Global Warming tough to prove.

[turtlespeed 226]

Quote

Quote

What major industry do we need from you?

Just where do you think we'll get our hagis from, smart guy?

We can get snipes here - so Meh - whatever.

But Curling - Curling I would miss.

I'm not usually into the whole 3-way thing, but you got me a little excited with that. - Skymama
BTR #1 / OTB^5 Official #2 / Hellfish #408 / VSCR #108/Tortuga/Orfun

[billvon 3,132]

>If the world invented and Emission free car but it cost 100,000
> dollars to buy, would it make sense to outlaw all cars in the US
>which were not emission free?

Of course not. Incremental measures are a lot more beneficial. Automakers have stated that there are a lot of cheap things they could do to increase gas mileage; weak hybrids, 42V systems, better factory tires etc. So instead of "outlawing" anything, just increase the CAFE (corporate average fuel economy requirements) by 10% a decade. Automakers deal with that by making their large vehicles more fuel efficient (with mild hybrids etc) and by making their really cheap and efficient cars even cheaper and more efficient, to pull down their average numbers. Cost would be a $300-$700 premium per large vehicle for the first 10% increase, and the later 10% increases would likely be similar.

[nacmacfeegle 0]

"What major industry do we need from you?"

Thats not how boycotting stuff works, your thinking of embargoes and trade sanctions, its what we might stop buying from you guys and source from more environmentally friendly countries. As is our right under a free market economy. The consumer pressure brought to bear on South Africa during the apartheid era, for example, severely isolated that country in trade terms.
Thats at a personal level, at an official level, US imports might attract a carbon tax, which would be levied on all US imports to the UK, making US goods even less attractive.
Your balance of trade is currently in the shit, you guys are importing more than you are exporting and have been for a few years. Something like this would hurt it even more, resulting in further devaluation of the dollar, and increased interest rates in the US. What cost then to be a little more environmentally responsible?

No malice, just following through a fictional scenario, I currently spend more time earning loot for US shareholders (Exxon- Mobil, Chevron -Texaco etc) than I do for my British, Khazak, or Canadian clients.

--------------------

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

[storm1977 0]

-----------------------------------------------------------
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MELTING DOWN?
By Patrick J. Michaels
-----------------------------------------------------------
This is not your father's National Geographic any more. Once a coffee table
staple with gorgeous photos of people, places and things, it now more resembles
a host of other slick lobbying mags, pushing today's popular issues.

Last month's cover story was "fat." What' has that to do with geography,
other than some people are skinny, some are large, and they all don't live in
the same place? And obesity turns out to be a pretty slippery subject, given
that what is fat today was considered healthy a century ago.

This month it's global warming, a subject that actually lends itself to
quantitative fact-checking, of which National Geographic apparently did little.

Dispassionate objectivity and virtue are the claims of every lobby. So, on
the masthead, editor Bill Allen informs us what's inside isn't "science fiction"
and "we're not going to show you waves swamping the Statue of Liberty"
(referring to this summer's ludicrous global warming flick, "The Day After
Tomorrow"). He realizes what's inside may not jibe with the perceptions of some
of us unfortunates who live outside Georgetown, but he "can live with some
canceled memberships" to tell what he calls "the biggest story in geography
today."

His masthead essay must have been completed before the final copy came in,
because the fourth paragraph of the first article, by Daniel Glick, says the
effects of global warming indeed are "like watching the Statue of Liberty melt."

This massive rhetorical gaffe, unfortunately, is typical. I will start with
the first misrepresentation of facts. When I get to this article's word limit,
I'll still have 75 percent of them left.

It begins with a picture of a flooded rice field in Bangladesh, with the
comment that "as global temperatures and sea level climbs [rice farming] becomes
an ever more precarious means of support." In 2001, Cecile Cabanes calculated
sea-level rise for the last half-century around the world. In Bangladesh, there
was a net fall in the 1990s. In the last 50 years, it has risen there an
infinitesimal seven-tenths of an inch, far too little for anyone to notice, in
Bangladesh or anywhere else.

People in North Carolina adapt and prosper, living with sea level rises of
12 feet in 10 minutes, or a decent hurricane storm surge. If seven-tenths of an
inch in 50 years is a problem, it's a social, not a climatic, one.

Two pages later, we read, "Human activity almost certainly drove most of the
past century's warming." That's not true either. There were two warming periods
in the 20th century — one early and one late — and they were both the same
magnitude. There is little dispute the first was "natural," caused by a warming
sun. It occurred before humans could have influenced climate much with
industrial emissions.

Speaking of human influence, the next paragraph says "warming may not be
gradual." Yet double-digit billions of dollars of scientific research comes to
this central tendency: Once human warming begins in the atmosphere, it occurs at
a constant rate. At least that's what the average of all of our climate models
for the future says.

And, if the warming trend of late 20th-century temperatures is caused by
humans, which is reasonable, that rate has been established. And, indeed, what
is remarkable is its constancy and that it is at the absolute low end of
computer projections.

The first article starts with the melting of Sperry Glacier, in Montana's
Glacier National Park, saying, "A trailside sign notes that, since 1901, Sperry
Glacier has shrunk from more than 800 to 300 acres." Indeed, it has. And,
according to data from the National Climatic data center, which you can download
at www.wrcc.dri.edu, summer temperatures averaged over Western Montana show
absolutely no warming trend whatsoever in the 20th century. Glaciers melt in the
summer.

Next column: "The famed snows of Kilimanjaro have melted more than 80
percent since 1912." Again, indeed, true. In the "natural" warming of the first
part of the 20th century, Kilimanjaro lost 45 percent of its cap. From 1953
through 1976, another 21 percent. That occurred while the planet cooled. Since
1976, in the era of "human" warming, another 12 percent, or the slowest melt
rate of the last 100 years. National Geographic forgot to tell us this. Or that
from 4,000 to 11,000 years ago it was much warmer in Africa than today, and
Kilimanjaro's cap was much larger than now.

Seven misleading statements in three pages. There are 28 more. When the
truth gets this stretched, that's more than one person's work. Instead, it's a
process, where scientists tell editors what they want to hear, editors don't
check the facts and, ultimately, we all pay with very bad policies.
Unfortunately, it's all predictable.

Different scientific communities compete with each other for a finite (but
large) amount of our tax dollars, and no one ever won out by saying his or her
issue was not the world's most important problem. That makes great copy for
Washington's other lobbies, like the National Geographic Society, now crusading
against obesity and global warming.



Patrick J. Michaels, senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato
Institute, is the author of "Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global
Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media" (Cato Institute), to be
published Sept 27.

-----------------------------------------------------
Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

[kallend 2,175]

Why is the Cato Institute more credible than National Geographic?

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[storm1977 0]

It is not about credibility....

If you read the article it clearly states that the information given to NG by scientist is somewhat true, but it is spun with such a political message that the truth is dramatically stretched. Again if a scientist (you or me) tells a news paper x, y, and z, and the paper only writes about x & Y, they are not lying, but they also aren't telling the Whole truth!!.



Chris

-----------------------------------------------------
Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

[billvon 3,132]

>Yet double-digit billions of dollars of scientific research comes to
>this central tendency: Once human warming begins in the atmosphere,
>it occurs at a constant rate. At least that's what the average of all
>of our climate models for the future says.

Ah yes. The illusion some hold that there is no such thing as global warming has started to crack; now the same people who were saying there is no evidence to support it, and no way to even reliably predict what radically increasing CO2 content will do to the climate, are now confidently predicting a gradual, constant increase, one that will be no big deal. The next step, of course, is to admit that it _is_ a big deal, but maybe the changes will be good (i.e. "we can grow grapes in Canada now!")

[SpeedRacer 1]

farting causes global warming.

and twin otter cooling, because someone needs to open the door.

Speed Racer
--------------------------------------------------

[storm1977 0]

You should talk with the leading Researcher in the atmospheric physics Dept at Colorado State U. Dr. Gray.

He is a world known expert on the topic... Ask his scientific opinion and those of many other non-media hungry scientist.

The fact is the ave global temp is rising right now, but 25 yrs ago it was falling. Nature is cyclical, and nothing should be made of short term trending. Bill, I don't know what your expertise is, but my is atmospheric physics, and to jump out there is say GW is happening and is caused by humans, and will be disastrous, is pretty naive.

-----------------------------------------------------
Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

[billvon 3,132]

>Bill, I don't know what your expertise is, but my is atmospheric physics,
> and to jump out there is say GW is happening and is caused by humans,
> and will be disastrous, is pretty naive.

CO2 concentrations are increasing; this is easily proved through measurement. They are due to anthropogenic CO2 generation; this is easily shown by simply figuring out how much carbon we put into the atmosphere by burning fuel. CO2 is a strong greenhouse gas. The experiment to prove that is trivial. Average temperature is also increasing rapidly; that's also easily proved by climactic records. In addition, ice core samples show that CO2 and methane concentrations closely track global temperatures.

When you crunch the numbers, you discover that the amount of forcing (i.e. the amount of pertubation to the normal heat budget of the planet) due solely to anthropogenic CO2 is about 2 watts per square meter. This is a small but measurable addition to the amount of solar heating that takes place. (Solar heating is about 1000 w/square meter; averaging it out including night and clouds is around 330 w/sq m.) When you take into account easily-factored balancing forces (i.e. more heat causes more radiation of IR) then you end up with about 1 watt/sq m out of balance. Thus the earth will gradually become warmer based purely on thermal energy balance. This, in fact, is what is happening with measured global temperatures.

The question becomes - what does that do? An optimist might use the Gaia theory - the theory that the earth is inherently self-regulating and will "do what it takes" to keep temperatures down despite increases in heat intake. The problem is that we may not like the methods the earth uses to achieve this regulation. For example, clouds reflect solar energy; if there were a lot more clouds, less heat overall would reach the earth and the thermal budget will once again balance. Clouds, of course, mean weather, and thus this optimistic approach _requires_ weather to get worse for it to work.

Another possibility is that nature will _not_ respond to balance out our additional heating; after all, it did not prevent previous ice ages and interglacials. If that is the case, the planet will gradually warm. In this scenario, the weather does not change significantly; the planet just gradually warms up. The risk there is the ice sheets. They may melt gradually, in which case we'd see a slow rise over the next 100 years of around a meter or so. Or they may be nonlinear; as an ice shelf begins to melt, it may calve more and more rapidly, thus spreading the ice to warmer waters where it will melt all the faster. Indeed, during the beginning of this current interglacial, melting ice drove the sea levels up at a rate of a meter every 20 years; it is likely that a certain "critical temperature" was hit and ice breakup became very rapid. If we repeat this, we'd lose Amsterdam, NYC, Venice - basically most coastal cities.

The reason people disagree so vehemently about global warming is that people see it as a political football. They use it to campaign for restrictions on this or that, so it's often reduced to people claiming it's politics, not science. But the science is there and is easily demonstrated.

It's a worrisome issue. Fortunately, people are beginning to take it seriously. Last week a bill was passed in California to significantly reduce automotive greenhouse gas emissions by 2016. As California goes, so do many other states; NY is already considering a similar bill. Will we deal with the threat before it's too late to prevent some of the uglier potential problems? That remains to be seen, but at least we're starting.

(BTW interesting article today from Reuters on global warming's effects on Arctic marine life.)

[nacmacfeegle 0]

"You should talk with the leading Researcher in the atmospheric physics Dept at Colorado State U. Dr. Gray.
He is a world known expert on the topic..."

Even I have had a look at some of Dr Gray's stuff. Controversial reading, and worthy of consideration.
But one 'expert' doen't mean total agreement, take for example the opinions of the following experts...
Joyce Penner, from the University of Michigan;
Thomas Crowley, of Duke University;
Richard Alley, from Pennsylvania State University;
Jerry Meehl, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research;
Lonnie Thompson, from Ohio State University;
Chris Field, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington,
Daniel Schrag, of Harvard University,
Michael Oppenheimer, from Princeton University,
David Battisti, from the University of Washington in Seattle.

If the rest of the parade are out of step with you, who's marching to the wrong beat?

"to jump out there is say GW is happening and is caused by humans, and will be disastrous, is pretty naive. "

To deny that we are having an influence on Global Climate change is pretty delusional, and what cost if we are wrong? Really, what is it going to cost us if we react and make a serious effort to reduce our emissions rates?

--------------------

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

[Erroll 80]

Quote

The illusion some hold that there is no such thing as global warming has started to crack

Need more evidence of the effects of global warming?

[nacmacfeegle 0]

I reckon I need to reassess my stance on this whole issue.

--------------------

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson