http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science...eut/index.html
Tuesday, April 25, 2006; Posted: 10:26 a.m. EDT (14:26 GMT)
Hurricane Katrina was the deadliest Atlantic hurricane in 77 years.
MONTEREY, California (Reuters) -- The record Atlantic hurricane season last year can be attributed to global warming, several top experts, including a leading U.S. government storm researcher, said on Monday.
"The hurricanes we are seeing are indeed a direct result of climate change and it's no longer something we'll see in the future, it's happening now," said Greg Holland, a division director at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
Holland told a packed hall at the American Meteorological Society's 27th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology that the wind and warmer water conditions that fuel storms that form in the Caribbean are "increasingly due to greenhouse gases. There seems to be no other conclusion you can logically draw."
His conclusion will be debated throughout the week-long conference, as other researchers present opposing papers that say changing wind and temperature conditions in the tropics are due to natural events, not the ac ulation of carbon dioxide emissions clouding the Earth.
Many of the experts gathered in the coastal city of Monterey, California, are federal employees. The Bush administration contends global warming is an unproven theory.
While many of the conference's 500 scientists seem to agree that a warming trend in the tropics is causing more and stronger hurricanes than usual, not all agree that global warming is to blame.
Some, like William Gray, a veteran hurricane researcher at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado, attributed the warming to natural cycles.
Gray said he believes salinity buildups and movements with ocean currents cause warming and cooling cycles. He predicted the Caribbean water will continue to warm for another five to 10 years, then start cooling.
More warming to come
Whatever the cause, computer projections indicate the warming to date -- about one degree Fahrenheit (half a degree Celsius) in tropical water -- is "the tip of the iceberg" and the water will warm three to four times as much in the next century, said Thomas Knutson, explaining projections from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey.
Adam Lea, a postdoctoral student at Britain's University College London in Dorking, Surrey, presented research based on British, German, Russian and Canadian studies that concludes half of the increased hurricane activity in the tropics could be attributed to global warming.
Holland, director of the Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology Division of the federal research center, said tropical storm anomalies in the 1940s and 1950s can be explained by natural variability.
But he said carbon dioxide started changing traceable patterns in the 1970s and by the early 1990s, the atmospheric results were affecting the storm numbers and intensities.
"What we're seeing right now in global climate temperature is a signature of climate change," said Holland, a native of Australia. "The large bulk of the scientific community say what we are seeing now is linked directly to greenhouse gases."
Hurricane Katrina, which tore onto the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts on August 29, was the deadliest Atlantic hurricane in 77 years and the costliest ever, with property damages estimated at $75 billion.
This year, the weather service's Tropical Prediction Center expects more hurricanes than usual, but not as many as last year's record 14.
So, what was happening 78 years ago that this couldn't top it?
Oh, and has it occurred to anyone that because of a growing population and development on exposed coats, that any hurricane is likely to be more costly than those of yesterday? a hundred years ago, hurricane Andrew could have barreled across Florida without causing much of a problem.
250 years or longer ago, Katrina would have done the same in the Mississippi River Delta...and, a forgotten storm probably did just that.
People negate global warming because they want to continue living comfortably. We are selfish ers.
People negate global warming because there is nothing we can do about it.
Is that a fact?
As long as global warming continues (and these things happen in cycles due to the carbon cycle, we are just accelerating it compared to pre-man times), the folks in Florida won't have to worry about hurricanes. Florida won't exist as it will be part of the Atlantic Ocean.
Selfish indeed.
Credible Link?
You don't think people are selfish?Selfish indeed.
How about my B.S. in Geosciences?
Did anyone see the Nova show where meteorologists put forth the contention that the global warming effect of greenhouse gasses has til now been blunted by the reflective properties of small-particle pollution? The evidence they used to prove it were temperature fluctuations in the no-fly days after 9/11. Very interesting stuff.
Any other hypothesis would have been thrown out by now.
But no... for man caused global warming they come up with a new theory every year why we haven't seen as big a change as everyone predicts.
It's just junk science.
Global warming happens.
Global cooling happens.
DO we have any significant effect on global temperature? No one has been able to say anything other than "Models Predict" that we do and that temperature will rise by a degree or two or 4 100 years from now. (however they manipulate their model)
Jesus.
My weatherman can't tell me it is going to rain tommorow.
They can predict global temperature in 100 years?
Common sense, dummy.
Huh! You are kidding aren't you? Carbon cycle, now that's a new one.
Florida underwater. Heck, half of it has always been underwater, they
are called swamps, like Louisiana.I have some property in Florida I
will sell you, interested?
Maybe they "negate" global warming because it's a natural occurrence to which we must adapt not try to control through onerous, costly, and ineffective measures such as the Kyoto Protocol.
So the other 4 times the ice melted it was man made too .. millions of years before we where even driving SUV's?
Unless every democrats and leftist is going to sell there car I don't want to hear it...
The President has set us on a course for replacing oil anyway. Saudi hates his guts right now.. so be happy and just worry about the future.
Cause there ain't we can do about gas right now. Till every last drop is used up and we (forum members) will be either old or dead by then.
The ice has melted and come back a of a lot more than 4 times Vashner...
I keep seeing you use that number and I have no idea where you got it.
There have been numerous times of transgression and recession of the oceans in the worlds history as a result of ice formation and thaw.
Here's the link to the Nova program:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/
Description: "Dimming the Sun" investigates the discovery that the sunlight reaching Earth has been growing dimmer, which may seem surprising given all the international concern over global warming. At first glance, less sunlight might hardly seem to matter when our planet is stewing in greenhouse gases. But the discovery of global dimming has led several scientists to revise their models of the climate and how fast it's changing. According to one recent and highly controversial model, the worst-case warming scenario could be worse than anyone has predicted. "Dimming the Sun" unravels this baffling climate conundrum and the implications for Earth's future.
To find out what global dimming means for the fate of the planet, NOVA reports on the findings of the world's top climate detectives, including an American scientist who found a grim but crucial opportunity immediately following September 11, 2001, when the entire U.S. airline fleet was grounded for three days. This presented a unique opportunity to study the effects of airplane vapor trails on the atmosphere (see The Contrail Effect). Comparing changes in the daily temperature range showed that the absence of dimming from aircraft pollution alone made a marked difference to the temperature. This result hints at how much the effects of atmospheric pollution had been underestimated.
Working in Israel, Dr. Gerald Stanhill was one of the first to discover the surprising fact that less solar energy is reaching the Earth's surface. While his measurements were met with skepticism, a review of worldwide data by Stanhill and a German researcher demonstrated that during the 1980s and early '90s, sunlight reaching Earth's surface had dropped just about everywhere. Halfway around the world, independent studies by Australian scientists confirmed this disturbing diagnosis. (For more, see Discoveries in Global Dimming.)
Scientists have long known that increasing air pollution—the smog that clouds urban skies—endangers our respiratory health. But they had underestimated the impact of pollution on the amount of sunlight reaching Earth. Some scientists now believe that global dimming may also disturb rainfall patterns such as the Asian monsoon. If they are right, global dimming may be one of many factors that contributed to severe droughts and famines in Africa during the 1980s.
The good news is that pollution controls have slowed and possibly even halted global dimming during the last decade. The bad news—and the ironic twist in NOVA's story—is that without pollution, more sunlight is reaching Earth, revealing the full impact of global warming. Although all climate models have important uncertainties, the unsettling implication is that, with dimming fading away in many regions, global temperatures may rise even faster than most models have predicted.
A total melt vs the normal ice phases. I am talking about the caps not just the sheets on North America.
I'll agree that pollution is a contributor. But I won't accept any Bush arguments. Kyoto was going to give China a pass and that's just not fair.
Plus he's said we need to get off the addiction which was a huge thing to say as far as setting goals for the future.
If you followed around a lot of these people.. Sean Penn, Clooney.. you would see they burn millions of gallons of gas on there various Jet's, Yachts etc.
Clooney burns more gas at his italian villa in a week than we do in a year. Yet who's ing crying? lefties...
NONE of which are giving up the keys. Except for a few hardcores.
What I want to see is less finger pointing and more creative solutions.
It's not you man it's the others. You have to remember this forum is drowned out with like 99% leftist posts. So we just come in here (right wingers) for occasional air strikes then go back to base.
Vashner, you would need three promotions to be an asshole.
GS 16? I don't even think there is such a rank. That's like SES level 1.
Your gonna pay me 102 grand? Where do I report?
http://www.opm.gov/ses/
The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004 (Public Law 108-136, November 24, 2003) established a new performance-based pay system for members of the Senior Executive The new SES pay range has a minimum rate of basic pay equal to 120 percent of the rate for GS-15, step 1, and the maximum rate of basic pay is equal to the rate for level III of the Executive Schedule. However, for any agency certified under 5 U.S.C. 5307(d) as having a performance appraisal system which, as designed and applied, makes meaningful distinctions based on relative performance, the maximum rate of basic pay will be the rate for level II of the Executive Schedule.
The President's Executive order adjusts the minimum rate of basic pay for the SES rate range to be consistent with the increase in the minimum rate of basic pay for senior-level positions under 5 U.S.C. 5376 ($109,808 in 2006). The applicable maximum rate of basic pay for the SES is $165,200 (EX-II) for SES members covered by a certified SES performance appraisal system and $152,000 (EX-III) for SES members covered by an SES performance appraisal system that has not been certified. An SES member at the minimum rate of the SES rate range must receive a pay increase of 2.1 percent in January 2006, since an SES member may not receive less than the minimum rate of the SES rate range. An increase in pay necessary to ensure that an SES member's rate of basic pay remains within the SES rate range is not considered a pay adjustment for the purpose of applying the 12-month rule.
Last edited by Vashner; 04-25-2006 at 04:32 PM.
Well, happy belated Earth Day...sorry, it just didn't get put on my calendar.
Patrick at Ankle Biting Pundits marked Earth Day in his own way, by pointing out that Americans aren't buying the Chicken Little argument.
The WSJ told us the ways in which the world is getting cleaner:
Don't believe 'em? Well, here's the Index, itself...check it out.
And, the Commons Blog notes a NYT article that suggests the alarmist campaign is "going overboard," and includes more scientific skepticism than the Times usually shows.
I used to mark Earth Day by laughing at the news reports of Earth Day events which invariably showed scenes of Earth Day celebrants racking up dumpster upon dumpster of waste (although I'm sure it was all biodegradable), most of which didn't even make it into the trash cans.
The irony was not lost on me.
Reality is neither you, not scarecrow, nor my man Xray, nor the scientific community agree on why the Earth is getting warmer.
Nevertheless, the fact is we pollute the out this blessed planet we live in and I don't see any harm in trying to limit that pollution. Kyoto or no Kyoto agreement.
Last edited by smeagol; 04-25-2006 at 06:15 PM.
It may well be...but, the argument is over whether we're causing it and even whether there is anything we can do about it...except, of course, what animals have done since life spawned on this planet -- ADAPT!
Speak for yourself, we (the US) are doing our part -- as posted previously:
Bull ...nobody is doing their part. We are doing something..but not nearly as much as what we could be doing.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
