substation exploded, shutting down the city’s entire train service, trapping people in lifts, and blocking roads as traffic lights failed. Half a million homes and businesses were blacked out, and patients were turned away from hospitals.
More than 20 people have died from the heat, mainly in Adelaide. Trees in Melbourne’s parks are dropping leaves to survive, and residents at one of the city’s nursing homes have started putting their clothes in the freezer.
"All of this is consistent with climate change, and with what scientists told us would happen," said climate change minister Penny Wong.
As an aside, I wonder when the United States will get a Department of Climate Change. Probably not for a decade or more, until we are hit by an extended Australian-scale drought somewhere along with one or more of the other near-term climate Pearl Harbors?
AFP’s story’s calls this "once-in-a-century heatwave that has claimed dozens of lives and sparked wildfires." But, in fact, Professor David Karoly, of the University of Melbourne, said last week: "The heat is unusual, but it will become much more like the normal experience in 10 to 20 years."
One final (very) small point. We already saw Tiger Woods win the "Hottest Major of All Time" and the parched "brown British Open."
But this Australian open is going to go down as the hottest tennis major of all time (so far):
Earlier in the week, as the historic heat took grip, men’s champion Novak Djokovic sensationally pulled out of his Australian Open quarter final with heat-related problems, the first defending champion to withdraw in the Open era.
Three-time champion Serena Williams, who will take on Russia’s Dinara Safina in Saturday’s women’s final, described playing as an "out-of-body" experience before the roof of the Rod Laver Arena was closed and a row over the Australian Open heat policy ensued.
In the future, more and more major sporting events will have to be moved away from the summer and perhaps, like the Super Bowl, actually be held in the winter (if not indoors where possible).
Of course, if we really turn one third of the planet into permanent desert by century’s end -- and raise global temperatures an average of 10°F, with sea levels 5 feet higher and rising 10 inches a decade, I wonder just how much interest will remain in such "nonessential" activities like professional sports.
© 2009 Climate Progress All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/124689/
==========
So pick your weather to make your case:
snow very far south for a couple days, or
or long term extreme heat and drought moving away from the equator and desertifying temperate regions.
Gee...the earth's climate changes.
Who'd a thunk it?