Denial Stops Here: Global Climate Change

WOW!!! Denial ain't just the name of a river in Eygpt.

 

Minuteman can defend himself...

Am I concerned about it? ofcourse , How to prepare for this? Well I don't live within 100mi of any large body of water(great lakes are fresh and not connected to the oceans and Im still 100 mi from lakes michigan and Superior.... Short of moving to a higher altitude I am as prepared for this an anything.

Are the people inthe coastal cities screwed ? "Yuppers" ( theyare screwed in so many diferent scenarios you'd have to be blind,deaf ingnorant to livethere.)
Preparations ?? Some things are not survivable and its time to leave. Perhaps they should trade their "blinging thumping escalades in on gold leafed "bass trackers.

Realize before you jump with both feet into minuteman's oatmeal wiki is a publicly authored encyclopedia and hence can be editted by anyone with a agenda.This issue is full of raging interests with their own agendas. You seem to have a "boatload" passion on this issue....( sorry couldn't resist the pun).

I do believe the earth and sun follow their own cycles( and that something s are not "survivable")..are we adding to the greehnouse gas load of course we are, Should we outlaw SUV's?

( Its not what this country is based on, butIMHO They are in your face: I make mo' money than you . people would say I'm just a bitter loser for not having one,and perhaps there is alittle superiority complex on my part, I "feel" better not driving a huge tank to the store for bread. (editted myoffensive ranting getsaway sometimes, i gotta get outta my chair more,...)for people who will nevereven see a dirt road never mind "off road"...And i see as usual by time I hunt, peck, copy, paste ,insert a photoand submit there are 4 replies who got posted beforew i got mine in....better go read them.

 

Well done, that was far more informative than my fuzzy ungrounded personal opinions* (it's dark in here,don't smell to good either...)...

 

<tt><tt><tt>Seems temps are self regulating: more cosmic ray = more low deck clouds=more humidity holding more heat energy ....more lowclouds= reflecting more uv back into space=cools off the darker exposed landmasses brings the overall temps down....
Temperatures may or not be regulated around a mean temp we find comfortable. Nature neither likes us nor hates us, it just is...If temps get outtahand we adapt(move inland and north) or we go away: </tt></tt><tt><tt>no "biggie"</tt></tt></tt><tt><tt><tt> nature will adapt and other species will fill in and become dominant </tt></tt></tt><tt><tt><tt>Edited </tt></tt></tt>

 

To me, the eco-freak's agenda is more important to them than the truth. Not saying to trash anything, but we just don't know enough to make an informed decision here, and we could make a worse choice than continueing our current direction. Besides, power mongers use people and agandas like this to enslave the rest of us.

jim

 

Caught the last 10minutes of the u.n. presentation on c=span, afterwards:
U.S.Sec of energy Bodman declares, "The debate's over on human contribution to global warming" than went into 10minutes about how the administration supports the research and findings. I'll have to fiind the report ( or summary) online to read it. One positive note: a reporter asked the scientific panel "what should we do??"the lead scientist (Soloman) replies Idon'tthink I 'm gonna give you the answer you want, We are only the scientists. we present accurate data and our best findings. The people must decide policy...."I thought that was a pretty good answer.
Guess its now official policy...http://today.reuters.com/news/artic...G-USA.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsHome-C3-domesticNews-3


(Corrects 10th, 11th paragraphs to make Boxer and Inhofe senators, not representatives)
By Deborah Zabarenko and Chris Baltimore
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration played down the U.S. contribution to world climate change on Friday and called for a "global discussion" after a U.N. report blamed humans for much of the warming over the past 50 years.
"We are a small contributor when you look at the rest of the world," U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said of greenhouse gas emissions. "It's really got to be a global discussion." <script language="Javascript">if(!CMSB_ID){var CMSB_ID=""} CMSB_ID+="020207_MIDART_editorschoice,";document.write('<meta name="DCSext.rCMS" content="' + CMSB_ID.substring(0,CMSB_ID.length - 1) + '" />');</script>

The United States is responsible for one-quarter of the world's emissions of carbon dioxide and uses one-quarter of the world's crude oil.
A unilateral U.S. program to cut emissions might hurt the economy and send business overseas, Bodman said.
In measured tones that accepted the reality of global climate change but stopped short of urging specific limits on the emission of greenhouse gases that contribute to it, Bodman hailed the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released in Paris.
"We're very pleased with it. We're embracing it. We agree with it," Bodman told a news conference. "Human activity is contributing to changes in our Earth's climate and that issue is no longer up for debate." Continued...
© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.

<.

 

"and that issue is no longer up for debate"

Statements like that are usually your first clue that the one making the argument is not standing on solid ground.

 

Resistance ifs futile!!! Well thats the story today :"debate over" ...(thats why I can't commit to any of these "determinations"...) Ales jones is going off on this on his
streaming audio..
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1997/11.06/BrighteningSuni.html

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<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr valign="top"><td align="center" bgcolor="#996600"> [SIZE=-1]SEARCH THE GAZETTE[/SIZE]</td></tr> <tr valign="top"><td align="center" bgcolor="#cc6600"> <form name="search" method="get" action="http://search.harvard.edu:8765/news/query.html"> <input name="col" value="news" type="hidden"> <input name="qp" value="" type="hidden"> <input name="rq" value="0" type="hidden"> <input name="qt" size="9" value="" maxlength="256" type="text">
<input value=" search " type="submit"> </form> </td></tr></tbody></table> </td> <!------ GUTTER-------> <td width="30"> </td> <!---- RIGHT COLUMN ----> <td valign="top" width="400"> Brightening Sun is Warming Earth May account for major part of global warming

By William J. Cromie
Gazette Staff
There is a better explanation for global warming than air pollution, two Harvard researchers say: the Sun is increasing in brightness and radiance.
"Changes in the Sun can account for major climate changes on Earth for the past 300 years, including part of the recent surge of global warming," claims Sallie Baliunas, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).
"We're not saying that variations in solar activity account for all of the global rise in temperature that we are experiencing," cautions her CfA colleague, astrophysicist Willie Soon. "But we believe these variations are the major driving force. Heat-trapping gases emitted by smokestacks and vehicles -- the so-called greenhouse effect -- appear to be secondary."
If that conclusion proves true, it promises a huge economic and political impact on the "third rock from the Sun." The Clinton Administration is trying to negotiate an international treaty to gradually reduce greenhouse pollutants without bringing economic havoc to industries that satisfy our enormous appetite for the energy that comes from burning oil, coal, and gas.
Other world leaders and environmentalists are pushing for immediate action, but Baliunas thinks there is time to carefully consider what action to take. "The best models of global warming call for a very slow temperature rise of less than two degrees in the next 100 years," she has told various congressional committees and briefings. "There is time for more research and a measured response because the penalty you pay in increased temperatures from greenhouse warming is small."
Anything that's cost-effective to cut emissions can be done right away, Baliunas says. Dramatic cuts with high economic penalties might be postponed in the expectation that more effective and affordable technologies will become available in the next 25 years or so.
To ease the economic burdens, President Clinton has proposed various incentives. These include offering $5 billion in tax breaks for businesses to conserve energy and to develop new technologies, such as efficient electric cars and fuel cells that burn clean hydrogen. Vice President Al Gore described these incentives last Friday in a talk at the Kennedy School of Government.
A Bright Connection
Baliunas and Soon base their ideas about the cause of global warming on irrefutable evidence that sunlight is getting stronger. Since the late 1970s, three Sun-watching satellites recorded surprising changes in heat, ultraviolet radiation, and solar wind. The radiation alters the paths of winter storms; solar winds affect cloudiness and rainfall.
The increased activity, everyone agrees, is tied to a cycle that sees the Sun dimming, then brightening, every 11 years or so. From the late 1970s to mid-1980s, activity on Earth's star declined. Since then it has risen, declined, then risen again. The satellites measured an increase in brightness of as much as 0.14 percent on the latest rise.
Two unknowns, however, prevent Sun-watchers from making any useable forecasts about the next five years. No one knows why the Sun cycles like it does, or when it will reach its next maximum. The best guess is the year 2000.
Also, a 0.14 percent jump in brightness is not enough to account for the approximately 1 degree F rise in temperature on Earth in the past 100 years. What's more, various observations show that our planet is almost 2 degrees F warmer than it was around the year 1700.
Baliunas quickly points out that the satellite measurements apply to only one cycle, and evidence exists that the estimated jump in brightness over several previous cycles was almost four times as much -- 0.5 percent.
Also, looking elsewhere in the Milky Way reveals larger shifts in brightness of other Sunlike stars. Twenty years ago, when still a Harvard graduate student, Baliunas took over a project that has been recording brightness changes in such stars of between 0.1 and 0.7 percent.
"A change of 0.5 percent in brightness sustained over several past cycles could account for the 2 degree change in climate we have experienced since the beginning of the 18th century," Baliunas maintains. "We don't know if this actually happened, but it indicates that the Sun is a major driver of climate change. We cannot ignore its variations when accounting for the present global warming."
Sun Spots and Storms
What is more, these Baliunas-Soon assumptions consider only brightness changes. Also increasing during the maximum part of solar cycles are invisible but potent ultraviolet rays which heat up Earth's atmosphere and change the paths of winter storms.
This radiation hits oxygen molecules in the upper stratosphere and converts them to ozone. Some 25 miles above our heads, the ozone layer is best known for screening out ultraviolet radiation implicated in skin cancer, cataracts, and crop damage. However, researchers at Harvard's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences have found that increased amounts of ozone interfere with movement of heat from the equator to the poles. That, in turn, shifts the pattern of jet streams that steer the storms around the planet.
Exactly how this contributes to warming Earth during maximum solar activity, and to cooling it during minimums, remains a mystery. "Our uncertainty is enormous," Soon admits, "but we can't omit ultraviolet forcing as a factor in global warming."
The most striking markers of the Sun's waxings and wanings are the coming and going of black spots on its face. Sunspots mark areas where strong magnetic fields exit and enter the surface of the Sun. They are about a thousand degrees cooler than the bright areas that surround them, but are still incandescently hot.
These spots not only follow an 11-year cycle; they also cycle through longer periods of high and low magnetic activity. When the Sun boasts a maximum of spots, cycle after cycle, Earth tends to be warmer than when its face is clear.
During the years from 1640 to 1720, for example, observers counted abnormally few sunspots and Earth's climate entered a period of unusually cold weather. Since the mid-1960s, solar magnetism has been increasing along with global temperatures.
At such maximums, the wind of magnetic fields and charged particles that normally wafts across the 93 million miles from Sun to Earth blows harder. These gusts can trigger colorful displays of auroral lights during long polar nights. The strongest winds may also disrupt long-range radio communications, cause power outages, and disturb the operation of satellites.
Solar winds also produce radioactive carbon atoms in the atmosphere that eventually rain down and become assimilated into tree rings. High solar winds lead to rings with fewer radioactive atoms and vice versa. Changing levels of radiocarbon provide a natural record of magnetic changes on the Sun that can be matched with weather records of coldings and warmings.
"There have been 19 cold periods in the past 10,000 years and a decrease in solar magnetic activity can be linked to 17 of them," Baliunas notes.
Exactly how this happens remains unknown. It probably involves both changes in energy and variations in electrical charges on drops of water in the atmosphere. The drops provide seeds for the formation of clouds which add to natural and greenhouse warmings.
Neither Baliunas nor Soon ties these changes to El Niño, the periodic warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean that brings mostly unwanted weather changes from India to Indiana. "There is no solar cycle with the same 4-to-7-year period and no known direct connection with changes on the Sun," Baliunas says.
"Over longer periods, both the ultraviolet radiation and the particles in solar winds alter the balance of energy in the atmosphere, affecting the movement of winds," Soon points out. "Together with changes in brightness, these mechanisms must affect longer-term changes in climate. All the records we have of climate tie it to variations in the Sun. It is reasonable to assume that that effect persists at the present time."
No one doubts this; but the magnitude of its influence on global warming remains in question. However, a significant number of researchers insist that solar changes are not great enough to produce the warming we are experiencing. They maintain that human activity is the main cause of rising temperatures that threaten widespread flooding, increased storminess, and potentially disruptive shifts in croplands. It is this group that wants to take immediate action to reduce heat-trapping air pollutants.
Baliunas and Soon maintain that interest in and understanding of solar effects will increase faster than rising temperatures, allowing time to study the Sun-climate relationships.
"But," Baliunas admits, "I am addressing scientific issues. Economic, political, and environmental considerations are quite another story."
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Got a Ford Excursion 4x4 w/ a v10 for ya! Drives the environmental wackos into a frenzy! Great fun.

 

Not 100% human made

Oh I'm sure we have a little, very little to do with it. Man for years used wood and coal for heating before cars came out. Then cars came out and we used gas, but quit making wood and coal fires. The earth has checks and balances to neutralize these things, the people saying protect the earth aren't giving the earth any credit here. I agree with the professor from MIT on Larry King the other night. These are just cycles the earth goes through. The SUN goes through cycles too. If the sun gets hotter and send flares out it will warm the earth more and affect the ocean waters and we have global warming, causing more extreme weather. Then on the other hand, if the sun reverses down it can cause ice ages, and the glaciers refreeze. The sun is going through a hotter cycle right now [ count the flares this year alone] and it is causing El Nino etc. What you need to be worried about is why everybody in politics from Gore to Prince Charles is pushing this so heavily. A U.N and E.U. Global TAX on CARBON emmisions to rake more money out of countries for total economic control. I'm sure the World Bank and the IMF will be more than happy to finance all the changes necessary to make it go away. Like that would help. Then people will be so broke they will have to go back to wood and coal AND gas. This doesn't fool me a bit. Just another ploy of the NEW World ORDER. So don't bring me that Socialist propaganda. Seen it before. They have taken your good intentions and are trying to make huge profit off of it. Don't be fooled! They lie. Pull up weather modification on your computer, it explains why it's happening.
I have nothing wrong with higher education, as long as it doesn't interfere with common sense. Ben Cartwright

 

So this article says we are to blame for 90% of global warming...

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/02/02/climate.change.report/index.html

I don't presume to have any detailed scientific knowledge on this subject. I will rely on those who have done the research and studied the research. (sometimes.... ;-) ) But my gut tells me that my car will coast down a hill on it's own ..... but it will get to the bottom a lot faster if I step on the gas pedal. Coasting ... natural phenomenon. Pedal to the metal ... human influence. Arrival at bottom of hill exacerbated by human influence....

I realize there is a current trend to blame everything on us humans..which discounts the massive power of the Earth......

Just reading up on it as I sit here living Floridays , today, Freezing....

 

Followed the links and watched the video clips, the reports and article calls for 7-23 inches of sea riseover100years, THE SAN FRANCISCO PREDICTION MAPS USED A 3FOOT RISE TO FLOOD THE AIRPORT.
FEAR
On face value I can believe the industrial revolution has wrought environmental changes, no matter how big the earth is. I'm not real sure
Why people are so opposed to considering the idea.

My paranoid side says: Iam also pretty sure the United nation and forces for a one world government have their trump card now, they have seized this as a the high moral ground position to legislate from Oslo or the Hague, that Americans or brits are "carbon criminals" using far more "carbon credits" per person that any third worlder, hence subject to checks and balances...

Perhaps a carbon based economy ( as the brits are calling for there.) makes sense???As we ARE all using the same catbox?
Is it socialist??? Probably.
(caution Blasphemy ahead Is wanton unchecked capitalism
the best thing for the majority of the world's people?

Does anybody know what the "best thing for the world 's citizen's is????"
Does every chinese citizen in Beijing deserve a chevy tahoe??? If so what would beijing belike in 15 years ??eek3who gets to make that choice???

I willfirmly argue capitalism is the best system on an individual impact basis as the "micro loan" program showed: I 'm not sure of the names but someone found all these african villages who couldn't get grants from gvernment agencies for large sums , individuals were offered low or nocost loans on "microscopic" amounts of money 20-50$. They used it to buy sewing machines/cloth and cell phones than went on to not only produce buto rent these machines among the villiage and so improved a great many people's situation. Capitalism at work!

The "free" market system works where the markets are "free" and not manipulated by susidies, taxes , and people who "know" better.

Hilliary screeched the other day about the record profits of one of the big oil companies and how she would TAKE THOSE PROFITS AND INEST IN ALTERNATIVE ENERGIES. Ah... Hill, those aren't yours.(yet)..

As "progressive" as I allow myself to think sometimes ; That still throws up giant alarms up in my books!!..See hilliary knows better..Riiiigght....

Cal me a selfish carbon criminal, but I think I fear do-gooders in power jailing me because my truck needs a smog inspection..more than I fear rising sealevels slowly flooding Asbury Park NewJersey....

S'pose we can call the uhaul trucks in and pack the UN back to europe where it belongs. become an outlaw nation?? Sounds like an mtv special...

Just How do we respond to all this...eek3
Guess I've argued to fight the imposition of a control structure but not the issue (environmental degradation)...

 

Why am I hearing Buffett here, T3??

We've made it nearly twenty centuries
A bunch of monkeys with PHD's.
Spun a web of communications
But it's all still a tangle to me.....

I'm light years behind from the age they call stone.
I'm just a carbon based caveman honey, just flesh and bone.

 

Good one!!( can'tfind the "applause" smiley)

 

The Earth is how old and we've been studying weather for how long?

Maybe all those scientists should ask themselves how did the Earth warm up ending the Ice Age.

Man must be responsible for global warming on Mars also. The whole darn Universe must be in a global warming trend, better check out the other planets, just in case.

Mars Emerging from Ice Age, Data Suggest
By SPACE.com

posted: 03:00 pm ET
08 December 2003

Scientists have suspected in recent years that Mars might be undergoing some sort of global warming. New data points to the possibility it is emerging from an ice age.

NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter has been surveying the planet for nearly a full Martian year now, and it has spotted seasonal changes like the advance and retreat of polar ice. It's also gathering data of a possible longer trend.

There appears to be too much frozen water at low-latitude regions -- away from the frigid poles -- given the current climate of Mars. The situation is not in equilibrium, said William Feldman of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

"One explanation could be that Mars is just coming out of an ice age," Feldman said. "In some low-latitude areas, the ice has already dissipated. In others, that process is slower and hasn't reached an equilibrium yet. Those areas are like the patches of snow you sometimes see persisting in protected spots long after the last snowfall of the winter."

Frozen water makes up as much as 10 percent of the top 3 feet (1 meter) of surface material in some regions close to the equator. Dust deposits may be covering and insulating the lingering ice, Feldman said.

Feldman is the lead scientist for an Odyssey instrument that assesses water content indirectly through measurements of neutron emissions. He and other Odyssey scientists described their recent findings today at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

"Odyssey is giving us indications of recent global climate change in Mars," said Jeffrey Plaut, project scientist for the mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

High latitude regions of Mars have layers with differing ice content within the top 20 inches (half-meter) or so of the surface, researchers conclude from mapping of hydrogen abundance based on gamma-ray emissions.

"A model that fits the data has three layers near the surface," said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, Tucson, team leader for the gamma-ray spectrometer instrument on Odyssey. "The very top layer would be dry, with no ice. The next layer would contain ice in the pore spaces between grains of soil. Beneath that would be a very ice-rich layer, 60 to nearly 100 percent water ice."

Boynton interprets the iciest layer as a deposit of snow or frost, mixed with a little windblown dust, from an era when the climate was colder than nowadays. The middle layer could be the result of changes brought in a warmer era, when ice down to a certain depth dissipated into the atmosphere. The dust left behind collapsed into a soil layer with limited pore space for returning ice.

More study is needed to determine for sure what's going on.

Other Odyssey instruments are providing other pieces of the puzzle. Images from the orbiter's camera system have been combined into the highest resolution complete map ever made of Mars' south polar region.

"We can now accurately count craters in the layered materials of the polar regions to get an idea how old they are," said Phil Christensen of Arizona State University, Tempe, principal investigator for the camera system.

Temperature information from the camera system's infrared imaging has produced a surprise about dark patches that dot bright expanses of seasonal carbon-dioxide ice.

"Those dark features look like places where the ice has gone away, but thermal infrared maps show that even the dark areas have temperatures so low they must be carbon-dioxide ice." Christensen said. "One possibility is that the ice is clear in these areas and we're seeing down through the ice to features underneath."

 

We've brought this up, the important difference is NOW it will used to effect policy..whether it's nuts or not..