Entire Antarctic Shelf splitting away from Continent.

[gatorback]

We're not looking at 10,000 years ago, we're going back to late 1700s or the start of the industrial revolution.  Remember, it's the green house gasses causing global cooling.  We just think we're to small to make a difference.

I was always told that greenhouse gases cause global warming.  Which is it?

It's all explained brilliantly in the movie "Day After Tomorrow."  Basically as I understand it, as the polar ice melts (THIS ISN’T MY THEORY) the fresh water will cause the ocean currents to have a problem.  Warm water and air will not make it so far north as it does now.  SO, since the current stops they get cold up northâ€"which is what they call global cooling.  I agree to global cooling is caused by global warming which humans haven’t helped much in preventing.  That’s all I know.

Watch the movie and buy land in Texas, or better, Mexico.

[Charleston native]

Gator, I guess in my old missileer job, I should've paid more attention to the facts in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

Oh yes, and since we're talking about going to Mars, I think Star Wars would be a great reference to what will happen with space travel.

And lastly, should we ever have to prepare for an asteroid that could destroy the planet, Armageddon should provide plenty of "brilliant" material for us.

[gatorback]

You bet Charleston.  Did you ever watch China Syndrom?  And, what was that other one, oh yes, The Al Gore movie, what was that called? 

[Charleston native]

I never thought I'd see the day when we started basing our reality on movies. It's just maddening.

[gatorback]

China Syndrom?  You're saying that the reality of what was presented in China Syndrom couldn't happen?

[Charleston native]

I never saw China Syndrome, and from the synopsis on Wiki, I wouldn't care to watch it. It's sensationalism at its best, and you apparently bought into it completely.

Let's see, you've bought into this movie, Gore's movie, The Day After Tomorrow, and the sensationalistic hurricane forecasters with their paranoid theories on CNN/Weather Channel. Gator, I highly suggest that you start using a mental filter when viewing these mediums of entertainment. If you believe everything that the TVs or movies tell you, there's a serious problem going on.

[gatorback]

Charleston of course you wouldn't care to watch China Syndrome as it would prove a minor point which is sometimes the directors and producers want to shed light on a cause and put up their own money.  When CS premiered there were a bunch of maggots in the nuclear power industry who said it could never happen.  3 months after the premiere 3 Mile Island.  So, laugh all you want.  I’ll give you one more.  Flipper.

Yes, that American television program we all grew up with.  I’m sure you ridiculed Flipper as being not possible…for dolphins to not be as they were portrayed on TV.  That as a young Flipper, flipping your little flippers in the deep blue see, to hear and understand the distress of Bud or Sandy, and come to his or her rescue….yes, because that’s on TV that could never happen.  Right?  Dolphins would never come to help another species huh?  And your argument here is, because it’s on TV it can never be true.  Bravo.  Thanks for contributing my understand of nature.

Charlarleston all you've really done his is proven you're one of those people.  All you have to do is look at Chernobyl.

[Charleston native]

Gator, very obtuse logic. I never said that there wasn't any truth or fact in TV shows and movies, but you apparently believe it all. And that's the problem with propaganda. They'll give you a sliver of truth and combine it with a bunch of fiction. Then create hysterical postulations of what "could" possibly happen. Then stamp their seal of approval and call it fact.

Paranoid delusions continue to inhibit our ability to provide for more nuclear power and to drill for our own oil.

[jaxnative]

August 15, 2008
Climate Change circa 6,000 B.C.
Ethel C. Fenig

Along with death and taxes, the only other constant in life is change.  Now that the Al Gore hysteria of global warming seems to be cooling down a bit  the new climate hysteria mantra has been changed to  let's stop global climate change.


But the global climate has always been changing as proven once again by a recent discovery published in a scientific journal by famed University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno and his team. 


About 6000-10,000 years ago 
The period of the Green Sahara, as some researchers call it, began when a fluctuation in the Earth's orbit changed African weather patterns and brought more rain to the desert. The lakes that developed supported six-foot-long pike fish, turtles, crocodiles and an array of other wildlife and human settlers.

But the dunes eventually returned, swallowing for ages any record of how Stone Age people managed to thrive at the site in northern Niger.


"It's really the story of humanity's struggle to exist in an environment undergoing severe changes," Sereno said.


Hmmm, 6000 years ago people had already discovered fire but was it this smoke polluting the atmosphere; was this smoke so damaging to the environment to cause the Earth's orbit to change?  Probably not.  Or is it possible that there are other factors beyond human actions which cause climate change such as the change in the Earth's orbit? 

Digging at different locations all across our planet would reveal artifacts such as plants and bones that indicate thousands of years ago these places had a different climate.  In other words it has changed since then; climate has always been changing long before Al Gore noticed it and will continue to do so long after he and his acolytes have moved on to the latest phony crisis. 
And that is a constant. 

www.americanthinker.com

[RiversideGator]

OK.  Either way, why don't you explain this one fact.  That in the North Poll, where nobody lives, and nobody has ever lived, that the ice there, the ice that has  been there for ever since we recoreded, that ice, it's gone.   Explain please that if we are cooling, why wouldn't we have more ice there then no ice at all?

Actually Gator, the ice is still there and more widespread than last year:

Just a few weeks ago, predictions of Arctic ice collapse were buzzing all over the internet. Some scientists were predicting that the "North Pole may be ice-free for first time this summer". Others predicted that the entire "polar ice cap would disappear this summer".

The Arctic melt season is nearly done for this year. The sun is now very low above the horizon and will set for the winter at the North Pole in five weeks. And none of these dire predictions have come to pass. Yet there is, however, something odd going on with the ice data.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado released an alarming graph on August 11, showing that Arctic ice was rapidly disappearing, back towards last year's record minimum. Their data shows Arctic sea ice extent only 10 per cent greater than this date in 2007, and the second lowest on record. Here's a smaller version of the graph:
Arctic ice not disappearing


The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC)'s troublesome ice graph

The problem is that this graph does not appear to be correct. Other data sources show Arctic ice having made a nice recovery this summer. NASA Marshall Space Flight Center data shows 2008 ice nearly identical to 2002, 2005 and 2006. Maps of Arctic ice extent are readily available from several sources, including the University of Illinois, which keeps a daily archive for the last 30 years. A comparison of these maps (derived from NSIDC data) below shows that Arctic ice extent was 30 per cent greater on August 11, 2008 than it was on the August 12, 2007. (2008 is a leap year, so the dates are offset by one.)
Ice at the Arctic


Ice at the Arctic: 2007 and 2008 snapshots

The video below highlights the differences between those two dates. As you can see, ice has grown in nearly every direction since last summer - with a large increase in the area north of Siberia. Also note that the area around the Northwest Passage (west of Greenland) has seen a significant increase in ice. Some of the islands in the Canadian Archipelago are surrounded by more ice than they were during the summer of 1980.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKLiHWRaJU4

The 30 per cent increase was calculated by counting pixels which contain colors representing ice. This is a conservative calculation, because of the map projection used. As the ice expands away from the pole, each new pixel represents a larger area - so the net effect is that the calculated 30 per cent increase is actually on the low side.

So how did NSIDC calculate a 10 per cent increase over 2007? Their graph appears to disagree with the maps by a factor of three (10 per cent vs. 30 per cent) - hardly a trivial discrepancy.
What melts the Arctic?

The Arctic did not experience the meltdowns forecast by NSIDC and the Norwegian Polar Year Secretariat. It didn't even come close. Additionally, some current graphs and press releases from NSIDC seem less than conservative. There appears to be a consistent pattern of overstatement related to Arctic ice loss.

We know that Arctic summer ice extent is largely determined by variable oceanic and atmospheric currents such as the Arctic Oscillation. NASA claimed last summer that "not all the large changes seen in Arctic climate in recent years are a result of long-term trends associated with global warming". The media tendency to knee-jerkingly blame everything on "global warming" makes for an easy story - but it is not based on solid science.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/15/goddard_arctic_ice_mystery/

[gatorback]

OK.  Either way, why don't you explain this one fact.  That in the North Poll, where nobody lives, and nobody has ever lived, that the ice there, the ice that has  been there for ever since we recoreded, that ice, it's gone.   Explain please that if we are cooling, why wouldn't we have more ice there then no ice at all?

Actually Gator, the ice is still there and more widespread than last year:

Just a few weeks ago, predictions of Arctic ice collapse were buzzing all over the internet. Some scientists were predicting that the "North Pole may be ice-free for first time this summer". Others predicted that the entire "polar ice cap would disappear this summer".

The Arctic melt season is nearly done for this year. The sun is now very low above the horizon and will set for the winter at the North Pole in five weeks. And none of these dire predictions have come to pass. Yet there is, however, something odd going on with the ice data.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado released an alarming graph on August 11, showing that Arctic ice was rapidly disappearing, back towards last year's record minimum. Their data shows Arctic sea ice extent only 10 per cent greater than this date in 2007, and the second lowest on record. Here's a smaller version of the graph:
Arctic ice not disappearing


The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC)'s troublesome ice graph

The problem is that this graph does not appear to be correct. Other data sources show Arctic ice having made a nice recovery this summer. NASA Marshall Space Flight Center data shows 2008 ice nearly identical to 2002, 2005 and 2006. Maps of Arctic ice extent are readily available from several sources, including the University of Illinois, which keeps a daily archive for the last 30 years. A comparison of these maps (derived from NSIDC data) below shows that Arctic ice extent was 30 per cent greater on August 11, 2008 than it was on the August 12, 2007. (2008 is a leap year, so the dates are offset by one.)
Ice at the Arctic


Ice at the Arctic: 2007 and 2008 snapshots

The video below highlights the differences between those two dates. As you can see, ice has grown in nearly every direction since last summer - with a large increase in the area north of Siberia. Also note that the area around the Northwest Passage (west of Greenland) has seen a significant increase in ice. Some of the islands in the Canadian Archipelago are surrounded by more ice than they were during the summer of 1980.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKLiHWRaJU4

The 30 per cent increase was calculated by counting pixels which contain colors representing ice. This is a conservative calculation, because of the map projection used. As the ice expands away from the pole, each new pixel represents a larger area - so the net effect is that the calculated 30 per cent increase is actually on the low side.

So how did NSIDC calculate a 10 per cent increase over 2007? Their graph appears to disagree with the maps by a factor of three (10 per cent vs. 30 per cent) - hardly a trivial discrepancy.
What melts the Arctic?

The Arctic did not experience the meltdowns forecast by NSIDC and the Norwegian Polar Year Secretariat. It didn't even come close. Additionally, some current graphs and press releases from NSIDC seem less than conservative. There appears to be a consistent pattern of overstatement related to Arctic ice loss.

We know that Arctic summer ice extent is largely determined by variable oceanic and atmospheric currents such as the Arctic Oscillation. NASA claimed last summer that "not all the large changes seen in Arctic climate in recent years are a result of long-term trends associated with global warming". The media tendency to knee-jerkingly blame everything on "global warming" makes for an easy story - but it is not based on solid science.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/15/goddard_arctic_ice_mystery/

2007 to 2008. 1 year? That is funny.  You're global cooling theory is predicated on 1 year of Change. ROFLMAO.

Really who cares about 1 year and who cares about 1 degree.  We're talking trends and significant temperature change over the long run.

[RiversideGator]

The point is we are above last year in terms of ice coverage rather than the ice free Arctic predicted by many alarmists (and parroted by you just a few posts ago).  If things are roughly normal (and they are based on our 30 years of satellite data) and in fact ice coverage is increasing, then perhaps the "problem" is exaggerated.

[gatorback]

I concur but as we all are painfully aware of this stuff sells newspapers which in turn keeps the economy going which ironically contributes to global warming/cooling.  Yeah!   Let’s face it, humans ARE not capable of turning back the hands of time.  That the industrial revolution didn’t help mother nature.  That the entire mess was put into play billions of years ago, and that it's going to get a lot hotter and colder in the near future.  As it's happened before.  As supported by our oxygen isotope data going back long time.

[RiversideGator]

Climate change does appear to be the only constant in the history of the Earth.

[RiversideGator]

This just in.  Denver (site of the Democrat Convention) records a record low high temperature yesterday:

Statement as of 8:00 PM MDT on August 16, 2008

... Record low maximum temperature set in Denver for August 16th...

The high temperature at Denver International Airport today was 58
degrees.

This 58 degree reading will replace the previous low maximum
temperature record for August 16th which was 63 degrees set 118
years ago in 1890.

http://www.wunderground.com/US/CO/040.html