Metro Jacksonville

QuoteYear of global cooling

By David Deming
December 19, 2007

Al Gore says global warming is a planetary emergency. It is difficult to see how this can be so when record low temperatures are being set all over the world. In 2007, hundreds of people died, not from global warming, but from cold weather hazards.

Since the mid-19th century, the mean global temperature has increased by 0.7 degrees Celsius. This slight warming is not unusual, and lies well within the range of natural variation. Carbon dioxide continues to build in the atmosphere, but the mean planetary temperature hasn't increased significantly for nearly nine years. Antarctica is getting colder. Neither the intensity nor the frequency of hurricanes has increased. The 2007 season was the third-quietest since 1966. In 2006 not a single hurricane made landfall in the U.S.

South America this year experienced one of its coldest winters in decades. In Buenos Aires, snow fell for the first time since the year 1918. Dozens of homeless people died from exposure. In Peru, 200 people died from the cold and thousands more became infected with respiratory diseases. Crops failed, livestock perished, and the Peruvian government declared a state of emergency.

Unexpected bitter cold swept the entire Southern Hemisphere in 2007. Johannesburg, South Africa, had the first significant snowfall in 26 years. Australia experienced the coldest June ever. In northeastern Australia, the city of Townsville underwent the longest period of continuously cold weather since 1941. In New Zealand, the weather turned so cold that vineyards were endangered.

Last January, $1.42 billion worth of California produce was lost to a devastating five-day freeze. Thousands of agricultural employees were thrown out of work. At the supermarket, citrus prices soared. In the wake of the freeze, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked President Bush to issue a disaster declaration for affected counties. A few months earlier, Mr. Schwarzenegger had enthusiastically signed the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, a law designed to cool the climate. California Sen. Barbara Boxer continues to push for similar legislation in the U.S. Senate.

In April, a killing freeze destroyed 95 percent of South Carolina's peach crop, and 90 percent of North Carolina's apple harvest. At Charlotte, N.C., a record low temperature of 21 degrees Fahrenheit on April 8 was the coldest ever recorded for April, breaking a record set in 1923. On June 8, Denver recorded a new low of 31 degrees Fahrenheit. Denver's temperature records extend back to 1872.

Recent weeks have seen the return of unusually cold conditions to the Northern Hemisphere. On Dec. 7, St. Cloud, Minn., set a new record low of minus 15 degrees Fahrenheit. On the same date, record low temperatures were also recorded in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Extreme cold weather is occurring worldwide. On Dec. 4, in Seoul, Korea, the temperature was a record minus 5 degrees Celsius. Nov. 24, in Meacham, Ore., the minimum temperature was 12 degrees Fahrenheit colder than the previous record low set in 1952. The Canadian government warns that this winter is likely to be the coldest in 15 years.

Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri are just emerging from a destructive ice storm that left at least 36 people dead and a million without electric power. People worldwide are being reminded of what used to be common sense: Cold temperatures are inimical to human welfare and warm weather is beneficial. Left in the dark and cold, Oklahomans rushed out to buy electric generators powered by gasoline, not solar cells. No one seemed particularly concerned about the welfare of polar bears, penguins or walruses. Fossil fuels don't seem so awful when you're in the cold and dark.

If you think any of the preceding facts can falsify global warming, you're hopelessly naive. Nothing creates cognitive dissonance in the mind of a true believer. In 2005, a Canadian Greenpeace representative explained “global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter.” In other words, all weather variations are evidence for global warming. I can't make this stuff up.

Global warming has long since passed from scientific hypothesis to the realm of pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo.

David Deming is a geophysicist, an adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis, and associate professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma

QuoteGISS 2007 Temperature Analysis through November
10 December 2007

James Hansen, Reto Ruedy, Makiko Sato, Ken Lo

Through the first 11 months, 2007 is the second warmest year in the period of
instrumental data, behind the record warmth of 2005, in the Goddard Institute for Space Studies
(GISS) analysis. The unusual warmth in 2007 is noteworthy because it occurs at a time when
solar irradiance is at a minimum and the equatorial Pacific Ocean has entered the cool phase of
its natural El Nino â€" La Nina cycle.

Analysis of the full year will be prepared in mid-January and presented on the GISS web
site. It is likely that 2007 will remain as the second warmest year after December data is added,
but it could slip to third in our analysis if December is unusually cold. Ranking relative to other
years is likely to vary among results of different groups that make global temperature analyses,
because of differences in data sources, methods of combining data sets, and areas included in the
averaging. A difference in recent years arises from Arctic data, as our analysis extrapolates
limited data to cover the entire Arctic, a region that is important for determining the true global
temperature change because of the large temperature anomaly there. Comparison with satellite
infrared data indicates that our estimated temperature anomalies there are not excessive.

Figure 1 shows temperature anomalies during the first 11 months of 2007 relative to
1951-1980 base period mean temperatures. The global mean temperature anomaly, about 0.6°C
(about 1°F) warmer than the 1951-1980 mean, continues the strong warming trend of the past
thirty years that has been confidently attributed to the effect of increasing human-made
greenhouse gases (http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2007/2007_Hansen_etal_1.pdf). The six
warmest years in the GISS record have all occurred since 1998, and the 15 warmest years in the
record have all occurred since 1988.
....

Quote from: midnightblackrx on December 20, 2007, 01:01:30 PM
Hey, we all know it's a concensus tht global warming exists.  See what the US Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works says about it... 

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=f80a6386-802a-23ad-40c8-3c63dc2d02cb

QuoteWe know the kelp and sea creatures lived in the oceans so either the land was pushed up or the oceans receded.

QuoteIce cores have established the existence of at least 17 Ice Age Cycles in just the past 2 million years.

Quotescientists tell us that CO2 levels have been as high as 15 times the current level of about 380 parts per million (ppm) and levels of about 5 times the current level were common. The current level of 380 ppm is like comparing the contents of an eye dropper to a swimming pool. Plants thrived at the higher CO2 levels and varying CO2 levels aren’t harmful to plants, animals, or humans.

QuoteConsidering the earth is only about 6,000 years old

QuoteWe all knew that Ohio State would roll over the "overrated" Gators in last year's championship game, Y2K was going to be the end of civilization as we knew it and Jesus Christ would return in 1988.

Boy, we sure do know a lot don't we?

QuoteAccording to the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists(ACGIH), a professional society devoted to the development of administrative and technical aspects of worker protection in my particular industry, the Threshold Limit Value(TLV), which measures of toxicity of a substance and refers to , in general, the airborne concentrations at or below which nearly all workers may be repeatedly exposed without adverse effect, has set the TLV of Carbon Dioxide at 5000 ppm.

Quote from: Lunican on January 07, 2008, 04:55:49 PM
How do you calculate 6,000 years?

QuoteI found an interesting calculator created by a University of Maryland professor along with his students in partnership with NASA (I haven't validated the exact science of this, but it's interesting nonetheless), that allows you to calculate where man first appears on the planet on a year, week, or 24 hour clock.  Of course, this is a scientific approach to the creation of man (based on astronomy) and not the faith-based religious approach, so this may be moot for many of you to begin with.  Regardless, let's pretend that everyone here has an open mind to science.

QuoteIn a 24 hour time period, with the universe's creation occuring at 12:00 midnight, and earth's creation at 4:38pm,  man appears at 11:59:56pm, just under 24 hours from the universe being created.  By condensing the time in which our world was formed, it really makes one think about how little we actually do know.  How can we claim to be all-knowing when it comes to the power of nature, when nature has been around so much longer than we have been?  I read in some science journal (wish I could remember the name or provide a link), that if man were to dissapear today, it would only take 5 days for nature to take over, i.e. weeds overtaking concrete sidewalks/roads, animals reclaiming once noisy and populated housing subdivisions, etc.  And, that I can prove.  Just take a look at my yard.  It's like the ruins of Pompei, lol, and it's only been a week!

Quote from: downtownparks on January 10, 2008, 12:18:23 PM
And you believe that?

QuoteDo you know some solid facts that I don't know?

QuoteOf course. Doesn't everyone?  I mean, no way did anything else exist on our planet until Adam and Eve were put here, and they immediatly had the ability to speak intellectually, read and write.  Fossils and carbon dating is just a bunch of whooey cooked up by the government to deviate from the only historically accurate record we have; the bible.  ::)

QuoteCarbon Dating - The Controversy
Carbon dating is controversial for a couple of reasons. First of all, it's predicated upon a set of questionable assumptions. We have to assume, for example, that the rate of decay (that is, a 5,730 year half-life) has remained constant throughout the unobservable past. However, there is strong evidence which suggests that radioactive decay may have been greatly accelerated in the unobservable past.1 We must also assume that the ratio of C-12 to C-14 in the atmosphere has remained constant throughout the unobservable past (so we can know what the ratio was at the time of the specimen's death). And yet we know that "radiocarbon is forming 28-37% faster than it is decaying,"2 which means it hasn't yet reached equilibrium, which means the ratio is higher today than it was in the unobservable past. We also know that the ratio decreased during the industrial revolution due to the dramatic increase of CO2 produced by factories. This man-made fluctuation wasn't a natural occurrence, but it demonstrates the fact that fluctuation is possible and that a period of natural upheaval upon the earth could greatly affect the ratio. Volcanoes spew out CO2 which could just as effectively decrease the ratio. Specimens which lived and died during a period of intense volcanism would appear older than they really are if they were dated using this technique. The ratio can further be affected by C-14 production rates in the atmosphere, which in turn is affected by the amount of cosmic rays penetrating the earth's atmosphere. The amount of cosmic rays penetrating the earth's atmosphere is itself affected by things like the earth's magnetic field which deflects cosmic rays. Precise measurements taken over the last 140 years have shown a steady decay in the strength of the earth's magnetic field. This means there's been a steady increase in radiocarbon production (which would increase the ratio).

And finally, this dating scheme is controversial because the dates derived are often wildly inconsistent. For example, "One part of Dima [a famous baby mammoth discovered in 1977] was 40,000 RCY [Radiocarbon Years], another was 26,000 RCY, and 'wood found immediately around the carcass' was 9,000-10,000 RCY." (Walt Brown, In the Beginning, 2001, p. 176)

Quote from: second_pancake on January 10, 2008, 12:53:01 PM

QuoteDo you know some solid facts that I don't know?

Would it make a difference?

Quote from: JeffreyS on January 10, 2008, 01:37:49 PM
Faith has you take the polio vaccine and pray that it works.  It would be so easy to argue if faith meant abandoning science and reason but it does not. Their are some who reject scientific achievements but you know this isn't the norm.  It just messes up your zinger not to fit people in their neat little boxes.

Quote from: second_pancake on January 10, 2008, 01:45:23 PM
You can look into a microscope with infected cells, introduce the vaccine and watch it work...no faith involved.  If it were a matter of hoping, praying and guessing, there would be cases of Polio all over our country from people who've had the vaccine.  If we use the ideaology that SC and yourself are using, then anything and everything only exists because we believe it to be so, and when we stop believing it will be no more.  You're asking to prove whether truth is truth and fact and is fact.  You're asking to prove whether I am here or if "here" even exists.  Any facts or evidence that are laid before you will just be dismissed as there is no proof that the proof is actual proof.  No one can win arguments like this because they're completely circular.  So, yes, you have rejected reason if this is what you believe.  Reason has an objective end, faith does not.

Quote from: JeffreyS on January 10, 2008, 01:55:00 PM
Faith is not Synonymous with reason one is just not a rejection of the other.  Some cures work on some people for some afflictions. Things can be proven and other things work but we don't know why.  I know arguing with someone whose come back is just I believe it can be frustrating.  I just hope you just do not equate faith with being dumb.

Quote from: Lunican on January 10, 2008, 01:25:25 PM
Specimens, cosmic rays, ratios, precise measurements, magnetic fields, radiocarbons... geez, this all sounds so scientific.

QuoteFor clarification, what I am asking is for you to prove the earth is older than 6,000 years (if you would like to go ahead and prove evolution as well it would be much appreciated).

Quote from: second_pancake on January 10, 2008, 03:05:59 PM
You know what, you're right.  I concede.  I CAN'T prove the earth is older than 6,000 years because I am not, nor have I ever been, a scientist.  I don't own or know how to build the equiptment that would allow me to do the research to prove this.  I don't know how to take a core sample, analyze fossils, or extract DNA from dinasaur bones.  Alas, all I can do is read books written by people who have done all of the above and have documented every step taken to come to the conclusion they have drawn.  Thousands of books that all have the same thing written in them, over and over again in various languages and are known to be true by hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world because they have duplicated the tests and come to the same conclusion.  The burden is not on me to prove the world is over 6,000 years old, my friend.  It is for you to prove it is not. 

QuoteIt's a good thing that the various laws of physics and scientific principles that are used in carbon dating and other types of research and technology are the same principles that allow things like large scale integrated circuits and LCD displays to have become realities, even though the movement of atoms and electrons within these devices cannot be seen, and are not observable nor intuitively obvious,

Quoteor else you would be carving your moronic new earth missives with a chisel onto a piece of stone.

QuoteTo be clear, the word moronic is an adjective that was used to describe your new earth ideas, not yourself.

QuoteBack to my original question: Where did you get 6,000 years from?

QuoteFor everyone's edutainment, can you explain what makes it a more compelling number than 200, or 10,000, or 5 million?

Quote from: Lunican on January 11, 2008, 02:56:13 PM
How can you verify the level of accuracy of events stated in the Bible?

Quote from: Midway on January 11, 2008, 10:26:06 PM
Social Conservative, it might be better to leave the promotion of new earth creationism to the experts in the field. You are doing a poor job of representing this cause and as such are tarnishing the entire movement.

There are numerous websites devoted to this subject that have in depth discussions of all the important and pertinent advances in this field, as well as a museum in Kentucky. I am deeply offended that you are representing this important cause in such an inadequate fashion.

If your arguments were more reasoned and compelling, I am certain that all who read them would understand the  basic underlying truth in this interpretation of the creation of Earth, and would also understand that the Earth's age cannot possibly exceed 8,000 years.

Please avail yourself of the myriad resources on this subject for the purposes of self education and return when you are equipped to adequately represent this advancement of human knowledge and awareness in a way that permits all people to follow your teachings.

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and ye shall find; knock and the door will be opened unto you. For everyone who asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
Matthew 7:7-8

QuoteThe Sun Also Sets

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, February 07, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Climate Change: Not every scientist is part of Al Gore's mythical "consensus." Scientists worried about a new ice age seek funding to better observe something bigger than your SUV â€" the sun.

Related Topics: Global Warming

Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles.

To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better "eyes" with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth's climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined.

And they're worried about global cooling, not warming.

Kenneth Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, is among those looking at the sun for evidence of an increase in sunspot activity.

Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle. But so far in this cycle, the sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century.

Such an event occurred in the 17th century. The observation of sunspots showed extraordinarily low levels of magnetism on the sun, with little or no 11-year cycle.

This solar hibernation corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until 1715. Frigid winters and cold summers during that period led to massive crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe.

Tapping reports no change in the sun's magnetic field so far this cycle and warns that if the sun remains quiet for another year or two, it may indicate a repeat of that period of drastic cooling of the Earth, bringing massive snowfall and severe weather to the Northern Hemisphere.

Tapping oversees the operation of a 60-year-old radio telescope that he calls a "stethoscope for the sun." But he and his colleagues need better equipment.

In Canada, where radio-telescopic monitoring of the sun has been conducted since the end of World War II, a new instrument, the next-generation solar flux monitor, could measure the sun's emissions more rapidly and accurately.

As we have noted many times, perhaps the biggest impact on the Earth's climate over time has been the sun.

For instance, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar Research in Germany report the sun has been burning more brightly over the last 60 years, accounting for the 1 degree Celsius increase in Earth's temperature over the last 100 years.

R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center of Canada's Carleton University, says that "CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales."

Rather, he says, "I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of energy on this planet."

Patterson, sharing Tapping's concern, says: "Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth."

"Solar activity has overpowered any effect that CO2 has had before, and it most likely will again," Patterson says. "If we were to have even a medium-sized solar minimum, we could be looking at a lot more bad effects than 'global warming' would have had."

In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov made some waves â€" and not a few enemies in the global warming "community" â€" by predicting that the sun would reach a peak of activity about three years from now, to be accompanied by "dramatic changes" in temperatures.

A Hoover Institution Study a few years back examined historical data and came to a similar conclusion.

"The effects of solar activity and volcanoes are impossible to miss. Temperatures fluctuated exactly as expected, and the pattern was so clear that, statistically, the odds of the correlation existing by chance were one in 100," according to Hoover fellow Bruce Berkowitz.

The study says that "try as we might, we simply could not find any relationship between industrial activity, energy consumption and changes in global temperatures."

The study concludes that if you shut down all the world's power plants and factories, "there would not be much effect on temperatures."

But if the sun shuts down, we've got a problem. It is the sun, not the Earth, that's hanging in the balance.

QuoteChina battles "coldest winter in 100 years"
Mon Feb 4, 2008 9:28am GMT

By John Ruwitch

CHENZHOU, China, Feb 4 (Reuters) - Millions remained stranded in China on Monday ahead of the biggest holiday of the year as parts of the country suffered their coldest winter in a century.

Freezing weather has killed scores of people and left travellers stranded before the Lunar New Year, or Spring Festival -- the only opportunity many people have to take a holiday all year.

It has also brought China unwanted negative publicity six months before the Summer Olympics in Beijing.

President Hu Jintao chaired an emergency Politburo meeting on Sunday for the second time in a week to discuss rescue efforts.

"We have to be clear-minded that the inclement weather and severe disaster will continue to plague certain regions in the south," said a statement issued after Sunday's meeting. "Relief work will continue to face challenges, posing a tough task."

The China Meteorological Administration said the weather was the coldest in 100 years in central Hubei and Hunan provinces, going by the total number of consecutive days of average temperature less than 1 degree Celsius (33.8 degrees Fahrenheit).

But it expected brighter weather ahead, though fog could become a problem and temperatures at night would likely still be below freezing, slowing the thaw.

"The weather over the disaster-stricken regions is likely to turn better in the next several days, but it is still necessary to remain alert for possible low temperatures, frozen rain, snow, freezing and heavy fog," said administration head Zheng Guoguang.

He added the cold snap had caught the country off guard, in an area unprepared for such heavy snow. But climate change could see more extremes in weather in China, Zheng warned.

Four people died after a snow-laden roof collapsed at a fuel station in the eastern city of Nanjing on Sunday, Xinhua news agency said. One person was killed in a stampede at Guangzhou railway station in the south as people rushed to board trains.

Roads and railways, some of which have been blocked for days, have started to move again, and fewer flights were being cancelled, state media said, offering a glimmer of hope.

CAJOLED TO SKIP HOLIDAY

Authorities in the southern city of Guangzhou said their priority was to clear the backlog of travellers, having cajoled millions of migrant workers to stay put and skip the holiday.

Elsewhere, efforts turned to restoring power and water, which some cities, such as Chenzhou in the south, have been without for more than a week, causing some to question China's ability to handle emergencies months before Beijing holds the Olympics.

"Without power the only information we have been getting is by SMS from the government," said Chenzhou resident Zheng Ninghong, tending a fruit stall amid the slush.

"There was one, I think, that said it would get warmer, but what we need is electricity."

China has largely avoided unrest throughout the crisis, in part due to hundreds of thousands of soldiers and paramilitary police that have been deployed around the country to help with disaster relief and crowd control.

Mobilising the might of the state, China has deployed more than 300,000 troops and nearly 1.1 million militia and army reservists to get traffic moving and ensure power supplies.

Pictures from Wuhan, capital of the central province of Hubei and lying at the middle reaches of the Yangtze and Han rivers, showed cars blanketed not by snow, but by ice. Riverside barriers and trees were draped in huge icicles.

The China Daily quoted Li Pumin, spokesman for top planning body the National Development and Reform Commission, as saying power plants in Beijing and Shanghai had only enough coal for less than seven days.

"But top economic planners said the country had reversed a sharp decline in coal reserves. There was enough coal on Saturday to generate electricity for the entire country for the next eight days," the newspaper added. (Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by Nick Macfie and Alex Richardson)

QuoteRecord Cold for Northern Minn.: 40 Below

By JEFF BAENEN â€" 2 days ago

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) â€" It lived up to its name: The temperature in International Falls fell to 40 below zero Monday, just a few days after the northern Minnesota town won a federal trademark making it officially the "Icebox of the Nation."

It was so cold that resident Nick McDougall couldn't get his car trunk to close after he got out his charger to kick-start his dead battery. By late morning, the temperature had risen all the way to 18 â€" below zero.

"This is about as cold as it gets, this is bad. There's no wind â€" it's just cold," said McDougall, 48, a worker at The Fisherman, a convenience store and gas station in the town on the Canadian border. "People just don't go out, unless you have to go to work."

Residents of the area use electric engine block heaters to keep their cars from freezing.

"You plug in your car, for sure, and you put the car in the garage if you can," McDougall said. His garage is full of other things, so he had to park outside â€" a "big mistake."

The previous record low for Feb. 11 in International Falls was 37 below, set in 1967, said meteorologist Mike Stewart at the weather service in Duluth.

The temperature also fell to 40 below in Embarrass, 80 miles southeast of International Falls. That's just one degree above the all-time record in Minneapolis, 250 miles to the south, that was set in January 1888, the weather service said.

It was also a cold day in Winter. The town in northwest Wisconsin chilled to a low of 25 below.

"You don't want to be out there too long," said Winter area resident Bill Warner, 37.

The chilly air also blew into the Northeast on Monday and many schools in New York state between Buffalo and Syracuse closed or opened late. Single-digit temperatures plus wind drove the wind chill factor to nearly 20 below across much of upstate New York.

New York state got more than 3 feet of lake-effect snow Monday along the east end of Lake Ontario as the cold wind picked up moisture from the lake. "The highway crews are having a difficult time keeping up with the amount of snow and blowing conditions," said Oswego Town Supervisor Victoria Mullen.

South of the coldest air mass, freezing rain hit southwest Missouri, making roads hazardous and closing schools. Ice was more than an inch thick in places, authorities said. Several thousand lost electricity in the Springfield area when lines iced over and ice-covered limbs crashed onto power lines.

"It's treacherous" Missouri Highway Patrol Sgt. Dan Bracker said in Springfield.

As the precipitation moved eastward out of Missouri, the weather service posted winter storm and snow warnings for parts of Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio.

Hundreds of West Virginia homes and businesses had no electricity Monday, down from several thousand, after weekend wind gusts of up to 55 mph. At least nine counties closed schools because of power outages and the cold. The mountain city of Elkins had a low of 6 above.

Classes also were canceled Monday for a number of schools in Michigan, which remained in a deep freeze after a weekend of single-digit temperatures and gusty wind. One death was blamed on the weather there.

QuoteFebruary 16, 2008
Arctic Sea Ice Sees 'Significant Increase' in Size Following 'Extreme Cold'
Thomas Lifson
The ultraliberal CBC reports a truth that is mighty inconvenient for Al Gore.


There's an upside to the extreme cold temperatures northern Canadians have endured in the last few weeks: scientists say it's been helping winter sea ice grow across the Arctic, where the ice shrank to record-low levels last year. Temperatures have stayed well in the -30s C and -40s C range since late January throughout the North, with the mercury dipping past -50 C in some areas. Satellite images are showing that the cold spell is helping the sea ice expand in coverage by about 2 million square kilometres, compared to the average winter coverage in the previous three years. "It's nice to know that the ice is recovering," Josefino Comiso, a senior research scientist with the Cryospheric Sciences Branch of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, told CBC News on Thursday. [...] Winter sea ice could keep expanding. The cold is also making the ice thicker in some areas, compared to recorded thicknesses last year, Lagnis added. "The ice is about 10 to 20 centimetres thicker than last year, so that's a significant increase," he said. If temperatures remain cold this winter, Langis said winter sea ice coverage will continue to expand.


Will somebody please tell all the schoolchildren frightened by nightmares of drowning polar bears that Al Gore unnecessarily scared them?

QuoteGlobal Warming: The same applies here. Even if every single individual agreed that this phenomenon was taking place, yet disagree on the reasons for it, government cannot impose obligations on those who disagree with the ‘evidence’ in order to satisfy those who believe the ‘evidence’. Now, according to the Global Warming Lobby, some 40 to 60% of people believe that Global Warming is a man-made phenomenon. In that case, if all those who believe that ‘evidence’ simply ceased to avail themselves of those ‘conveniences’ which they claim cause the problem, the problem would be immediately reduced by half. Of course, that would have a dramatic effect on the motor industry, the airline industry, and the energy industry. But, no doubt, the free-enterprise system would quickly compensate by increasing production of bicycles, candles and the like. But, I suspect, such people are not that convinced of their ‘evidence’. If they are, the solution lies in their hands

Quote from: Lunican on February 21, 2008, 10:44:36 PM
http://www.youtube.com/v/wppjYDj9JUc

Quote from: Lunican on March 04, 2008, 03:56:02 PM
Case closed RG... the earth is flat.

Quote from: RiversideGator on March 05, 2008, 12:00:44 AM
Sorry.  Perhaps I should be more explicit:  the earth is not flat and global warming is not real.  There is no wise guy analogy here.  You are simply wrong with your cherished GW theory.  Got it?

Quote from: RiversideGator on March 05, 2008, 12:00:44 AM

Quote from: Lunican on March 04, 2008, 03:56:02 PM
Case closed RG... the earth is flat.

Sorry.  Perhaps I should be more explicit:  the earth is not flat and global warming is not real.  There is no wise guy analogy here.  You are simply wrong with your cherished GW theory.  Got it?

Quote
Vatican lists new sinful behaviors

ROME, Italy (AP) -- A Vatican official has listed drugs, pollution and genetic manipulations as well as social and economic injustices as new areas of sinful behavior.

Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti said in an interview published on Sunday by the Vatican's daily newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, that known sins increasingly manifest themselves as behavior that damages society as a whole.

Quote from: Charleston native on March 10, 2008, 02:50:23 PM
The SBC thinks it is sinful to drink alcohol of any kind and to dance.

Quote from: Midway on March 10, 2008, 05:43:16 PM
The SBC have just been dubbed "environmental Whacko's" by the supreme arbiter of moral sanity and probity.


HAA HAA HAA.   


Give me a minute to regain my composure I'll let you know when the convulsions of laughter subside.......

Quote from: gatorback on March 10, 2008, 03:59:03 PM
I stopped going to UBC because of the dance thing. I like to dance and don't think it's a sin.  What did Jesus say about dancing.

Also, the SBC also doesn't allow women to reach the level as the men right?  Or is that the Vatican?

Quote from: Midway on March 11, 2008, 04:06:52 PM
My posts stand on their own merits.

Point by point refutations are a waste of time, accomplish nothing.

Quote from: gatorback on March 11, 2008, 12:26:49 PM
Charleston:  He's a pratically a newbie, give him some more rope...lol

Quote
Climate facts to warm to

Christopher Pearson | March 22, 2008

CATASTROPHIC predictions of global warming usually conjure with the notion of a tipping point, a point of no return.
Last Monday - on ABC Radio National, of all places - there was a tipping point of a different kind in the debate on climate change. It was a remarkable interview involving the co-host of Counterpoint, Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril.

Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth stillwarming?"

She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."

Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"

Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued ... This is not what you'd expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you'd expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up ... So (it's) very unexpected, not something that's being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it's very significant."

Duffy: "It's not only that it's not discussed. We never hear it, do we? Whenever there's any sort of weather event that can be linked into the global warming orthodoxy, it's put on the front page. But a fact like that, which is that global warming stopped a decade ago, is virtually never reported, which is extraordinary."

Duffy then turned to the question of how the proponents of the greenhouse gas hypothesis deal with data that doesn't support their case. "People like Kevin Rudd and Ross Garnaut are speaking as though the Earth is still warming at an alarming rate, but what is the argument from the other side? What would people associated with the IPCC say to explain the (temperature) dip?"

Marohasy: "Well, the head of the IPCC has suggested natural factors are compensating for the increasing carbon dioxide levels and I guess, to some extent, that's what sceptics have been saying for some time: that, yes, carbon dioxide will give you some warming but there are a whole lot of other factors that may compensate or that may augment the warming from elevated levels of carbon dioxide.

"There's been a lot of talk about the impact of the sun and that maybe we're going to go through or are entering a period of less intense solar activity and this could be contributing to the current cooling."

Duffy: "Can you tell us about NASA's Aqua satellite, because I understand some of the data we're now getting is quite important in our understanding of how climate works?"

Marohasy: "That's right. The satellite was only launched in 2002 and it enabled the collection of data, not just on temperature but also on cloud formation and water vapour. What all the climate models suggest is that, when you've got warming from additional carbon dioxide, this will result in increased water vapour, so you're going to get a positive feedback. That's what the models have been indicating. What this great data from the NASA Aqua satellite ... (is) actually showing is just the opposite, that with a little bit of warming, weather processes are compensating, so they're actually limiting the greenhouse effect and you're getting a negative rather than a positive feedback."

Duffy: "The climate is actually, in one way anyway, more robust than was assumed in the climate models?"

Marohasy: "That's right ... These findings actually aren't being disputed by the meteorological community. They're having trouble digesting the findings, they're acknowledging the findings, they're acknowledging that the data from NASA's Aqua satellite is not how the models predict, and I think they're about to recognise that the models really do need to be overhauled and that when they are overhauled they will probably show greatly reduced future warming projected as a consequence of carbon dioxide."

Duffy: "From what you're saying, it sounds like the implications of this could beconsiderable ..."

Marohasy: "That's right, very much so. The policy implications are enormous. The meteorological community at the moment is really just coming to terms with the output from this NASA Aqua satellite and (climate scientist) Roy Spencer's interpretation of them. His work is published, his work is accepted, but I think people are still in shock at this point."

If Marohasy is anywhere near right about the impending collapse of the global warming paradigm, life will suddenly become a whole lot more interesting.

A great many founts of authority, from the Royal Society to the UN, most heads of government along with countless captains of industry, learned professors, commentators and journalists will be profoundly embarrassed. Let us hope it is a prolonged and chastening experience.

With catastrophe off the agenda, for most people the fog of millennial gloom will lift, at least until attention turns to the prospect of the next ice age. Among the better educated, the sceptical cast of mind that is the basis of empiricism will once again be back in fashion. The delusion that by recycling and catching public transport we can help save the planet will quickly come to be seen for the childish nonsense it was all along.

The poorest Indians and Chinese will be left in peace to work their way towards prosperity, without being badgered about the size of their carbon footprint, a concept that for most of us will soon be one with Nineveh and Tyre, clean forgotten in six months.

The scores of town planners in Australia building empires out of regulating what can and can't be built on low-lying shorelines will have to come to terms with the fact inundation no longer impends and find something more plausible to do. The same is true of the bureaucrats planning to accommodate "climate refugees".

Penny Wong's climate mega-portfolio will suddenly be as ephemeral as the ministries for the year 2000 that state governments used to entrust to junior ministers. Malcolm Turnbull will have to reinvent himself at vast speed as a climate change sceptic and the Prime Minister will have to kiss goodbye what he likes to call the great moral issue and policy challenge of our times.

It will all be vastly entertaining to watch.

THE Age published an essay with an environmental theme by Ian McEwan on March 8 and its stablemate, The Sydney Morning Herald, also carried a slightly longer version of the same piece.

The Australian's Cut & Paste column two days later reproduced a telling paragraph from the Herald's version, which suggested that McEwan was a climate change sceptic and which The Age had excised. He was expanding on the proposition that "we need not only reliable data but their expression in the rigorous use of statistics".

What The Age decided to spare its readers was the following: "Well-meaning intellectual movements, from communism to post-structuralism, have a poor history of absorbing inconvenient fact or challenges to fundamental precepts. We should not ignore or suppress good indicators on the environment, though they have become extremely rare now. It is tempting to the layman to embrace with enthusiasm the latest bleak scenario because it fits the darkness of our soul, the prevailing cultural pessimism. The imagination, as Wallace Stevens once said, is always at the end of an era. But we should be asking, or expecting others to ask, for the provenance of the data, the assumptions fed into the computer model, the response of the peer review community, and so on. Pessimism is intellectually delicious, even thrilling, but the matter before us is too serious for mere self-pleasuring. It would be self-defeating if the environmental movement degenerated into a religion of gloomy faith. (Faith, ungrounded certainty, is no virtue.)"

The missing sentences do not appear anywhere else in The Age's version of the essay. The attribution reads: "Copyright Ian McEwan 2008" and there is no acknowledgment of editing by The Age.

Why did the paper decide to offer its readers McEwan lite? Was he, I wonder, consulted on the matter? And isn't there a nice irony that The Age chose to delete the line about ideologues not being very good at "absorbing inconvenient fact"?

Quote from: gatorback on March 25, 2008, 12:29:25 AM
Where did you go to school?  You seem to know so much about climatology I'd be willing to bet 10 to 1 you went to GA.  I only went to UF studying under respected researchers that I would never question given they've been studying this for over 30 years. What would these researchers gain from false truths?  Nothing except ridicule from their piers.

Quote from: midnightblackrx on March 25, 2008, 12:58:03 PM

Quote from: gatorback on March 25, 2008, 12:29:25 AM
Where did you go to school?  You seem to know so much about climatology I'd be willing to bet 10 to 1 you went to GA.  I only went to UF studying under respected researchers that I would never question given they've been studying this for over 30 years. What would these researchers gain from false truths?  Nothing except ridicule from their piers.

Why is it that personal insults are made when the possibility of another side is mentioned? Let's just step back and see what's going on before spending trillions on trying to reverse a cycle in the Earth's climate that may or may not be even occuring?  :-\

Quote from: gatorback on March 25, 2008, 12:29:25 AM
What would these researchers gain from false truths?  Nothing except ridicule from their piers.

QuoteThe Mystery of Global Warming's Missing Heat

by Richard Harris

Morning Edition, March 19, 2008 · Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them.

This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.

In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.

"There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant," Willis says. So the buildup of heat on Earth may be on a brief hiatus. "Global warming doesn't mean every year will be warmer than the last. And it may be that we are in a period of less rapid warming."

In recent years, heat has actually been flowing out of the ocean and into the air. This is a feature of the weather phenomenon known as El Nino. So it is indeed possible the air has warmed but the ocean has not. But it's also possible that something more mysterious is going on.

That becomes clear when you consider what's happening to global sea level. Sea level rises when the oceans get warm because warmer water expands. This accounts for about half of global sea level rise. So with the oceans not warming, you would expect to see less sea level rise. Instead, sea level has risen about half an inch in the past four years. That's a lot.

Willis says some of this water is apparently coming from a recent increase in the melting rate of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica.

"But in fact there's a little bit of a mystery. We can't account for all of the sea level increase we've seen over the last three or four years," he says.

One possibility is that the sea has, in fact, warmed and expanded â€" and scientists are somehow misinterpreting the data from the diving buoys.

But if the aquatic robots are actually telling the right story, that raises a new question: Where is the extra heat all going?

Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research says it's probably going back out into space. The Earth has a number of natural thermostats, including clouds, which can either trap heat and turn up the temperature, or reflect sunlight and help cool the planet.

That can't be directly measured at the moment, however.

"Unfortunately, we don't have adequate tracking of clouds to determine exactly what role they've been playing during this period," Trenberth says.

It's also possible that some of the heat has gone even deeper into the ocean, he says. Or it's possible that scientists need to correct for some other feature of the planet they don't know about. It's an exciting time, though, with all this new data about global sea temperature, sea level and other features of climate.

"I suspect that we'll able to put this together with a little bit more perspective and further analysis," Trenberth says. "But what this does is highlight some of the issues and send people back to the drawing board."

Trenberth and Willis agree that a few mild years have no effect on the long-term trend of global warming. But they say there are still things to learn about how our planet copes with the heat.

Quote
Gore And Bloomberg Meet (Again)

The DN's Adam Lisberg reports:

Al Gore came to City Hall for an unannounced hour-long private meeting with Mayor Bloomberg. Here's what he said afterward as we chased him out the door:

bloomberg-gore-blog533

    "It was a private conversation, but it was at my request to talk to him about efforts to solve the climate crisis. I've been a big fan of Mayor Bloomberg's outspoken advocacy of solving the climate crisis, and we've talked several times in the past, and I enjoyed this conversation. It was a private conversation, but [there's] nothing mysterious about it, just ways of working effectively to solve the climate crisis."


    "There are a bunch of activities underway ... and I chair a group called the Alliance for Climate Protection, and we're pushing very hard to get solutions to the climate crisis. But thank you all."


He ducked every political question after that, smiling and laughing and saying:

    "Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. I have no comment. Thanks anyway. I am focused on trying to solve the climate crisis. ... Thank you. Great talking to you guys. Bye-bye."


And he hopped into the back of a black Lexus SUV, which he said was a hybrid, and left.

QuoteThe Schizophrenic’s Guide to “Global” Warming (1894-2008)

Posted By Ben-Peter Terpstra On April 14, 2008 @ 4:55 am In Environment, Animal Rights, Health Issues, & Drugs |

The media reports on "climate change."

In 1954, the Associated Press matter-of-factly reported that:

. . . Dr. Joseph Kaplan, UCLA professor and chairman of the U.S. Committee for the 1957 International Geophysical Year, has predicted that ocean levels will rise at least 40 feet and inundate vast areas of the earth in the next 50 or 60 years unless atmospheric temperatures can be controlled. 

The 54-year-old scientist said the burning of fuels is of such magnitude that discharged gasses are creating a "greenhouse" effect over the earth.

Should the oceans rise by 40 feet, their waters would cover parts of New York City, San Francisco, much of Florida, sections of Tokyo and many other coastal cities.

The solution?

Heat control is the answer to the threat, Dr. Kaplan said. "We're working on a method of controlling man's environment and the temperature of the world," he reported. "We've already, fired rockets into the upper atmosphere and discharged chemicals that affect the temperature of the atmosphere.

"Control by man of the earth's weather and temperature is within the realm of practicality now.

"The end result of our studies (of temperature control) will be more important to the survival of man than atomic energy."

In other words, humans are gods. I mean, even Democrats boast about plans to control the earth’s weather and temperature. Or, liberals are tricknologists. But, in any event, some possible follow-up questions are:

In 2008, do New Yorkers really believe that the ocean levels will soon rise to 40 feet?

Is much of Florida doomed?

How many professors liked to use coke in the 1950s?

Do liberal North Americans have a history of trying to control populations through junk science? 

The last question, of course, is the easiest to answer. Still, I’ll let history speak now.

The Media’s “Climate Change” Narrative 1894-2008

1894: September 6, “The Ice Age In North America . . . But now a change has come upon the forces . . . and the long winter is drawing to a close” (Cambridge City Tribune & Harper’s Magazine)

1912: October 7, “Fifth Ice Age Is On the Way” (Los Angeles Times)

1913: March 23, “How and Why Earth Will End: Scientists Believe Our Universe Will Some Day Plunge Into Sun” (Washington Post, Chicago Tribune)

1920: September 21, “Mac Millian Kills New Ice Age Theory: Earth May Be Entering Its Golden Years (Syracuse Herald)

1923: “Scientists Says Arctic Ice Will Wipe Out Canada” (Chicago Tribune)

1924: September 18, “Mac Millian Reports Signs of New Ice Age” (New York Times)

1926: August 15, “THE sun is sick [say international scientists], and the world is about to enter . . . a new glacier period” (The Zanesville Times Signal â€" Ohio)

1933: 27 March, “America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776; Temperature Line Records a 25-Year Rise” (New York Times)

1934: 27 September, “Predicts New Ice Age For America: Savant Says It Will Come in 10,000 Years (International News Service, Herald-Times, PA)

1939: “[The] weather men have no doubt the world at least for the time being is growing warmer” (TIME)

1952: August 10, “Our Changing Climate . . . the world has been getting warmer in the last half century” (New York Times)

1954: “Climate â€" the Heat May be Off . . . Despite all you may have read, heard or imagined, it’s been growing cooler â€" not warmer since the Thirties” (Fortune)

1957: April 9, “Control of Temperature Said Vital” (Associated Press, Union-Bulletin)

1958: August 8, “Ice Age Return Is Seen In U.S.” (Portland Oregonian Editor, The Salisbury Times)

1958: September, “The Coming Ice Age” (Harper’s)

1959: February 15, “A Warmer Earth Evident At Poles” (New York Times)

1961: March 9, “Don’t Say We Didn’t Give You Fair Warning: The Ice Age Cometh” (The Ada Weekly News)*

1962: April 13, “Arctic Deals Blow to Ice Age Theories” (New York Times news service)

1969: February 20, “Expert Says Arctic Ocean Will Soon Be Open Sea” (New York Times)

1970: April 22, “Colder Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age” (Washington Post)

1971: July 9, “U.S. Scientists See New Ice Age Coming” (Washington Post)

1973: April 14, “The Earth Is Cooling, Return of Ice Age Is Feared” (Iowa City Press Citizen)

1974: “It [the New Ice Age] is the root cause of a lot of that unpleasant weather around the world and they warn that it carries the potential for human disasters of unprecedented magnitude” (Fortune)

1974: June 24, “Another Ice Age?” (TIME)

1975: “The Ice Age Cometh” (Science News)

1975: “[T]he world’s climatologists agreed . . . Once the freeze starts, it will be too late” (Douglas Colligan, Science Digest)

1975: April 28, “The Cooling World . . . The drop in food output could begin . . . soon” (Newsweek) 

1975: May 21, “Scientists Ponder Why World’s Climate is Changing: A Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable” (New York Times)

1975: June, “The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of death . . .” (Nigel Calder, International Wildlife Journal)

1981: March 31, “Long-range forecast: snow, ice for 114,000 years . . . Earth’s current warm period ending . . . new ice age could last 114,000 years say scientists” (AP) 

1981: August 24, “Scientists predict melting icecaps next century . . . With a slow growth of fossil fuel use temperatures would go up about 4.5 degrees F . . . with a rapid increase . . . 5 to 8 degrees” (U.P.) 

1981: November 25, “Warming of World can involve many gases” (UPI)

1982: “‘Volcano dust may cool Earth 2 years’ . . . Dust from Mexican volcano will produce a cooling effect around the Earth for the next two years, the National Oceanic Administration estimates” (AP)

1983: October 22, “The good news is Canadian winters may moderate . . . A predicted warming . . . will moderate Canada’s bitter waters. Prince Edward Island will likely be cut in half” (CP)

1990: April 16, “Global Warming: Pollutants turn Earth into ecological hothouse” (Syracuse Herald-Journal)

1994: January 31, “The Ice Age Cometh?”  (TIME)

2000: April-May, “How to Prevent a Meltdown: Answers to global warming are in the wind” (TIME)

2004: December 26, “Undeniable Global Warming” (Washington Post)

2005: December 27, “Past Hot Times Hold Few Reasons to Relax About New Warming” (New York Times)

2006: January 29, “Debate on Climate Shifts to Issue of Irreparable Change: Some Experts on Global Warming Foresee ‘Tipping Point’ When It Is Too Late To Act” (Washington Post)

2006: July 24, “Global Warming Signed, Sealed, and Delivered Scientists Agree: The Earth . . . warming, and human activities are the principal cause” (Los Angeles Times) 

2006, July, “Mostly cooler and wetter than normal this July in Alaska” (Alaska Monthly Summary)

2006: December, “Global Cooling Plan: It’s now clear that climate change threatens to warm the planet but to ice the world economy” (Newsweek: Special Edition) 

2007: February 10, “From Bad to Worse: Earth’s Warming to Accelerate” (Science News) 

2007: April 9, “Global Warming: What Now? Our feverish planet badly needs a cure” (TIME)

2007: May 28, “The Brooding Omnipresence of Global Warming” (Harper’s)

2007: August 6, “A warmer world creates new iceberg ecology . . . But now marine biologists have a more positive take on the . . . icebergs that have broken free” (TIME)

2008: January 14, “Snow Storm Hits New England: First Major Snow Drops Heavy Snow; Emergencies Declared, Hundreds of Schools Closed” (CBS/AP)

2008: February 11, “China On Ice . . . Blizzards have cost the economy at least 3 billion . . . Snow Crash. Storms have caused widespread damage and disruption throughout the country” (TIME)

* Note: This satirical 1961 piece pokes fun at Harper’s “New Ice Age” story (1960).


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

Article printed from Intellectual Conservative Politics and Philosophy: http://www.intellectualconservative.com

URL to article: http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2008/04/14/the-schizophrenic%e2%80%99s-guide-to-%e2%80%9cglobal%e2%80%9d-warming-1894-2008/

Quote from: Midway on April 14, 2008, 08:57:50 PM
Even China is ahead of us on this.

Quotethe Chinese plan does not include any concrete goals for reducing emissions

Quote from: Lunican on April 15, 2008, 10:44:05 AM
I thought it was settled that climate and weather are two separate things?

Quote from: Midway on April 15, 2008, 12:51:57 PM

Quote from: RiversideGator on April 15, 2008, 12:28:01 PM
I was discussing the situation using your parameters.  And, using your parameters, the Chinese are doing nothing.  And, there is obviously such a thing as pollution and the Chinese are the kings of it nowdays.

BTW, I buy as little Chinese made merchandise as possible.  Thanks for attempting to speak for me though in your own lefty, sarcastic way.   ;)

Sure you do.

QuoteU.S. family tries living without China

By Cynthia Osterman

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Lamps, birthday candles, mouse traps and flip-flops. Such is the stuff that binds the modern American family to the global economy, author Sara Bongiorni discovers during a year of boycotting anything made in China.

In "A Year Without 'Made in China,'" (Wiley, $24.95) Bongiorni tells how she and her family found that such formerly simple acts as finding new shoes, buying a birthday toy and fixing a drawer became ordeals without the Asian giant.

Bongiorni takes pains to say she does not have a protectionist agenda and, despite the occasional worry about the loss of U.S. jobs to overseas factories, she has nothing against China. Her goal was simply to make Americans aware of how deeply tied they are to the international trading system.

"I wanted our story to be a friendly, nonjudgmental look at the ways ordinary people are connected to the global economy," she said in an interview before the book appears in July.

As a business journalist in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Bongiorni wrote about international trade for a decade. "I used to see the Commerce Department trade statistics, the billions of dollars, and think it had nothing to do with me," she said.

The reality was far different.

As the year unfolded, "the boycott made me rethink the distance between China and me. In pushing China out of our lives, I got an eye-popping view of how far China had pushed in," she wrote.

About 15 percent of the $1.7 trillion in goods the United States imported in 2006 came from China, economist Joel Naroff writes in the foreword. Much of that is the manufactured stuff that fills Wal-Mart and other retailers -- the necessities and frivolities sought by lower- and middle-income Americans.

Quote from: Midway on April 15, 2008, 07:02:49 PM
Why would you want to avoid buying items made in China? They are not marketed or sold by Chinese corporations, they are designed, branded, marketed and sold by fine US corporations.

Quote
The reason that these fine US corporations moved their factories to China was to make more profit by reducing the cost of production.

It is the legal duty of the management of these corporations to add shareholder value.

This increase in profits adds value for the shareholders of the corporation, and thus, is good for the country.

Quote
So, my questions are these;

1. Why do you hate American corporations?

2. Why do you want to precipitate the collapse of stalwart American companies like Wal-Mart by unpatriotically refusing to buy their fine Chinese made merchandise?

3. Why do you hate America so?

Quote from: Midway on April 16, 2008, 01:41:32 PM
On the one hand, you fancy yourself to be a supporter of business in a very one dimensional way, and your opinions are also very absolutist.

Quote
Then, on the other hand, you complain about totalitarian regimes like China, who are just contributing to the prosperity of American corporations by providing cheap goods to them. And China is a major source of credit to this country, providing the funding for our "war on terror".

Quote
So, while you refuse to recognize that all of these issues are more complex than the black and white portrayal that you make of them in your postings, you inconsistently waver back and forth when part of your all black or all white manifesto does not fit the present circumstance. It's just a form of rationalization that has no basis in fact.

Quote from: Midway on April 16, 2008, 08:01:51 PM
No, not really.

But this one sounds like it might be yours:

QuoteTop UN climate official welcomes China's plan to combat global warming

Quote from: Midway on April 18, 2008, 01:44:59 PM
If I were king, I would live in my palace in Saudi Arabia, because that is a Kingdom. The United States of America is supposed to be a republic, So I would not be a king here, because that would contravene the constitution. (although I suppose you might be able to get a "dittohead exemption" for a signing statement).

But if I were in the house of Saud, I would raise oil prices as much as I possibly could so that I could siphon of as much of America's wealth as possible, and I would enlist the Carlyle group and Halliburton to assist me. Oh,.... wait a minute, that's already being done.

Oh well, I suppose I would just stare at my solid gold bathroom fixtures then.

Quote from: Midway on April 18, 2008, 07:53:47 PM
We have elected officials who are supposed to be DOING things that will have a positive effect on our society. That they have abjectly failed only places a responsibility on me to be sure that I vote so as to elect people who do not repeat the same tragically stupid errors.

It is beyond the scope of my authority to directly change these things, and postulating about "what I would do if I were king"  is a senseless exercise, and a typical 'deteriorated straw man" obfuscation technique on your part.

However, I am certain that when you go to bed at night, you pass away into a blissful recurring dream about being king of the world and solving all of the problems in it, "RiversideGator style".

Which is to say, you just tune into Rush Limbarge daily for your marching orders.

You are possessed of incredible hubris that goes beyond mere egotism.

Anyhow, my Chinese affiliates are really turning out great!  Even though it would appear on the surface that they are just a bunch of worker bees making crap to fill Wal-Mart, they really do have a civilization that is steeped in 5000 years of tradition and its accompanying wisdom. To wit; here is their response relative to that whole RG King for a day thing:

The ridiculous boastful king of Yelang.
The king of Yelang thought his country was larger than it was. This expression refers to a person who is blinded by presumptuous self-conceit. A bumblebee in a cow-turd [Cowford] thinks himself a king.

Now, if that's not a succinct pearl of wisdom, I just don't know what is! A distillation of 5000 years of wisdom in one sentence.

I sent them an extra 5 lbs of rice for that. They're just doing great work! I think that this innovation is going to change the whole blogosphere paradigm.

We're also making great progress with the "law kiosk" project as well. Negotiating with Wal-Mart to put the first one in the Normandy Blvd store. Every one loves it!

Quote from: stephendare on April 19, 2008, 03:16:55 PM
Shortly after Riverside Gator became the Head of Council:

http://www.youtube.com/v/iAs9txFhfHQ

Quote from: Midway on April 20, 2008, 11:38:34 AM
That was not a challenge. It was a weak, overused rhetorical device that is so transparently ridiculous and pointless that, to use your reasoning and language, it is not meritorious of a response.

However, I did respond to the subtext of your "challenge", but I suppose that response was not sufficiently direct for you.

Quote from: stephendare on April 20, 2008, 12:38:01 PM
River, I think the point is that you obviously are gifted with intellect and intelligence, and it seems like an extraordinary shame that you have allowed yourself to become the pawn of others who do not share your regard for reason or intellect, but only their own profits derived from the pumping, processing and distribution of oil.

I say this with some confidence because on many occasions, you have simply refused even to look at or consider evidence contrary to your stated thesis, ---that global warming is not caused by the human production of CO2---and will entertain no discussion or argument except as how it pertains to your thesis.

There have been on many occasions, whole months where you have repeatedly reinforced your thesis into discussions that have had nothing to do with CO2 production.

You yourself have repeatedly asserted that there have been other warming periods, and you yourself have introduced evidence to show that a period of increased solar activity (now debunked) might be the operative factor in climate change, yet you will allow no discussion of the possibilities, without interjecting whatever scurrilous new article you can find to support the dwindling stature of your claims.

And the question seems to be:  Why?

How can such a clearly intelligent person DELIBERATELY close their mind, and worse, exhort other people to do the same.

I thought at first that it was simply a Randian defense of the principles of free trade and letting the market sort it out.  That perhaps you thought that the 'liberal' approach to a universe that values ALL life, like trees and spotted owls and whales etc was a way of slowing down or frustrating the economy or, if you believe in it in the 19th century way, progress.

Or maybe that you percieved a hidden subtext in the concerns of climate change arguments that capitalism and industrialism are evil and destroying the world and that you felt that this conversation was in all likelihood more deadly than the weather changes it describes because of the possibility that it was incorrect.

And, as I say, because of the number of times you have simply refused to either read or listen to the substance of the scientific treatises that disagreed with your thesis, I never thought that you simply disagreed with the material on a scientific basis, and your intelligence removes the possibility that you are just simply a drooling moron who does what he is told---leaving only philosophy or ideology as rationale.

So which is it River?  How can you be so alligned with the profit motive of Big Oil and their related industries that you, an intellect, are willing to discard all evidence from fellow intellects and ignore all findings of your fellow Doctors in other fields in favor of this nonsense?

Quote from: Midway on April 20, 2008, 12:53:16 PM
Perhaps herein lies the answer to your question. Basically the difference between rote learning and the development of "intelligence".

And  RG, before you dismiss this as armchair psychoanalysis, note that it is a serious paper on various methodologies used in teaching, and not psychoanalytical.

Cheers ;)

QuoteBRAIN-ANTAGONISTIC TEACHING METHODS: rote memorisation

                                                            OR 'ROTE LEARNING'

Theme: In the framework of the traditional teaching paradigm, most teaching is done with a view to predetermined outcomes such as successful 'performance' on tests which emphasize the acquisition of data through memorization of factual material and isolated information i.e. 'rote learning'. Rote learning is conditioned learning... programmed learning... not necessarily with understanding.  Rote learning develops dependent personalities...

"Much of the problem in leading a child to effective cognitive activity is to free him from the immediate control of environmental rewards and punishments. Learning that starts in response to the rewards of parental or teacher approval or to the avoidance of failure can too readily develop a pattern in which the child is seeking cues as to how to conform to what is expected of him. We know from studies of children who tend to be early overachievers in school that they are likely to be seekers after the 'right way to do it' and that their capacity for transforming learning into viable thought structures tends to be lower than that of children achieving at levels predicted by intelligence tests ...They develop rote abilities and depend on being able to 'give back' what is expected rather than to make it into something that relates to the rest of their cognitive life. Their learning is not their own." (Jerome Bruner. On Knowing: Essays for the Left Hand, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1962, 88)

Rote learning is 'route' or 'taxon' learning   Rote learning is 'route' learning or 'taxon' learning (from 'taxonomies' meaning lists, prototypes and categories which refer to generic terms such as 'dog', 'school' etc.) As taxon learning, rote learning is based on the brain's 'taxon memory systems'. Retention of taxon memories depends on repeated rehearsals. Lack of rehearsal results in loss of memoryor 'forgetting. Rote learning is inefficient because it activates only part of the brain's potential. Route learning is the traditional textbook learning for test-taking and grades. It involves specified 'routes' for acquisiton of knowledge

  When the brain is activated largely for the purposes of rote learning, a relatively small number of neurons are fired repeatedly resulting in rapid brain fatigue and inhibiting the formation of synaptic connections.

Traditional paradigm  Pedagogies based on methods of rote learning have been evident for centuries. In the relatively recent 'traditional' or 'behavioural paradigm' of education the fragmented and assembly line approach is based on the confusion of learning with school and 'schooling'. Learning as schooling places the emphasis almost entirely on the mechanics of knowledge - the knowledge that something is the case as in a 'fact' i.e. 'declarative knowledge', and knowledge of how something is done as in a 'procedure' i.e. 'procedural knowledge'. Declarative and procedural knowledge or 'data' which on its own does not  necessarily make sense is 'inert knowledge' or 'surface knowledge'. Surface knowledge which is unrelated to life experience is meaningless.

In the traditional paradigm of education emphasis is placed on  surface knowledge which is often  for the learners concerned.

  Traditional teaching methods are detrimental to brain function... 'brain- antagonistic' methods of learning  Teaching methods which impose meaningless patterns on the brain are met with its resistance to learning... are known as 'brain-antagonistic' pedagogies. Brain-antagonistic methods involve the processing of meaningless stimuli which are forced ]and meet with its natural resistance. The brain naturally resists the imposition of meaningless patterns and isolated facts which become meaningless when unrelated to meaningful experience. Brain-antagonistic pedagogies antagonize the learning process. The brain naturally resists rote learning of fragmented information which has no meaning in experience. Rote learning is a form of learning which is very tiring and taxing. With rote learning the brain is rapidly fatigued. When the brain is activated largely for the purposes of memorization, a relatively small number of neurons fire repeatedly and this is what leads to rapid brain fatigue. When the brain is used largely for the purposes of rote learning, only part of its potential is activated.

Pedagogies based on methods of rote learning have been evident for centuries... evident in the sixteenth century at the time of Montaigne. "'Tis the custom of pedagogues to be eternally thundering in their pupils' ears, as they were pouring into a funnel, whilst the business of the pupil is only to repeat what the others have said: now I would have a tutor to correct this error, and that at the very first he should, according to the capacity he has to deal with, put it to the test, permitting his pupil himself to taste things, and of himself to discern and choose them, sometimes opening the way to him, and sometimes leaving him to open it for himself. ... Cubs of bears and puppies readily discover their natural inclination; but men, so soon as ever they are grown up, applying themselves to certain habits, engaging themselves in certain opinions, and conforming themselves to particular laws and customs, easily alter, or at least disguise, their true and real disposition; and yet it is hard to force the propension of nature. Whence it comes to pass, that for not having chosen the right course, we often take very great pains, and consume a good part of our time in training up children to things for which, by their natural constitution, they are totally unfit." (Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592) "Of the Education of Children", The Essays, The Great Books of the Western World, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952 volume 25:64)

Teacher's role in the traditional paradigm  In the traditional paradigm of 'banking education', the teacher is an authority who decides what and how their students should learn through lecture and textbook. Lessons are designed with a view to specific 'learning outcomes' which are outlined in structured 'lesson plans'. Evaluation of learning is based on student 'performance' on 'objective tests'. And even though much is forgotten after testing, performance is measured in terms of a reward/punishment system of 'scores', 'grades' and 'grade averages'. These methods are characteristic of the 'student/teacher contradiction'  in which naturally protective ethical barriers are spontaneously set up between learner and teacher and the learner is prevented from engaging in natural learning. Teaching practice is based on the assumption that learning is a mental process which substitutes one stimulus for another in conditioned responses i.e. 'conditioned learning' or 'conditioning'. Conditioning is 'programming. Programming without understanding involves the separate functioning of 'emotions' and 'intellect' and its retention depends on the repetition of rote learning.

Emphasis on conditioning and rote learning involves the unnatural imposition of meaningless stimuli on the brain.

Brain-antagonistic methods of teaching (teaching for 'rote learning' or 'conditioned learning' actually inhibit 'real learning' as experiential learning because they inhibit the formation of new synaptic connections in the cortex of the brain.

Traditional teaching methods are 'brain-antagonistic'  The traditional teaching methods which emphasize facts and outcomes are ineffective in the development of the human potential for intelligence required for social adaptability - rational, spiritual, emotional, aesthetic, creative i.e.  'social intelligence'. Development of social intelligence depends on a learning environment characterised by respect for the individual's 'freedom' and their instinctive capacity for 'self-evaluation'. Since authoritarian methods teach to behavioural objectives, they can actually prevent real understanding of meaningful learning and are described as 'brain-antagonistic'. Brain-antagonistic teaching  ignores the role of the unconscious or 'emotion' in the process of learning. Meaningful learning engages personal initiative based on instinctive motivations or 'emotional drives' i.e. 'intrinsic motivation'. The various types of intrinsic motivation - 'motivational types' - are determined by a range of human motives for learning or 'human needs'. Human needs include the so-called 'higher needs' or 'spiritual needs' i.e. 'metaneeds' for 'ego-transcendance' as well as the basic psychological 'ego needs' for security and self-esteem. The motivational type depends on the individual's level of psychological development or 'sociocognitive stage'. Hence the importance of intrinsic motivated learning which engages personality development to maturity or 'self-actualisation'.

"Route learning is the traditional textbook learning for test-taking and grades. It involves specified 'routes' for acquisiton of knowledge. Map learning involves the whole brain.... "Maps allow for the whole brain - feelings included... The brain is designed to deal with complex stimuli." (Nummela, R., and T. Rosengren. "The Brain's Routes and Maps: Vital Connections in Learning." NAASP National Association American Society of Principals Bulletin 72: 507 83-86 April 1988)

Emphasis on rote learning inhibits the development of 'conscience' and 'social intelligence'  The brain's  natural function is to detect patterns, find relationships and make connections as quickly as possible in order to adapt to the complexities of changing conditions i.e. 'adaptability'. Adaptability depends on the brain's ability to make meaning of experience or 'learn'. Natural learning involves the brain's ability to integrate isolated facts with experience and to resist fragmentation of information. Teaching methods which depend on rote learning of fragmented knowledge naturally meet with the brain's resistance and antagonize the learning process. So-called 'brain-antagonistic' methods inhibit the brain's natural capacity for making connections and reduce its capacities for understanding relationships. This leads to brain deficiencies such as inability to process complex stimuli and connect with the emotional or 'inner life' which is the basis for social life. Brain-antagonistic methods interfere with the brain's natural development - intellectual or 'cognitive' development, emotional or 'psychological' development, and spiritual or 'ethical' development i.e. 'moral development'. Moral development is a function of development of 'moral consciousness' or 'conscience'. Alienation from conscience leads to imprisonment of mind and lack of 'freedom'. Development of conscience is a function of development of 'morality' and occurs in a series of age related stages i.e. 'socio-cognitive stages'.

Overemphasis on the rote learning capacity of the brain is an inefficient use of its potential. Learning by rote inhibits the brain's natural capacities for making connections and reduces its capacities for understanding relationships. As a result, the brain can become deficient in carrying out the natural functions which are essential to complex learning ...in the natural processing of complex stimuli. With deficiencies in the brain's capacity to process complex stimuli, there is little connectedness with other knowledge, or with the learner's emotional or 'inner life'.

Developed conscience is the source of human values for living or 'social intelligence'.

'Brain-compatible' pedagogies  Social intelligence which depends on the brain's ability to see links between learning and life is fostered by educational methods based on the brain's rules for complex learning i.e. 'brain-based learning'. So-called brain-compatible pedagogies enhance learning because they stimulate the brain's natural capacity for making connections between nerve cells or 'neurons'. They strengthen existing connections or 'synapses' and stimulate the formation of new ones. Brain-compatible pedagogies are based on recognition and respect for the learner's intrinsic motives for learning i.e. 'intrinsic motivation'.

Intrinsic motivation determines the extent to which rote learning is meaningful.

Implications for education  Overemphasis on predetermined outcomes, taxon memory and rote learning is an inefficient use of brain potential unless it is part of a larger pattern which is intrinsically motivating... a product of 'intrinsic motivation'.The inefficiency of rote learning deprives the learner of experiencing the real joys of learning and inhibits development of their natural capacity for personal creativity and intellectual growth and effective decision making i.e. 'adaptability'. It prevents the full functioning of the brain i.e. 'optimal learning' or 'optimalearning'. Optimalearning is effective because it involves the efficient use of brain potential...  involves understanding through expression and dialogue i.e. 'dialogical knowledge' - an outcome of teaching methods which are based on the resolution of the traditional 'teacher/student contradiction' i.e. 'humanisation' of education. Humane education is education of the whole person or 'holistic education'. Holistic education is education for the freedom to develop human potentialities... education for 'freedom' or 'libratory pedagogy'.

BRAIN-COMPATIBLE METHODOLOGIES Teaching methodologies are based on the integration of subject matter with life experience... respect for children's innate intelligence. Teaching for brain-based learning acknowledges the brain's ability to relate vast amounts of information to what has already been learned... allows for the learner's unique contribution. Learning takes place in different contexts. Brain-compatible methodologies encourage holistic thinking and a global perspective or 'wholistic perception'. Good pedagogical method is based on sound theoretical foundations. Teaching for the enhancement of learning... Brain-compatible pedagogies... They teach for learning which is meaningful in contextual frameworks. They provide for the individual's needs as well as for cultural differences and commonalities.

http://www.holisticeducator.com/rote.htm

Quote from: Midway on April 21, 2008, 06:28:44 PM
You reveal a great deal about your basic nature on these posts, as any profiler will tell you. All one need do is interpret the subtextual meaning and stylistic inferences.

As I have told you on numerous other occasions, I choose my words with great care, and I also read others words with that same care and attention to detail, however minute. this yields tremendous insight into that writers state of mind.

It is really amazing the range of things that it is possible to deduce by merely looking at small details.

Quote from: Charleston native on April 22, 2008, 09:14:55 AM
I think he has spare time between flipping burgers, but so would alot of people if they had the same profession.  ::)

Quote
Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh

Phil Chapman | April 23, 2008

THE scariest photo I have seen on the internet is www.spaceweather.com, where you will find a real-time image of the sun from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, located in deep space at the equilibrium point between solar and terrestrial gravity.

What is scary about the picture is that there is only one tiny sunspot.

Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.

All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.

There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally cold. It snowed in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, the winter in China was simply terrible and the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered the place in 1770.

It is generally not possible to draw conclusions about climatic trends from events in a single year, so I would normally dismiss this cold snap as transient, pending what happens in the next few years.

This is where SOHO comes in. The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.

It didn't happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.

The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.

Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.

That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern.

It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850.

There is no doubt that the next little ice age would be much worse than the previous one and much more harmful than anything warming may do. There are many more people now and we have become dependent on a few temperate agricultural areas, especially in the US and Canada. Global warming would increase agricultural output, but global cooling will decrease it.

Millions will starve if we do nothing to prepare for it (such as planning changes in agriculture to compensate), and millions more will die from cold-related diseases.

There is also another possibility, remote but much more serious. The Greenland and Antarctic ice cores and other evidence show that for the past several million years, severe glaciation has almost always afflicted our planet.

The bleak truth is that, under normal conditions, most of North America and Europe are buried under about 1.5km of ice. This bitterly frigid climate is interrupted occasionally by brief warm interglacials, typically lasting less than 10,000 years.

The interglacial we have enjoyed throughout recorded human history, called the Holocene, began 11,000 years ago, so the ice is overdue. We also know that glaciation can occur quickly: the required decline in global temperature is about 12C and it can happen in 20 years.

The next descent into an ice age is inevitable but may not happen for another 1000 years. On the other hand, it must be noted that the cooling in 2007 was even faster than in typical glacial transitions. If it continued for 20 years, the temperature would be 14C cooler in 2027.

By then, most of the advanced nations would have ceased to exist, vanishing under the ice, and the rest of the world would be faced with a catastrophe beyond imagining.

Australia may escape total annihilation but would surely be overrun by millions of refugees. Once the glaciation starts, it will last 1000 centuries, an incomprehensible stretch of time.

If the ice age is coming, there is a small chance that we could prevent or at least delay the transition, if we are prepared to take action soon enough and on a large enough scale.

For example: We could gather all the bulldozers in the world and use them to dirty the snow in Canada and Siberia in the hope of reducing the reflectance so as to absorb more warmth from the sun.

We also may be able to release enormous floods of methane (a potent greenhouse gas) from the hydrates under the Arctic permafrost and on the continental shelves, perhaps using nuclear weapons to destabilise the deposits.

We cannot really know, but my guess is that the odds are at least 50-50 that we will see significant cooling rather than warming in coming decades.

The probability that we are witnessing the onset of a real ice age is much less, perhaps one in 500, but not totally negligible.

All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead.

It will be difficult for people to face the truth when their reputations, careers, government grants or hopes for social change depend on global warming, but the fate of civilisation may be at stake.

In the famous words of Oliver Cromwell, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."

Phil Chapman is a geophysicist and astronautical engineer who lives in San Francisco. He was the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut.

Quote from: Midway on April 22, 2008, 04:00:35 PM

Quote from: RiversideGator on April 22, 2008, 01:31:54 PM

Quote from: Charleston native on April 22, 2008, 09:14:55 AM
I think he has spare time between flipping burgers, but so would alot of people if they had the same profession.  ::)

I dont believe he flips burgers.  If I had to do some profiling of my own, I would guess he works for the government in some capacity, probably in education.  He also has a college degree and possibly a graduate degree.  Of course, these degrees are in soft subjects like education, if I had to guess.  But, who knows.  I am just guessing.   :)

You seem to cast "soft subjects" in a pejorative light.

Are history and law "hard subjects", i.e. do you design & manufacture goods? Law is not equivalent to engineering, it is more related to the hated "soft subjects".

Quote from: Midway on April 22, 2008, 04:27:01 PM
Just to clarify, here is Phil Chapman's CV from the always accurate Wiki:

QuoteEducation

Born in Melbourne, Australia, his family moved to Sydney and he was educated at Parramatta High School. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics and Mathematics from Sydney University in 1956, and a Master of Science degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1964 and a Doctorate of Science in Instrumentation in 1967 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

These degrees do not qualify him as a Geophysicist. Aeronautics and Astronautics are the science of aircraft and rockets. Instrumentation is measurement and control devices. to be a Geophysicist, you would need to have some training in geology. And it's the Geophysicist part that qualifies him as an expert in this field. I'm not saying he's not smart, just that they misstate his credentials. That is, unless the Wiki is wrong.

QuoteCredentials are EVERYTHING to a scientist

QuoteOcean Cooling to Briefly Halt Global Warming, Researchers Say

By Jim Efstathiou Jr.

April 30 (Bloomberg) -- Parts of North America and Europe may cool naturally over the next decade, as shifting ocean currents temporarily blunt the global-warming effect caused by mankind, Germany's Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences said.

Average temperatures in areas such as California and France may drop over the next 10 years, influenced by colder flows in the North Atlantic, said a report today by the institution based in Kiel, Germany. Temperatures worldwide may stabilize in the period.

The study was based on sea-surface temperatures of currents that move heat around the world, and vary from decade to decade. This regional cooling effect may temporarily neutralize the long- term warming phenomenon caused by heat-trapping greenhouse gases building up around the earth, said Richard Wood, a research scientist at the Met Office Hadley Centre, a U.K. provider of environmental and weather-related services.

``Those natural climate variations could be stronger than the global-warming trend over the next 10-year period,'' Wood said in an interview. ``Without knowing that, you might erroneously think there's no global warming going on.''

The Leibniz study, co-written by Noel Keenlyside, a research scientist at the institute, will be published in the May 1 issue of the journal Nature.

``If we don't experience warming over the next 10 years, it doesn't mean that greenhouse-gas warming is not with us,'' Keenlyside said in an interview. ``There can be natural fluctuations that may mask climate change in the short term.''

CO2 Surge

Carbon dioxide, produced mainly from burning fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas, is the chief pollutant blamed for global warming. Since 1988, CO2 levels in the world's skies have increased by 9.8 percent, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Scientists debate how much carbon can be pumped into the atmosphere before the effects of climate change, including droughts, floods and reduced fresh water supplies, become irreversible. For every 1 million molecules in the atmosphere, about 384 are carbon dioxide, according to NOAA.

Global temperatures can't rise by more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) without risking the worst effects of climate change, according to the European Union. A scenario to stay below that limit suggests that CO2 levels must be stabilized between 350 and to 400 parts per million.

Long-term climate changes in the North Atlantic region affect ``hurricane activity in the Atlantic, and surface temperature and rainfall variations over North America, Europe and northern Africa,'' according to the study.

`Cold Direction'

``Natural variations over the next 10 years might be heading in the cold direction,'' Wood said. ``If you run the model long enough, eventually global warming will win.''

The world will become at least 2.5 degrees Celsius warmer by 2100, compared with the pre-industrial period, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said in March.

``We thought a lot about the way to present this because we don't want it to be turned around in the wrong way,'' Keenlyside said. ``I hope it doesn't become a message of Exxon Mobil and other skeptics.''

Exxon Mobil Corp. spokesman Gantt Walton said managers of U.S. oil company ``take the issue of climate change seriously and the risks warrant action,'' in an interview today.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jim Efstathiou Jr. in New York at jefstathiou@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: April 30, 2008 13:00 EDT

Quote from: Midway on May 01, 2008, 07:34:49 AM
I think that if you read this article carefully, it makes the case against your former position.

You will be receiving your Greenpeace membership card in the mail shortly. Welcome to the organization.

Quote from: Midway on May 02, 2008, 03:14:16 PM
From the beloved wikipedia:

QuoteSympathetic resonance
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

Sympathetic resonance is a harmonic phenomenon wherein a formerly passive string or vibratory body responds to external vibrations to which it has a harmonic likeness. The classic example is demonstrated with two similar tuning-forks of which one is mounted on a wooden box. If the other one is struck and then placed on the box, then muted, the un-struck mounted fork will be heard. In similar fashion will strings respond to the external vibrations of a tuning-fork when sufficient harmonic relations exists between the respective vibratory modes. A unison or octave will provoke the largest response as there is maximum likeness in vibratory motion. Other links through shared resonances occur at the fifth and third though with less effect. The principle of sympathetic resonanance has been applied in musical instruments from many cultures and times. Apart from the basic principle at work on instruments with many undamped strings, such as harps, lutes, guitars and pianos with the dampers raised, other instruments are fitted with extra choirs of sympathetic strings, which respond with a silvery halo to the tones played on the main strings.

Lewcock et al.(2006) states that:

    The property of sympathetic vibration is encountered in its direct form in room acoustics in the rattling of window panes, light shades and movable panels in the presence of very loud sounds, such as may occasionally be produced by a full organ. As these things rattle (or even if they do not audibly rattle) sound energy is being converted into mechanical energy, and so the sound is absorbed. Wood panelling and anything else that is lightweight and relatively unrestrained have the same effect. Absorptivity is at its highest at the resonance frequency, usually near or below 100 Hz.

Arden Wilken on his website provides a significant example of the power of resonance:

    The power of resonance can be seen dramatically in what occurred in 1940 to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in the State of Washington, USA. The wind created a tone as it blew across the valley, which happened to be the natural frequency of the bridge itself. This resonance created by the wind led to the total collapse of the bridge.

    A film of the bridge in the process of collapsing showed it undulating wildly in a continuous wave, appearing to be made out of ribbon instead of concrete and steel. The wind set the bridge in motion - at its own structural resonance frequency. In this case, unfortunately, the gradual build-up of vibration overcame the bounds of elasticity so that the bridge eventually collapsed. The wind set it in motion, just as it may set off a spider in its own web, bouncing to and fro at the resonance-frequency of the web with the spider in that particular place. If the spider could move away from that spot, the bouncing would stop. An example of proper sympathetic resonance is a windowpane rattling seadily at the very low powerful sound of a bus or truck engine going stationary. The rattling will usually occur at a higher harmonic of the sound made by the engine. As soon as the driver changes into gear the rattling will stop, often changing its rhythm before it stops altogether. Powerful sopranos bursting wineglasses fits in to the same category - sympathetic resonance at a distance.

Now, if you were to plot a sine wave using the upper and lower points of the temperature excursions (disregarding the blips because they are anomalous and insignificant), you would see that it is a resonant system, in that it basically tracks a sine wave. As that sine wave gets wider its frequency is decreasing. Because the earth is so large, and is acted upon by even larger forces of gravity (the Moon) and heat (the sun) the period of these oscillations are a very low frequency, maybe years or tens of years per cycle. But, on the other hand it does not take much energy at all to disrupt the usual resonant frequency because that frequency is influenced by millions of variables, most of which are not understood, and the results of relatively small disruptions can manifest themselves in very large ways.

Just like it took a relatively small amount of wind to set that bridge in motion.

Sorry, thats it for todays science lesson.

And, BTW, Wiki's explanation of how the wind influenced the bridge is INCORRECT, as usual.

QuoteFig. 3. Global average temperature reconstruction based upon 18 temperature proxies for the period 1 A.D. to 1995, combined with the thermometer-based dataset from the UK Met Office and University of East Anglia, covering the period 1850 to 2007. Note that for both datasets each data point represents a 30-year average.

QuoteAnother feedback contender, suggested over a century ago, is CO2. In the past decade, detailed studies of ice cores have shown there is a remarkable correlation between CO2 levels and temperature over the past half million years (see Vostok ice cores show constant CO2 as temperatures fell).

It takes about 5000 years for an ice age to end and, after the initial 800 year lag, temperature and CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere rise together for a further 4200 years.

What seems to have happened at the end of the recent ice ages is that some factor â€" most probably orbital changes â€" caused a rise in temperature. This led to an increase in CO2, resulting in further warming that caused more CO2 to be released and so on: a positive feedback that amplified a small change in temperature. At some point, the shrinking of the ice sheets further amplified the warming.

QuoteFor a while now I've been asking climate scientists to tell me what could be observed in the real world that would be inconsistent with forecasts (predictions, projections, etc.) of climate models, such as those that are used by the IPCC. I've long suspected that the answer is "nothing" and the public silence from those in the outspoken climate science community would seem to back this up. Now a paper in Nature today (PDF) suggests that cooling in the world's oceans couldthat the world may cool over the next 20 years few decades , according to Richard Woods who comments on the paper in the same issue, "temporarily offset the longer-term warming trend from increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere", and this would not be inconsistent with predictions of longer-term global warming.

I am sure that this is an excellent paper by world class scientists. But when I look at the broader significance of the paper what I see is that there is in fact nothing that can be observed in the climate system that would be inconsistent with climate model predictions. If global cooling over the next few decades is consistent with model predictions, then so too is pretty much anything and everything under the sun.

This means that from a practical standpoint climate models are of no practical use beyond providing some intellectual authority in the promotional battle over global climate policy. I am sure that some model somewhere has foretold how the next 20 years will evolve (and please ask me in 20 years which one!). And if none get it right, it won't mean that any were actually wrong. If there is no future over the next few decades that models rule out, then anything is possible. And of course, no one needed a model to know that.

Don't get me wrong, models are great tools for probing our understanding and exploring various assumptions about how nature works. But scientists think they know with certainty that carbon dioxide leads to bad outcomes for the planet, so future modeling will only refine that fact. I am focused on the predictive value of the models, which appears to be nil. So models have plenty of scientific value left in them, but tools to use in planning or policy? Forget about it.

Those who might object to my assertion that models are of no practical use beyond political promotion, can start by returning to my original question: What can be observed in the climate over the next few decade that would be inconsistent with climate model projections? If you have no answer for this question then I'll stick with my views.

Quote from: Midway on May 04, 2008, 12:26:33 PM

QuoteBTW, I NEVER claimed to be an expert on climatology.  In fact, I just stated that I am a layman.  I simply have read about "climate change" a bit.  Since you are too afraid to tell us what you do, I can only assume that you are not an expert on it either.  So, your opinion is therefore just as valid as mine (or they are both equally invalid).  And again, you are the one who keeps raising the issue of scientific knowledge and credentials.  Please tell us yours or stop whining about it.

Finally, let's be honest.  There are legitimate credentialed scientists on both sides of this issue.

So, without using technical terminology which I do not have the inclination to look up, why dont you tell us what you see in that chart?

BTW, you still have not been qualified as an expert on the subject of climatology (or tuning forks for that matter).  What was your field again?

We know the kelp and sea creatures lived in the oceans so either the land was pushed up or the oceans receded. Or there could have been a global flood in which all of the earth's land masses were covered with water.  If this was the case I sure am glad someone had the revelation to build a giant boat and preserve the wonderful creatures we have here on earth.

Ice cores have established the existence of at least 17 Ice Age Cycles in just the past 2 million years.

Considering the earth is only about 6,000 years old I have to disagree with this "fact" and all of the other "facts" that rely on the earth being older than it is.

Based on Genealogical Records in the Bible the earth is about 6,000 years old.

We absolutely should not claim to be all-knowing.  The only being that is all-knowing is God.  By the way, depending on what part of nature you are specifically talking about nature has only been around for 5 days longer than man.

How ridiculous to post a chart showing 400,000 years of temperatures when it already has been established beyond a shadow of a doubt previously in this very post that the Earth is only 6,000 years old.

And River, since you always object to things in this post that you disagree with, and there was no objection to the fact that the Earth is 6,000 years old, that implies your approval of that position. And since you approve of these facts as handed down by God almighty to our lord and savior Jesus Christ, and recorded in the bible, which is the acknowledged word of God, then it invalidates any conclusions that you have drawn from that obviously fraudulent chart of tempertaures that purports to go back 400,000 years, which you know to be impossible because the earth and time itself did not exist prior to 6,000 years ago.

Quote from: stephendare on May 04, 2008, 06:49:52 PM
Meanwhile in the 'real world', where 'science' works like magic and 'rational' people look at 'evidence'....

Quote
This is not a good update.  Every thing is proceeding along worst case scenarios rather than best case, most conservative projections.

Quote
Recent cold snap helping Arctic sea ice, scientists find
Last Updated: Friday, February 15, 2008 | 10:17 AM ET
CBC News

There's an upside to the extreme cold temperatures northern Canadians have endured in the last few weeks: scientists say it's been helping winter sea ice grow across the Arctic, where the ice shrank to record-low levels last year.

Temperatures have stayed well in the -30s C and -40s C range since late January throughout the North, with the mercury dipping past -50 C in some areas.

Satellite images are showing that the cold spell is helping the sea ice expand in coverage by about 2 million square kilometres, compared to the average winter coverage in the previous three years.

"It's nice to know that the ice is recovering," Josefino Comiso, a senior research scientist with the Cryospheric Sciences Branch of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, told CBC News on Thursday.

"That means that maybe the perennial ice would not go down as low as last year."

Canadian scientists are also noticing growing ice coverage in most areas of the Arctic, including the southern Davis Strait and the Beaufort Sea.

"Clearly, we're seeing the ice coverage rebound back to more near normal coverage for this time of year," said Gilles Langis, a senior ice forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa.

Quote
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/02/15/arctic-ice.html

Quote from: Midway on May 06, 2008, 02:29:01 PM
Here's the answer:

Quote from: RiversideGator on May 06, 2008, 11:30:38 AM
Only time will tell.  These things are best judged in retrospect.

Quote from: Midway on May 07, 2008, 09:33:43 AM
Oh, just one more question, if you please;

So, then it would be safe to say that you endorse the validity of the method(s) commonly known as "radioactive dating" and more specifically "Carbon-14 dating" as valid scientific processes whose outcomes yield accurate results in terms of establishing the actual age of the objects thusly tested?

I just want to be sure that we are working with the same basic parameters here, that's all, because I'm not really clear about where you stand on this matter either.

QuoteI do believe the scientific evidence suggests that the Earth is 4.54 billion years old.

Quotesophistry

noun
a deliberately invalid argument displaying ingenuity in reasoning in the hope of deceiving someone

QuoteIn psychology, psychological projection (or projection bias) is a defense mechanism in which one attributes one’s own unacceptable or unwanted thoughts or/and emotions to others.

Quote from: stephendare on May 07, 2008, 02:04:48 PM
The question is disengenuous charleston...

Quote from: Midway on May 07, 2008, 11:16:57 PM
But anyway, I like this definition better, as it's more straightforward:

Quotesoph·ist·ry      /ˈsɒfəstri/  Spelled Pronunciation[sof-uh-stree]
â€"noun, plural -ries.
1.   a subtle, tricky, superficially plausible, but generally fallacious method of reasoning.
2.   a false argument; sophism.
[Origin: 1300â€"50; ME sophistrie < MF, equiv. to sophistre sophister + -ie -y3]
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

Tell us all about your psychology degree, therapist Joe. We love hearing about your exploits.

Quote from:  RiversideGator on Yesterday at 11:12:17 PM
So, what caused the CO2 spike on Earth 140,000 years ago?  Ancient SUVs?

Quote
Actually, take a good look at your chart. Note that the Co2 levels fluctuate between 200 and 280 parts per million by volume roughly every 125,000 years or so. Also note that concurrent with the rise in co2 levels there is a rise in temperature of similar magnitude.

QuoteThere is a close correlation between Antarctic temperature and atmospheric concentrations of CO2 (Barnola et al. 1987). The extension of the Vostok CO2 record shows that the main trends of CO2 are similar for each glacial cycle. Major transitions from the lowest to the highest values are associated with glacial-interglacial transitions. During these transitions, the atmospheric concentrations of CO2 rises from 180 to 280-300 ppmv (Petit et al. 1999). The extension of the Vostok CO2 record shows the present-day levels of CO2 are unprecedented during the past 420 kyr. Pre-industrial Holocene levels (~280 ppmv) are found during all interglacials, with the highest values (~300 ppmv) found approximately 323 kyr BP. When the Vostok ice core data were compared with other ice core data (Delmas et al. 1980; Neftel et al. 1982) for the past 30,000 - 40,000 years, good agreement was found between the records: all show low CO2 values [~200 parts per million by volume (ppmv)] during the Last Glacial Maximum and increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations associated with the glacial-Holocene transition. According to Barnola et al. (1991) and Petit et al. (1999) these measurements indicate that, at the beginning of the deglaciations, the CO2 increase either was in phase or lagged by less than ~1000 years with respect to the Antarctic temperature, whereas it clearly lagged behind the temperature at the onset of the glaciations.

QuoteNow, keep in mind that the present co2 levels are roughly 375 ppmv, significantly higher than anything on your chart. Since we have already established that there is a one to one correspondence between global temperature and Co2 levels based upon the data presented in your chart, and since our C02 levels are presently higher than anything on that chart, it would stand to reason that that relationship between C02 levels and Earth surface temperature is still operative. you should also note that the C02 and temperature variations shown on your chart are pretty much independent of insolation.

QuoteI've given you these answers against my better judgment, because when you are confronted with material that disputes your political agenda, you proceed to deride those answers. please feel free to do so, as it just underscores the fact that you have no idea what you are looking at here.

Quote from: gatorback on May 08, 2008, 03:17:48 AM

Quote from:  RiversideGator on Yesterday at 11:12:17 PM
So, what caused the CO2 spike on Earth 140,000 years ago?  Ancient SUVs?

No.  It was deep water hydrogen sulfide.  Basically, the theory goes like this.  Syberian Volcanos heated an area about the size of North America.  This caused deep water to warm up.  That in turned caused deep water hydrogen sulfide to produce this nasty green sulfur bacteria: organisms that required both light and free hydrogen sulfide (H2S).  That in turn caused the CO2 spike.  Everybody does know that warm water holds less CO2 right?   Google: Oceanic Anoxic Events.   ::)

QuoteOceanic anoxic events occur when the Earth's oceans become completely depleted of oxygen (O2) below the surface levels. Although anoxic events have not happened for millions of years, the geological record shows that they happened many times in the past, and may have caused mass extinctions.

Quote from: RiversideGator on May 08, 2008, 06:28:32 PM

Quote from: gatorback on May 08, 2008, 03:17:48 AM

Quote from:  RiversideGator on Yesterday at 11:12:17 PM
So, what caused the CO2 spike on Earth 140,000 years ago?  Ancient SUVs?

No.  It was deep water hydrogen sulfide.  Basically, the theory goes like this.  Syberian Volcanos heated an area about the size of North America.  This caused deep water to warm up.  That in turned caused deep water hydrogen sulfide to produce this nasty green sulfur bacteria: organisms that required both light and free hydrogen sulfide (H2S).  That in turn caused the CO2 spike.  Everybody does know that warm water holds less CO2 right?   Google: Oceanic Anoxic Events.   ::)

According to the much hated wikipedia, an anoxic event has not happened in millions of years though and the data from the ice cores goes back just 400,000 years:

QuoteOceanic anoxic events occur when the Earth's oceans become completely depleted of oxygen (O2) below the surface levels. Although anoxic events have not happened for millions of years, the geological record shows that they happened many times in the past, and may have caused mass extinctions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxic_event

Quote from: that hated wikipedia
Here is another way of looking at oceanic anoxic events. Assume that the earth releases a huge volume of carbon dioxide during an interval of excessive volcanism; global temperatures rise due to the greenhouse effect; global weathering rates and fluvial nutrient flux increase; organic productivity in the oceans increases; organic-carbon burial in the oceans increases (OAE begins); carbon dioxide is drawn down (inverse greenhouse effect); global temperatures fall, and the oceanâ€"atmosphere system returns to equilibrium (OAE ends).

QuoteVarious proxies and modelling suggests large variations; 500 Myr ago CO2 levels were likely 10 times higher than now.[6] Indeed higher CO2 concentrations are thought to have prevailed throughout most of the Phanerozoic eon, with concentrations four to six times current concentrations during the Mesozoic era, and ten to fifteen times current concentrations during the early Palaeozoic era until the middle of the Devonian period, about 400 Mya

Quote from: The Wall Street Journal Online a freeking great on-line publication
Will Al Gore Melt?
If not, why did he chicken out on an interview?
by FLEMMING ROSE AND BJORN LOMBORG
Sunday, January 21, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

Al Gore is traveling around the world telling us how we must fundamentally change our civilization due to the threat of global warming. Last week he was in Denmark to disseminate this message. But if we are to embark on the costliest political project ever, maybe we should make sure it rests on solid ground. It should be based on the best facts, not just the convenient ones. This was the background for the biggest Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, to set up an investigative interview with Mr. Gore. And for this, the paper thought it would be obvious to team up with Bjorn Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist," who has provided one of the clearest counterpoints to Mr. Gore's tune.

The interview had been scheduled for months. The day before the interview Mr. Gore's agent thought Gore-meets-Lomborg would be great. Yet an hour later, he came back to tell us that Bjorn Lomborg should be excluded from the interview because he's been very critical of Mr. Gore's message about global warming and has questioned Mr. Gore's evenhandedness. According to the agent, Mr. Gore only wanted to have questions about his book and documentary, and only asked by a reporter. These conditions were immediately accepted by Jyllands-Posten. Yet an hour later we received an email from the agent saying that the interview was now cancelled. What happened?

One can only speculate. But if we are to follow Mr. Gore's suggestions of radically changing our way of life, the costs are not trivial. If we slowly change our greenhouse gas emissions over the coming century, the U.N. actually estimates that we will live in a warmer but immensely richer world. However, the U.N. Climate Panel suggests that if we follow Al Gore's path down toward an environmentally obsessed society, it will have big consequences for the world, not least its poor. In the year 2100, Mr. Gore will have left the average person 30% poorer, and thus less able to handle many of the problems we will face, climate change or no climate change

Quote from: RiversideGator on May 08, 2008, 11:02:29 PM
Oh and CO2 levels have been much higher in the past:

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide.png)

QuoteVarious proxies and modelling suggests large variations; 500 Myr ago CO2 levels were likely 10 times higher than now.[6] Indeed higher CO2 concentrations are thought to have prevailed throughout most of the Phanerozoic eon, with concentrations four to six times current concentrations during the Mesozoic era, and ten to fifteen times current concentrations during the early Palaeozoic era until the middle of the Devonian period, about 400 Mya

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_emissions

In the Cretacious Era, the era approximately 66+ million years ago, CO2 levels were 6 times what they were in the preindustrial era.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous

And, the Earth has seen ice ages during periods when CO2 levels were 3 times the preindustrial level.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian

Quote from: Lunican on May 09, 2008, 09:11:39 PM

Quote from: RiversideGator on May 08, 2008, 11:02:29 PM
Oh and CO2 levels have been much higher in the past:

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide.png)

QuoteVarious proxies and modelling suggests large variations; 500 Myr ago CO2 levels were likely 10 times higher than now.[6] Indeed higher CO2 concentrations are thought to have prevailed throughout most of the Phanerozoic eon, with concentrations four to six times current concentrations during the Mesozoic era, and ten to fifteen times current concentrations during the early Palaeozoic era until the middle of the Devonian period, about 400 Mya

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_emissions

In the Cretacious Era, the era approximately 66+ million years ago, CO2 levels were 6 times what they were in the preindustrial era.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous

And, the Earth has seen ice ages during periods when CO2 levels were 3 times the preindustrial level.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian

How many humans were alive during this period of elevated CO2 levels? The discussion of global warming is about the earth supporting human life, not whether the earth will continue to exist.

Quote from: RiversideGator on May 09, 2008, 10:57:43 PM
None that I know of.  But at what level is CO2 toxic to humanity?

Quote from: Lunican on May 10, 2008, 04:22:04 PM

Quote from: RiversideGator on May 09, 2008, 10:57:43 PM
None that I know of.  But at what level is CO2 toxic to humanity?

20,000 ppm is toxic to a human.

385 ppm is toxic to humanity.

Quote from: Midway on May 12, 2008, 07:23:45 PM
I am assuming that you took umbrage to my calling you an ambulance chaser? That's a commonly accepted term for lawyer.

How's that different than you calling me a troll?

As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

When you start cleansing posts because YOU don't like them, then your whole little kingdom here becomes irrelevant. Then You lose, and I win.

Maybe Metrojacksonville should not run a national politics thread, as it is really not relevant to Jacksonville issues, and promotes neo-con fanaticism, and thus dilutes the primary message of the site.

So, what do you think, Lunican?

QuoteLorne Gunter, National Post   Published: Tuesday, May 20, 2008

You may have heard earlier this month that global warming is now likely to take break for a decade or more. There will be no more warming until 2015, perhaps later.

Climate scientist Noel Keenlyside, leading a team from Germany's Leibniz Institute of Marine Science and the Max Planck Institute of Meteorology, for the first time entered verifiable data on ocean circulation cycles into one of the U. N.'s climate supercomputers, and the machine spit out a projection that there will be no more warming for the foreseeable future.

Of course, Mr. Keenlyside-- long a defender of the man-made global warming theory -- was quick to add that after 2015 (or perhaps 2020), warming would resume with a vengeance.

Climate alarmists the world over were quick to add that they had known all along there would be periods when the Earth's climate would cool even as the overall trend was toward dangerous climate change.

Sorry, but that is just so much backfill.

There may have been the odd global-warming scientist in the past decade who allowed that warming would pause periodically in its otherwise relentless upward march, but he or she was a rarity.

If anything, the opposite is true: Almost no climate scientist who backed the alarmism ever expected warming would take anything like a 10 or 15-year hiatus.

Last year, in its oft-quoted report on global warming, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted a 0.3-degree C rise in temperature in the coming decade -- not a cooling or even just temperature stability.

In its previous report in 2001, the IPCC prominently displaced the so-called temperature "hockey stick" that purported to show temperature pretty much plateauing for the thousand years before 1900, then taking off in the 20th Century in a smooth upward line. No 10-year dips backwards were foreseen.

It is drummed into us, ad nauseum, that the IPCC represents 2,500 scientists who together embrace a "consensus" that man-made global warming is a "scientific fact;" and as recently as last year, they didn't see this cooling coming. So the alarmists can't weasel out of this by claiming they knew all along such anomalies would occur.

This is not something any alarmist predicted, and it showed up in none of the UN's computer projections until Mr. Keenlyside et al. were finally able to enter detailed data into their climate model on past ocean current behaviour.

Less well-known is that global temperatures have already been falling for a decade. All of which means, that by 2015 or 2020, when warming is expected to resume, we will have had nearly 20 years of fairly steady cooling.

Saints of the new climate religion, such as Al Gore, have stated that eight of the 10 years since 1998 are the warmest on record. Even if that were true, none has been as warm as 1998, which means the trend of the past decade has been downward, not upward.

Last year, for instance, saw a drop in the global average temperature of nearly 0.7 degrees C (the largest single-year movement up or down since global temperature averages have been calculated). Despite advanced predictions that 2007 would be the warmest year on record, made by such UN associates as Britain's Hadley Centre, a government climate research agency, 2007 was the coolest year since at least 1993.

According to the U. S. National Climatic Data Center, the average temperature of the global land surface in January 2008 was below the 20th-Century mean for the first time since 1982.

Also in January, Southern Hemisphere sea ice coverage was at its greatest summer level (January is summer in the Southern Hemisphere) in the past 30 years.

Neither the 3,000 temperature buoys that float throughout the world's oceans nor the eight NASA satellites that float above our atmosphere have recorded appreciable warming in the past six to eight years.

Even Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, reluctantly admitted to Reuters in January that there has been no warming so far in the 21st Century.

Does this prove that global warming isn't happening, that we can all go back to idling our SUVs 24/7? No. But it should introduce doubt into the claim that the science of global warming is "settled."

lgunter@shaw.ca

QuoteADVISORY: Dr. Arthur Robinson (OISM) to Release Names of over 30,000 Scientists Rejecting Global Warming Hypothesis

May 15, 2008 12:39 PM EDT

Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM)

Who: Dr. Arthur Robinson of the OISM

What: release of names in OISM "Petition Project"

When: 10 AM, Monday May 19

Where: Holeman Lounge at the National Press Club, 529 14th St., NW, Washington, DC

Why: the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) will announce that more than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition rejecting claims of human-caused global warming. The purpose of OISM's Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of "settled science" and an overwhelming "consensus" in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climate damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists. As indicated by the petition text and signatory list, a very large number of American scientists reject this hypothesis.

It is evident that 31,072 Americans with university degrees in science - including 9,021 PhDs, are not "a few." Moreover, from the clear and strong petition statement that they have signed, it is evident that these 31,072 American scientists are not "skeptics."

CONTACT: Audrey Mullen, +1-703-548-1160, for the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine

/PRNewswire-USNewswire -- May 15/

SOURCE Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine

Quote from: stephendare on May 20, 2008, 01:33:18 PM
...It was rather sordid really, and ended up seriously pissing off a few of the actual pioneers of climatology, whose work they are now being accused of 'debunking'.

Its embarrassing really, you should have checked out the information more thoroughly.

Imagine getting 31 thousand scientists to suddenly agree on something.

That should have been your first alarm.

Quote from: stephendare on May 20, 2008, 01:34:38 PM
welcome to another fact free festival sponsored by Riverside Gator.

Quote from: stephendare on May 20, 2008, 05:20:19 PM
But sure, I would be glad to take it on, one non-fact at a time.

Quote from: stephendare on May 20, 2008, 05:16:04 PM
Dave, the Huffington Post is more of an aggregator of news than an original source.  There is a blogroll, and those people are sometimes paid for their work, but mostly its links to the NYT, WaPo, National Review, and maybe a hundred other sites.

It has a liberal slant to it, because the editors pick and choose which articles to link to, but its not primarily a first source for news, the way the National Post is...

Quote from: stephendare on May 20, 2008, 05:20:19 PM
But sure, I would be glad to take it on, one non-fact at a time.

Quote from: stephendare on May 21, 2008, 02:44:50 PM
But I guarantee you that the 31,000 signatures came from sign up lists for email at the conventions, not from people intentionally signing a petition...

Quote from: stephendare on May 20, 2008, 05:20:19 PM
But sure, I would be glad to take it on, one non-fact at a time.

QuoteExplanation: For about 300 years Jupiter's banded atmosphere has shown a remarkable feature to telescopic viewers, a large swirling storm system known as The Great Red Spot. In 2006, another red storm system appeared, actually seen to form as smaller whitish oval-shaped storms merged and then developed the curious reddish hue. Now, Jupiter has a third red spot, again produced from a smaller whitish storm. All three are seen in this image made from data recorded on May 9 and 10 with the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. The spots extend above the surrounding clouds and their red color may be due to deeper material dredged up by the storms and exposed to ultraviolet light, but the exact chemical process is still unknown. For scale, the Great Red Spot has almost twice the diameter of planet Earth, making both new spots less than one Earth-diameter across. The newest red spot is on the far left (west), along the same band of clouds as the Great Red Spot and is drifting toward it. If the motion continues, the new spot will encounter the much larger storm system in August. Jupiter's recent outbreak of red spots is likely related to large scale climate change as the gas giant planet is getting warmer near the equator.

Quote from: RiversideGator on May 23, 2008, 06:07:26 PM
Disturbing new signs of global warming...  On Jupiter:

(http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0805/jupiterSpots_hst.jpg)

QuoteExplanation: For about 300 years Jupiter's banded atmosphere has shown a remarkable feature to telescopic viewers, a large swirling storm system known as The Great Red Spot. In 2006, another red storm system appeared, actually seen to form as smaller whitish oval-shaped storms merged and then developed the curious reddish hue. Now, Jupiter has a third red spot, again produced from a smaller whitish storm. All three are seen in this image made from data recorded on May 9 and 10 with the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. The spots extend above the surrounding clouds and their red color may be due to deeper material dredged up by the storms and exposed to ultraviolet light, but the exact chemical process is still unknown. For scale, the Great Red Spot has almost twice the diameter of planet Earth, making both new spots less than one Earth-diameter across. The newest red spot is on the far left (west), along the same band of clouds as the Great Red Spot and is drifting toward it. If the motion continues, the new spot will encounter the much larger storm system in August. Jupiter's recent outbreak of red spots is likely related to large scale climate change as the gas giant planet is getting warmer near the equator.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080523.html

Quote from: stephendare on May 24, 2008, 12:31:11 PM
none of them have been established as 'facts'.

Anyone can pull the same trick and then force the opposing side to spend the rest of their lives on wild goose chases..

no thank you.

Quote from: Midway on May 27, 2008, 05:37:13 PM
But in a previous posting of yours there was proof that insolation does not significantly influence.

QuoteWASHINGTON -- I'm not a global warming believer. I'm not a global warming denier. I'm a global warming agnostic who believes instinctively that it can't be very good to pump lots of CO2 into the atmosphere, but is equally convinced that those who presume to know exactly where that leads are talking through their hats.

Predictions of catastrophe depend on models. Models depend on assumptions about complex planetary systems -- from ocean currents to cloud formation -- that no one fully understands. Which is why the models are inherently flawed and forever changing. The doomsday scenarios posit a cascade of events, each with a certain probability. The multiple improbability of their simultaneous occurrence renders all such predictions entirely speculative.

Yet on the basis of this speculation, environmental activists, attended by compliant scientists and opportunistic politicians, are advocating radical economic and social regulation. "The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity," warns Czech President Vaclav Klaus, "is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism."

If you doubt the arrogance, you haven't seen that Newsweek cover story that declared the global warming debate over. Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming -- infinitely more untested, complex and speculative -- is a closed issue.

But declaring it closed has its rewards. It not only dismisses skeptics as the running dogs of reaction, i.e., of Exxon, Cheney and now Klaus. By fiat, it also hugely re-empowers the intellectual left.

For a century, an ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous knowledge class -- social planners, scientists, intellectuals, experts and their left-wing political allies -- arrogated to themselves the right to rule either in the name of the oppressed working class (communism) or, in its more benign form, by virtue of their superior expertise in achieving the highest social progress by means of state planning (socialism).

Two decades ago, however, socialism and communism died rudely, then were buried forever by the empirical demonstration of the superiority of market capitalism everywhere from Thatcher's England to Deng's China, where just the partial abolition of socialism lifted more people out of poverty more rapidly than ever in human history.

Just as the ash heap of history beckoned, the intellectual left was handed the ultimate salvation: environmentalism. Now the experts will regulate your life not in the name of the proletariat or Fabian socialism but -- even better -- in the name of Earth itself.

Environmentalists are Gaia's priests, instructing us in her proper service and casting out those who refuse to genuflect. (See Newsweek above.) And having proclaimed the ultimate commandment -- carbon chastity -- they are preparing the supporting canonical legislation that will tell you how much you can travel, what kind of light you will read by, and at what temperature you may set your bedroom thermostat.

Just Monday, a British parliamentary committee proposed that every citizen be required to carry a carbon card that must be presented, under penalty of law, when buying gasoline, taking an airplane or using electricity. The card contains your yearly carbon ration to be drawn down with every purchase, every trip, every swipe.

There's no greater social power than the power to ration. And, other than rationing food, there is no greater instrument of social control than rationing energy, the currency of just about everything one does and uses in an advanced society.

So what does the global warming agnostic propose as an alternative? First, more research -- untainted and reliable -- to determine (a) whether the carbon footprint of man is or is not lost among the massive natural forces (from sunspot activity to ocean currents) that affect climate, and (b) if the human effect is indeed significant, whether the planetary climate system has the homeostatic mechanisms (like the feedback loops in the human body, for example) with which to compensate.

Second, reduce our carbon footprint in the interim by doing the doable, rather than the economically ruinous and socially destructive. The most obvious step is a major move to nuclear power, which to the atmosphere is the cleanest of the clean.

But your would-be masters have foreseen this contingency. The Church of the Environment promulgates secondary dogmas as well. One of these is a strict nuclear taboo.

Rather convenient, is it not? Take this major coal-substituting fix off the table and we will be rationing all the more. Guess who does the rationing?

Quote from: Midway on May 31, 2008, 10:56:06 PM
This guy sounds like a moderate next to you.

He's not an expert in the science, but he doesn't pretend to be either.

And sure, he raises valid points.

But then again, he's not exactly you:

from your beloved wiki:

QuoteIdeology

Krauthammer is generally considered a conservative or neoconservative. However, he is a supporter of legalized abortion[11][12][13], an opponent of the death penalty[14][15][16][17], an intelligent design critic and an advocate for the scientific consensus on evolution, calling the religion-science controversy a "false conflict" [18][19], a supporter of embryonic stem cell research (involving embryos discarded by fertility clinics),[20][21][22] and a longtime advocate of radically higher energy taxes to induce conservation.[23][24][25][26] Meg Greenfield, editorial page editor for The Washington Post who edited Krauthammer's columns for 15 years, called his weekly column "independent and hard to peg politically. It's a very tough column. There's no 'trendy' in it. You never know what is going to happen next."[27]

But, he's a guy who comes up with his own talking points instead of aping them from the fox news talking heads. I think it's called "independent thinking" Ugh!

Quote from: RiversideGator on June 01, 2008, 11:40:16 PM
I have always stated that it was possible that the GW hype is true.  The obvious solution is a massive shift to nuclear power, which I support.  Are you with me?

Quote from: RiversideGator on March 05, 2008, 12:00:44 AM
Sorry.  Perhaps I should be more explicit:  the earth is not flat and global warming is not real.  There is no wise guy analogy here.  You are simply wrong with your cherished GW theory.  Got it?

Quote from: RiversideGator on June 02, 2008, 12:27:52 AM
Well, other times I stated that it was possible that it was real, although I do not think it likely.  I dont claim to have a crystal ball on this subject.  Only time will tell.  But one thing is certain: now that it is nearly summer and natural warming will ensue, the hysteria from the GW crowd will increase exponentially.

Quote from: Midway on June 03, 2008, 08:14:37 PM
You have serious reading comprehension problems. I did not say that they were inefficient. I said that they are too expensive to build. So who is asking to build nuclear power plants? Please tell me.

And I don't recall citing any examples of solar power.

Quote from: Midway on June 02, 2008, 08:11:36 PM

Quote from: gatorback on June 02, 2008, 12:55:10 AM
I guess I'm PNP(Pro Nuclear Power lol) in America.  I'm just not sure about anywhere else on the planet including Iran.  Sorry guys, I guess I'm not really for nuclear power then.

So that makes you NPN.

Quote from: Charleston native on June 02, 2008, 08:41:22 AM

Quote from: RiversideGator on June 02, 2008, 12:27:52 AM
Well, other times I stated that it was possible that it was real, although I do not think it likely.  I dont claim to have a crystal ball on this subject.  Only time will tell.  But one thing is certain: now that it is nearly summer and natural warming will ensue, the hysteria from the GW crowd will increase exponentially.

This will be a completely accurate forecast for this summer...I forecast more man-made global climate change hysteria with the onslaught of any hurricanes that are spawned this season.

Quote from: Midway on June 03, 2008, 08:14:37 PM
You have serious reading comprehension problems. I did not say that they were inefficient. I said that they are too expensive to build. So who is asking to build nuclear power plants? Please tell me.

QuoteProtests Greet Nuclear Power Resurgence in US South
by Matthew Cardinale

WAYNESBORO, Georgia - Residents and environmental activists are in a bitter dispute with large U.S. energy corporations and the federal government over the safety of nuclear power, as more than a dozen corporations plan to, or have filed, paperwork to open new nuclear power plants, primarily in the U.S. South.0115 06

Energy giants like Southern Company, Entergy, and Florida Power and Light are attracted by billions in governmental incentives offered under the George W. Bush Administration.

“There’s a whole suite of incentives being pumped out by the federal government to try and cajole the utilities back into the game,” Glenn Carroll of Nuclear Watch South told IPS.

The U.S. Congress last month passed 38.5 billion dollars in loan guarantees to the nuclear industry. “If they can’t pay back the loan, or don’t want to pay back the loan, the government will guarantee the banks up to 80 percent,” Carroll said.

Five sites have already applied for the first combined licensing applications in 32 years, Roger Hannah, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told IPS. They are located in south Texas, Bellefonte in Alabama, Calvert Cliffs in Maryland, North Anna in Virginia, and Lee Site in South Carolina.

Four companies have applied for Early Site Permits for sites in Grand Gulf, Mississippi; Clinton, Illinois; North Hanna, Virginia; and Plant Vogtle in Burke County, Georgia.

“We’ve had indications of interest from 12 to 15 other companies,” Hannah said.

QuoteAnd I don't recall citing any examples of solar power.

QuoteConfirming what many of us have already noted from the anecdotal evidence coming in of a much cooler than normal May, such as late spring snows as far south as Arizona, extended skiing in Colorado, and delays in snow cover melting in many parts of the northern hemisphere, the University of Alabama, Huntsville (UAH) published their satellite derived Advanced Microwave Sounder Unit data set of the Lower Troposphere for May 2008.

It is significantly colder globally, colder even than the significant drop to -0.046°C seen in January 2008.

The global ∆T from April to May 2008 was -.195°C

UAH
2008 1 -0.046
2008 2 0.020
2008 3 0.094
2008 4 0.015
2008 5 -0.180

Compared to the May 2007 value of 0.199°C we find a 12 month ∆T is -.379°C.

But even more impressive is the change since the last big peak in global temperature in January 2007 at 0.594°C, giving a 16 month ∆T of -0.774°C which is equal in magnitude to the generally agreed upon “global warming signal” of the last 100 years.

Quote from: Midway on June 04, 2008, 10:59:47 PM
Thanks for proving my point that there is not a valid business case for building a nuclear power plant in the USA without massive government incentives, read that as tax dollar giveaways or subsidies to the nuclear power industry. Do you actually read the stuff you post, or is it that you just can't understand any of it? This is really ridiculous! NOW YOU'RE IN FAVOR OF MASSIVE GOVERNMENT GIVEAWAYS??

I mock your example.

QuoteSun Goes Longer Than Normal Without Producing Sunspots

ScienceDaily (Jun. 9, 2008) â€" The sun has been lying low for the past couple of years, producing no sunspots and giving a break to satellites.

That's good news for people who scramble when space weather interferes with their technology, but it became a point of discussion for the scientists who attended an international solar conference at Montana State University. Approximately 100 scientists from Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa and North America gathered June 1-6 to talk about "Solar Variability, Earth's Climate and the Space Environment."

The scientists said periods of inactivity are normal for the sun, but this period has gone on longer than usual.

"It continues to be dead," said Saku Tsuneta with the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, program manager for the Hinode solar mission. "That's a small concern, a very small concern."

The Hinode satellite is a Japanese mission with the United States and United Kingdom as partners. The satellite carries three telescopes that together show how changes on the sun's surface spread through the solar atmosphere. MSU researchers are among those operating the X-ray telescope. The satellite orbits 431 miles above ground, crossing both poles and making one lap every 95 minutes, giving Hinode an uninterrupted view of the sun for several months out of the year.

Dana Longcope, a solar physicist at MSU, said the sun usually operates on an 11-year cycle with maximum activity occurring in the middle of the cycle. Minimum activity generally occurs as the cycles change. Solar activity refers to phenomena like sunspots, solar flares and solar eruptions. Together, they create the weather than can disrupt satellites in space and technology on earth.

The last cycle reached its peak in 2001 and is believed to be just ending now, Longcope said. The next cycle is just beginning and is expected to reach its peak sometime around 2012. Today's sun, however, is as inactive as it was two years ago, and scientists aren't sure why.

"It's a dead face," Tsuneta said of the sun's appearance.

Tsuneta said solar physicists aren't like weather forecasters; They can't predict the future. They do have the ability to observe, however, and they have observed a longer-than-normal period of solar inactivity. In the past, they observed that the sun once went 50 years without producing sunspots. That period, from approximately 1650 to 1700, occurred during the middle of a little ice age on Earth that lasted from as early as the mid-15th century to as late as the mid-19th century.

Tsuneta said he doesn't know how long the sun will continue to be inactive, but scientists associated with the Hinode mission are ready for it to resume maximum activity. They have added extra ground stations to pick up signals from Hinode in case solar activity interferes with instruments at other stations around the world. The new stations, ready to start operating this summer, are located in India, Norway, Alaska and the South Pole.

Establishing those stations, as well as the Hinode mission, required international cooperation, Tsuneta said. No one country had the resources to carry out those projects by itself.

Four countries, three space agencies and 11 organizations worked together on Hinode which was launched in September 2006, Tsuneta said. Among the collaborators was Loren Acton, a research professor of physics at MSU. Tsuneta and Acton worked together closely from 1986-2002 and were reunited at the MSU conference.

"His leadership was immense, superb," Tsuneta said about Acton.

Acton, 72, said he is still enthused by solar physics and the new questions being raised. In fact, he wished he could knock 22 years off his age and extend his career even longer.

"It's too much fun," he said. "There's so much exciting stuff come up, I would like to be part of it."

Quote from: Midway on January 11, 2008, 10:26:06 PM
Social Conservative, it might be better to leave the promotion of new earth creationism to the experts in the field. You are doing a poor job of representing this cause and as such are tarnishing the entire movement.

There are numerous websites devoted to this subject that have in depth discussions of all the important and pertinent advances in this field, as well as a museum in Kentucky. I am deeply offended that you are representing this important cause in such an inadequate fashion.

If your arguments were more reasoned and compelling, I am certain that all who read them would understand the  basic underlying truth in this interpretation of the creation of Earth, and would also understand that the Earth's age cannot possibly exceed 8,000 years.

Please avail yourself of the myriad resources on this subject for the purposes of self education and return when you are equipped to adequately represent this advancement of human knowledge and awareness in a way that permits all people to follow your teachings.

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and ye shall find; knock and the door will be opened unto you. For everyone who asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
Matthew 7:7-8

Quote from: stephendare on June 14, 2008, 11:54:35 AM

Creationist propaganda is best conveyed in a big tent with tons of little old ladies with hair buns shouting "Amen!" and the distinctive sound of palmetto bugs flying around overhead.

QuoteCharlotte temperature hits 123-year low

GREG LACOUR
glacour@charlotteobserver.com

This morning was downright cool in the Charlotte region -- cool enough to break a record that had stood for more than a century.

The temperature at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport was 56 at about 5:30 a.m., breaking the July 2 record of 58, set in 1885. The normal low for this time of year is 70.

It'll warm up quickly today, though. Temperatures today are expected to peak at 90 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. But it'll still feel pleasant because of humidity levels between 20 and 25 percent, said NWS meteorologist Doug Outlaw.

Conditions will be cool again overnight, with the low descending to 59, one degree warmer than the record for July 3, set in 1932. And the Fourth of July is expected to be warm and dry, with a high of 92 and "a very, very minimal chance" of rain, Outlaw said.

Quote from: Social Conservative on January 10, 2008, 12:06:07 PM

Quote from: Lunican on January 07, 2008, 04:55:49 PM
How do you calculate 6,000 years?

Based on Geneological Records in the Bible the earth is about 6,000 years old.

Quote from: jacksonvilleconfidential on July 09, 2008, 12:49:45 PM

Quote from: Social Conservative on January 10, 2008, 12:06:07 PM

Quote from: Lunican on January 07, 2008, 04:55:49 PM
How do you calculate 6,000 years?

Based on Geneological Records in the Bible the earth is about 6,000 years old.

OMG (no pun intended), seriously?

Quote from: stephendare on July 09, 2008, 02:17:15 PM

Quote from: BridgeTroll on July 09, 2008, 12:52:03 PM

Quote from: jacksonvilleconfidential on July 09, 2008, 12:49:45 PM

Quote from: Social Conservative on January 10, 2008, 12:06:07 PM

Quote from: Lunican on January 07, 2008, 04:55:49 PM
How do you calculate 6,000 years?

Based on Geneological Records in the Bible the earth is about 6,000 years old.

OMG (no pun intended), seriously?

You cannot really believe that...

you would be surprised what the 'reality based community' of Riversidegator is willing to believe, bridge troll.

Its fascinating in an entymological kind of way.

Quote from: Midway on July 09, 2008, 05:05:10 PM
Then it's settled? The Earth is older than 6000 years?

Social Conservative is gone. He didn't like his biblical literalism being mocked. He has moved on to greener pastures.

That post was from January.

Quote from: Driven1 on July 09, 2008, 05:10:21 PM

Quote from: Midway on July 09, 2008, 05:05:10 PM
Then it's settled? The Earth is older than 6000 years?

Social Conservative is gone. He didn't like his biblical literalism being mocked. He has moved on to greener pastures.

That post was from January.

nope.  the earth is 6,000 years old.

Quote from: Driven1 on July 09, 2008, 05:23:41 PM
Bridge.  how does the previous graphic prove the age of the earth to me?  it does in no way.  using the same logic, i could "prove" the earth is 6,000 years old to you by posting the aforementioned genealogical record from the Bible.

Quote from: Midway on July 09, 2008, 06:45:41 PM
Any hows, The genealogical record accounts for the time up to Christ, so the Earth is at least 8000 years old. Thats quite an error! (What a dope!)

Quote from: Lunican on July 11, 2008, 07:34:51 AM
So the genealogical record is 4000 years + 2000 years to present?

Quote
Big chill hits Southeast Queensland

Article from: The Courier-Mail

Robyn Ironside and Brian Williams

July 29, 2008 07:50am

BRISBANE'S big chill continued this morning as the apparent temperature dived to a biting 1.7C - and tomorrow is forecast to get even colder.

The mercury sank to 7.4C at Brisbane Airport in the early hours, but the wind-chill factor meant it felt more than 6C colder.

"The southwesterly winds which make it feel colder than it actually is when you're outside," Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Bryan Rolstone said.

He said tomorrow's actual temperatures were likely to be colder still.

"Brisbane will get to four or five degrees and the western suburbs should get down to zero and have plenty of frost about," he said.

Meanwhile, clear skies greeted residents of Stanthorpe this morning - signalling an end to yesterday's light snow.

Mr Rolstone said it was unlikely the Granite Belt would see more snow this winter - but there was plenty of frost about.

"We had just enough moisture yesterday for snowfall, sleet and some thunderstorms but that's dropped out of the airstream now," Mr Rolstone said.

"What we'll see now is drier weather and extensive frost over inland areas."

Although Applethorpe remained in positive territory at 0.6C yesterday, the apparent temperature was a freezing -3.8C.

Dairy farmer Wes Judd of Yangan, near Warwick, was yesterday moving about 350 head of cattle into shelter yesterday, as freezing conditions hit his farm.

"It's pretty cold," he said at noon. "I haven't taken my coat and beanie off yet."

"I just wish it would go away but it's just one of those days where you just have to grin and bear it."

Stanthorpe residents said they were sorry to see the snow go.

"It was nice to see it fall but it was basically only the outer skirts of town," said local newsagent Louise Bentley.

QuoteIcy wings delay planes
28/07/2008 5:21:00 PM
The city's coldest July night since 1982 saw three flights delayed at Adelaide Airport this morning due to ice on the planes' wings.

The Bureau of Meteorology recorded the overnight minimum at just 0.7 degrees Celsius at Kent Town, and minus 1.7 at Parafield.

Three flights headed for Perth, Melbourne and Sydney were scheduled to leave about 7am, but were delayed by more than an hour as airport staff waited for the ice to thaw.

Airport managing director Phil Baker said most airlines did not have de-icing equipment in Adelaide because it was so rarely needed.

About 400 passengers were caught up in the delay.

QuoteDecade has had fewest 90-degree days since 1930

By Tom Skilling
    August 13, 2008

August is the wettest and often the muggiest month of the year. Yet, summer heat continues in short supply, continuing a trend that has dominated much of the 21st Century's opening decade. There have been only 162 days 90 degrees or warmer at Midway Airport over the period from 2000 to 2008. That's by far the fewest 90-degree temperatures in the opening nine years of any decade on record here since 1930.

This summer's highest reading to date has been just 91 degrees. That's unusual. Since 1928, only one yearâ€"2000â€"has failed to record a higher warm-season temperature by Aug. 13.

Quote from: gatorback on August 13, 2008, 03:14:41 PM
I'm thinking we've been near standard since the middle 1700's. 

Quote from: gatorback on August 13, 2008, 02:42:09 PM
Global Land Temperature Warmest On Record In March 2008   sooooooooooooooooo,
how come so many poeople say we are cooling when it's the hottest ever?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080418112341.htm

OH.  I get.  That's what cooling is.  :D

QuoteAges-Old Icecap at North Pole Is Now Liquid, Scientists Find

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: August 19, 2000

The North Pole is melting.

The thick ice that has for ages covered the Arctic Ocean at the pole has turned to water, recent visitors there reported yesterday. At least for the time being, an ice-free patch of ocean about a mile wide has opened at the very top of the world, something that has presumably never before been seen by humans and is more evidence that global warming may be real and already affecting climate.

Quote from: gatorback on August 13, 2008, 11:20:11 PM
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?

Quote from: gatorback on August 14, 2008, 09:32:40 AM
True.  Very true BridgeTroll; however, what about non-human recorded events, like ice cores, and tree growth rings, glaciers, and patterns like that.  Wouldn't that give us some insight into the past without us having to be here?

Quote from: gatorback on August 14, 2008, 10:37:43 AM
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.

Quote from: gatorback on August 14, 2008, 11:17:30 AM
the ice cores and the glaciers give us the big picture to support global cooling by green house gases then?

Quote from: gatorback on August 14, 2008, 09:32:40 AM
True.  Very true BridgeTroll; however, what about non-human recorded events, like ice cores, and tree growth rings, glaciers, and patterns like that.  Wouldn't that give us some insight into the past without us having to be here?

Quote from: BridgeTroll on August 14, 2008, 11:18:36 AM

Quote from: gatorback on August 14, 2008, 11:17:30 AM
the ice cores and the glaciers give us the big picture to support global cooling by green house gases then?

If you say so...

Quote from: gatorback on August 14, 2008, 10:37:43 AM
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.

Quote from: Doctor_K on August 14, 2008, 01:22:57 PM

Quote from: gatorback on August 14, 2008, 10:37:43 AM
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?

QuoteAugust 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. 

Quote from: gatorback on August 13, 2008, 11:20:11 PM
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?

QuoteJust 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

(http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/08/13/nsdic_ice_extent.jpg)
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

(http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/08/13/arctic_ice_comparison_8aug.jpg)
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.

Quote from: RiversideGator on August 16, 2008, 06:03:08 PM

Quote from: gatorback on August 13, 2008, 11:20:11 PM
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:

QuoteJust 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

(http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/08/13/nsdic_ice_extent.jpg)
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

(http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/08/13/arctic_ice_comparison_8aug.jpg)
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/

QuoteStatement 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.

QuoteNOAA: Fifth Warmest July on Record for Globe
August 15, 2008

The combined average global land and ocean surface temperature for July 2008 tied with 2001 and 2003 as the fifth warmest July since worldwide records began in 1880, according to an analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

Also, the seven months from January to July 2008 ranked as the ninth warmest seven-month period for combined average global land and ocean surface temperature.

Global Temperatures

The July 2008 combined global land and ocean surface temperature was 0.88 degree F (0.49 degree C) above the 20th century mean of 60.4 degrees F (15.8 degrees C). For the January â€" July period, the combined global land and ocean surface temperature was 0.81 degree F (0.45 degree C) above the 20th century mean of 56.9 degrees F (13.8 degrees C).

Separately, the global land surface temperature for July was 1.22 degrees F (0.68 degree C) above the 20th century mean of 57.8 degrees F (14.3 degrees C). For January â€" July, the global land surface temperature was 1.35 degrees F (0.75 degree C) above the 20th century mean of 46.8 degrees F (8.3 degrees C).

The July global ocean surface temperature was 0.76 degree F (0.42 degree C) above the 20th century mean of 61.5 degrees F (16.4 degrees C). The January â€" July global ocean surface temperature was 0.61 degrees F (0.34 degrees C) above the 20th century mean of 61.0 degrees F (16.1 degrees C).

Quote from: Lunican on August 18, 2008, 11:14:14 AM

QuoteNOAA: Fifth Warmest July on Record for Globe
August 15, 2008

The combined average global land and ocean surface temperature for July 2008 tied with 2001 and 2003 as the fifth warmest July since worldwide records began in 1880, according to an analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

Also, the seven months from January to July 2008 ranked as the ninth warmest seven-month period for combined average global land and ocean surface temperature.

Global Temperatures

The July 2008 combined global land and ocean surface temperature was 0.88 degree F (0.49 degree C) above the 20th century mean of 60.4 degrees F (15.8 degrees C). For the January â€" July period, the combined global land and ocean surface temperature was 0.81 degree F (0.45 degree C) above the 20th century mean of 56.9 degrees F (13.8 degrees C).

Separately, the global land surface temperature for July was 1.22 degrees F (0.68 degree C) above the 20th century mean of 57.8 degrees F (14.3 degrees C). For January â€" July, the global land surface temperature was 1.35 degrees F (0.75 degree C) above the 20th century mean of 46.8 degrees F (8.3 degrees C).

The July global ocean surface temperature was 0.76 degree F (0.42 degree C) above the 20th century mean of 61.5 degrees F (16.4 degrees C). The January â€" July global ocean surface temperature was 0.61 degrees F (0.34 degrees C) above the 20th century mean of 61.0 degrees F (16.1 degrees C).

More Details:
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008/20080815_ncdc.html

Quote from: stephendare on August 18, 2008, 01:13:40 PM
tufsu.

The secret is that there are only four thick skulled flat earthers left in jacksonville who seriously think that there is some 'controversy' over climate change.

Unfortunately they all post on here, led by one troll who shuts down conversation with his brainless nonsense and multiple postings.

When we look back at our flooded coastline, I do promise however that the name of a single attorney will be tied forever to the question
"why didnt these dumbasses even prepare for flooding?"

Quote from: stephendare on August 18, 2008, 05:16:07 PM
Now we know why you had to drop the Rezko Special Investigation, River......
keep up the good work, proving the scientists of the world wrong.

QuoteAn ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument to the man", "argument against the man") consists of replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to a characteristic or belief of the person making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim. The process of proving or disproving the claim is thereby subverted, and the argumentum ad hominem works to change the subject.

Quote from: RiversideGator on August 18, 2008, 05:12:55 PM
The problem here is the surface temperature measurements are not in agreement with the ocean temperature measurements or the satellite data.  This gives rise to the idea that the heat island effect and other data problems are causing the data to look "hot" when it is actually faulty.

Quote from: Lunican on August 18, 2008, 05:39:49 PM
Not according to NOAA.

Quote from: Lunican on August 18, 2008, 05:51:21 PM
So if sub sea temperatures have decreased as you claim, and the surface temperatures have increased, what conclusion would you draw from this? When thinking about your response, please take into consideration the location of Earth's energy source.

Quote from: RiversideGator on August 18, 2008, 05:32:40 PM
Both satellite and ocean temperature readings show cooling.

Quote from: RiversideGator on August 18, 2008, 06:09:56 PM
Atmospheric and subsea temps have dropped.  Surface temp data appears likely to be corrupted.

Quote from: gatorback on August 18, 2008, 09:34:15 PM
give me 10000000 years and contact me then I'll give you a really good graph of what your looking for.

Quote from: civil42806 on August 18, 2008, 08:34:16 PM
No my point should be obvious, there are problems with the models.  If you models are correct then you should reflect your current conditions with a certain deviation.  The problem is the models don't do that, in fact the current conditions are running at odds with the models.  That tells you that you have problems and better get digging fast, instead of yelling that the science is settled.  You need to determine why the model is not matching reality within your set acceptable deviation.  If the model is immediately diverging from reality, you need to refine it and accept the fact that if this is the case you cannot count on the accuracy of later predicitons until you identify the corrective action.

Quote from: Midway on August 18, 2008, 10:42:19 PM
I think that you may be looking for too high a degree of confluence between the models and the observations, because in the short term, climate is an essentially random process, and the lack of mathematical congruence between the models and observations may just be wobble attributable to randomness (noise) that may not have as much meaning as you first think, if you just expand the time scale a bit. (Maybe a lot). With climate, best fit may be all you can get.  BTW there are some discussion boards that are populated by climatologists where the level of scientific discussion is of a very high order, lots of disagreement, but also lots of good science.

Quote from: tufsu1 on August 18, 2008, 07:51:52 PM

Quote from: RiversideGator on August 18, 2008, 05:32:40 PM
Both satellite and ocean temperature readings show cooling.

and I assume the satellite readings also show the polar ice caps getting larger too!

Quote from: civil42806 on August 18, 2008, 08:34:16 PM
No my point should be obvious, there are problems with the models.  If you models are correct then you should reflect your current conditions with a certain deviation.  The problem is the models don't do that, in fact the current conditions are running at odds with the models.  That tells you that you have problems and better get digging fast, instead of yelling that the science is settled.  You need to determine why the model is not matching reality within your set acceptable deviation.  If the model is immediately diverging from reality, you need to refine it and accept the fact that if this is the case you cannot count on the accuracy of later predicitons until you identify the corrective action.

Quote from: Clem1029 on August 18, 2008, 11:41:14 PM

Quote from: Midway on August 18, 2008, 10:42:19 PM
I think that you may be looking for too high a degree of confluence between the models and the observations, because in the short term, climate is an essentially random process, and the lack of mathematical congruence between the models and observations may just be wobble attributable to randomness (noise) that may not have as much meaning as you first think, if you just expand the time scale a bit. (Maybe a lot). With climate, best fit may be all you can get.  BTW there are some discussion boards that are populated by climatologists where the level of scientific discussion is of a very high order, lots of disagreement, but also lots of good science.

Wait wait wait...I want to make sure I've got your contention correct here. You're saying that, in the short term, when the measurements are exact, and the variability is comparatively small, the models are highly INACCURATE, while predictions far out, when the measurements are inconclusive at best, and variability is significant, the models are MORE ACCURATE?

I'm not sure of others around here, but that doesn't fall into any definitions of "science" that I'm familiar with.

Quote from: Lunican on August 18, 2008, 08:49:50 PM

Quote from: RiversideGator on August 18, 2008, 06:09:56 PM
Atmospheric and subsea temps have dropped.  Surface temp data appears likely to be corrupted.

So I guess we should believe you, sitting at your computer looking at wikipedia, over NOAA.

No thanks.

QuoteThe Mystery of Global Warming's Missing Heat

by Richard Harris

Morning Edition, March 19, 2008 · Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them.

This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.

In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.

"There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant," Willis says.

Quote from: Lunican on August 19, 2008, 12:20:48 AM
What are you showing us RG?

Quote from: RiversideGator on August 19, 2008, 12:05:25 AM

Quote from: civil42806 on August 18, 2008, 08:34:16 PM
No my point should be obvious, there are problems with the models.  If you models are correct then you should reflect your current conditions with a certain deviation.  The problem is the models don't do that, in fact the current conditions are running at odds with the models.  That tells you that you have problems and better get digging fast, instead of yelling that the science is settled.  You need to determine why the model is not matching reality within your set acceptable deviation.  If the model is immediately diverging from reality, you need to refine it and accept the fact that if this is the case you cannot count on the accuracy of later predicitons until you identify the corrective action.

Here is a chart which illustrates his point.  The models show us as having increasing temperatures yet the reality is there has been no warming in the 21st century:

(http://icecap.us/images/uploads/ipccchart.jpg)

Quote from: civil42806 on August 18, 2008, 09:38:12 PM

Quote from: gatorback on August 18, 2008, 09:34:15 PM
give me 10000000 years and contact me then I'll give you a really good graph of what your looking for.

Oh well so much for trying to actually having a discussion.  Resume your "i know i am but what are you"
status

Quote from: Midway on August 18, 2008, 10:42:19 PM

Quote from: civil42806 on August 18, 2008, 08:34:16 PM
No my point should be obvious, there are problems with the models.  If you models are correct then you should reflect your current conditions with a certain deviation.  The problem is the models don't do that, in fact the current conditions are running at odds with the models.  That tells you that you have problems and better get digging fast, instead of yelling that the science is settled.  You need to determine why the model is not matching reality within your set acceptable deviation.  If the model is immediately diverging from reality, you need to refine it and accept the fact that if this is the case you cannot count on the accuracy of later predicitons until you identify the corrective action.

I think that you may be looking for too high a degree of confluence between the models and the observations, because in the short term, climate is an essentially random process, and the lack of mathematical congruence between the models and observations may just be wobble attributable to randomness (noise) that may not have as much meaning as you first think, if you just expand the time scale a bit. (Maybe a lot). With climate, best fit may be all you can get.  BTW there are some discussion boards that are populated by climatologists where the level of scientific discussion is of a very high order, lots of disagreement, but also lots of good science.

Here, not so much.

Quote from: RiversideGator on August 19, 2008, 12:29:22 AM
That the models we were all supposed to be so concerned about have not accurately predicted the present or near past.  Hence their predictive powers vis a vis the future are quite in doubt.

Quote from: gatorback on August 19, 2008, 03:37:34 AM

Quote from: civil42806 on August 18, 2008, 09:38:12 PM

Quote from: gatorback on August 18, 2008, 09:34:15 PM
give me 10000000 years and contact me then I'll give you a really good graph of what your looking for.

Oh well so much for trying to actually having a discussion.  Resume your "i know i am but what are you"
status

OK.  I do want to discuss this. It's just not so easy to reply on an iPhone, but I'm back at home now on the ThinkPad.  So, sorry for being short on iPhone, but honestly here is the deal..  Suppose the earth IS 4.5 Billion years old. 200 years of data is nothing vs 4.5 billion years right?  It's a spec in time in the context of 4.5 billion years..  You  can't conclude much from that data except for this. That we know this from the data we do have. That there's NEVER been an increase in temp like we have had in the past 200 years.   

Quote from: stephendare on August 19, 2008, 12:57:02 AM

Quote from: RiversideGator on August 19, 2008, 12:52:45 AM
And another straw man argument and appeal to ridicule.  The logical fallacies are getting very deep around here, Stephen.   ;)

You have repeatedly shown over the past two years that you have absolutely no ability to interpret any of the charts you have posted, and have never been above posting information that you know to be fraudulent in the pursuit of your hair brained theory that all of the scientists on earth are less qualified than an attorney in jacksonville florida to understand the science of global climatology.

Youve never shown the least embarrassment when posting the writings of 'economic scientists' as 'scientific dissenters' to the global warming theory.

And youve proven time and again that you don't care whether your own sources are actually being paid off by people with financial stakes in the outcome of their work.

No, my friend, you have conceded the field of 'logic'.  you are not interested in it, and have never pursued it.

Quote from: Lunican on August 19, 2008, 07:25:05 AM

Quote from: RiversideGator on August 19, 2008, 12:29:22 AM
That the models we were all supposed to be so concerned about have not accurately predicted the present or near past.  Hence their predictive powers vis a vis the future are quite in doubt.

Your charts show an increase in average temperatures.

Quote from: Lunican on August 19, 2008, 11:18:52 AM
So it's getting hotter?

Quote from: Lunican on August 19, 2008, 11:53:22 AM
So you have no idea whats going on.

Quote from: RiversideGator on August 19, 2008, 12:29:22 AM

That the models we were all supposed to be so concerned about have not accurately predicted the present or near past.  Hence their predictive powers vis a vis the future are quite in doubt.

QuotePeople in science don't use models (how something works, or patterns) to predict the future.

Quote from: Lunican on August 19, 2008, 01:17:43 PM
So you both post graphs showing that climate change is occurring, then deny it is occurring and call everyone else 'climate changers'.

Quote from: RiversideGator on August 19, 2008, 04:01:54 PM

Quote from: Lunican on August 19, 2008, 01:17:43 PM
So you both post graphs showing that climate change is occurring, then deny it is occurring and call everyone else 'climate changers'.

Let's not play verbal games, lunican.  Climate change always occurs.  I am stating that the predicted man-made global warming is not occurring.  Also, temperatures have not risen and in fact have fallen since the peak of 1998.  I dont know how to make it any clearer than that.

Quote from: stephendare on August 19, 2008, 01:45:40 PM
your post itself proves the point.

Quote
Incidentally, I am neither a restauranteur nor an erstwhile specimen of the variety at present.

Quote
And I have actually spent time talking to the primary sources in this argument whereas you apparently havent spoken to a living climatologist at all.  Its pretty easy you know.  That is, if you were actually interested in the truth rather than hearing gas pass from your body.

Quote
You just call them, leave a message, and/or email a list of questions you might have.

Most of them are glad to discuss the issue with you.

I suggest it to you in all good faith.

Quote from: gatorback on August 19, 2008, 04:03:21 PM

Quote from: RiversideGator on August 19, 2008, 04:01:54 PM

Quote from: Lunican on August 19, 2008, 01:17:43 PM
So you both post graphs showing that climate change is occurring, then deny it is occurring and call everyone else 'climate changers'.

Let's not play verbal games, lunican.  Climate change always occurs.  I am stating that the predicted man-made global warming is not occurring.  Also, temperatures have not risen and in fact have fallen since the peak of 1998.  I dont know how to make it any clearer than that.

If your cosmetologist says it then it must be true.

Quote from: RiversideGator on August 19, 2008, 04:04:22 PM

Quote from: stephendare on August 19, 2008, 01:45:40 PM
your post itself proves the point.

Which point was that again?

Quote
Incidentally, I am neither a restauranteur nor an erstwhile specimen of the variety at present.

I guess it would be fair to say then that Boomtown did not serve "food".

Quote
And I have actually spent time talking to the primary sources in this argument whereas you apparently havent spoken to a living climatologist at all.  Its pretty easy you know.  That is, if you were actually interested in the truth rather than hearing gas pass from your body.

Who did you speak with?

Quote
You just call them, leave a message, and/or email a list of questions you might have.

Most of them are glad to discuss the issue with you.

I suggest it to you in all good faith.

I suggest in all good faith that you call Dr. Roy Spencer.

Quote from: gatorback on August 19, 2008, 04:05:48 PM

Quote from: RiversideGator on August 19, 2008, 04:04:22 PM

Quote from: stephendare on August 19, 2008, 01:45:40 PM
your post itself proves the point.

Which point was that again?

Quote
Incidentally, I am neither a restauranteur nor an erstwhile specimen of the variety at present.

I guess it would be fair to say then that Boomtown did not serve "food".

Quote
And I have actually spent time talking to the primary sources in this argument whereas you apparently havent spoken to a living climatologist at all.  Its pretty easy you know.  That is, if you were actually interested in the truth rather than hearing gas pass from your body.

Who did you speak with?

Quote
You just call them, leave a message, and/or email a list of questions you might have.

Most of them are glad to discuss the issue with you.

I suggest it to you in all good faith.

I suggest in all good faith that you call Dr. Roy Spencer.

Is he your stylist?

Quote from: gatorback on August 19, 2008, 03:39:08 PM
People in science don't use models to predict the future.  We use models to show how things have worked in the past based on evidence.  And the evidence we have shows the Earth is getting warmer.

Quote from: Clem1029 on August 19, 2008, 04:13:09 PM

Quote from: gatorback on August 19, 2008, 03:39:08 PM
People in science don't use models to predict the future.  We use models to show how things have worked in the past based on evidence.  And the evidence we have shows the Earth is getting warmer.

I'm sorry, but this is a bit disingenuous, don't you think? There's a whole lot of problems here..

- ONE function of models is to demonstrate how things have worked to this point given a select set of variables.  But to claim that such demonstrations are not extrapolated forward is beyond false. If the only issue we had here was someone saying "hey - it's marginally warmer today from a select date in the past. here are the results we see due to this today," then we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Unless your claim is that global warming predictions aren't science...then we might be on track here. ;)

- EVERY single climate scenario I've ever seen projects results forward. I mean, stuff like Kyoto was based around predictions of "decreasing temperature x degrees in y years." This is why RG's model graphs are critical - the models, as you indicated, took existing data to "prove" how something worked...and then predicted out from there. When reality doesn't match the model prediction, that means there's something wrong with the model. And since we're being asked to make economic and environmental decisions based on models that have not once come out accurately predictive, it should be understandable why some are hesitant to jump on the AGW train.

- Be careful on your absolutes saying "the evidence says it's getting warmer." A subset of the evidence indicates it's getting warmer. A subset of the evidence also says it's getting cooler. What does ALL the evidence say? Nobody knows, because we don't have all, and we obviously don't know what the evidence we do have means.

- Finally, a comment on your other post about weather. I understand your desire to separate weather and climate, and on a certain level, I agree. However, weather is a local function of climate - far fewer variables over a much shorter timeframe. By your admission we can't get predictive models to 100% match a function of climate for tomorrow. Why should ANYONE accept what's "predicted" to happen 50 years out?

Quote
By SETH BORENSTEIN and DAN JOLING, Associated Press Writers
2 hours, 21 minutes ago

Arctic sea ice drops to 2nd lowest level on record.

WASHINGTON - More ominous signs Wednesday have scientists saying that a global warming "tipping point" in the Arctic seems to be happening before their eyes: Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is at its second lowest level in about 30 years.

ADVERTISEMENT

The National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that sea ice in the Arctic now covers about 2.03 million square miles. The lowest point since satellite measurements began in 1979 was 1.65 million square miles set last September.

With about three weeks left in the Arctic summer, this year could wind up breaking that previous record, scientists said.

Arctic ice always melts in summer and refreezes in winter. But over the years, more of the ice is lost to the sea with less of it recovered in winter. While ice reflects the sun's heat, the open ocean absorbs more heat and the melting accelerates warming in other parts of the world.

Sea ice also serves as primary habitat for threatened polar bears.

"We could very well be in that quick slide downward in terms of passing a tipping point," said senior scientist Mark Serreze at the data center in Boulder, Colo. "It's tipping now. We're seeing it happen now."

Quote from: RiversideGator on August 18, 2008, 11:59:51 PM

Quote from: tufsu1 on August 18, 2008, 07:51:52 PM

Quote from: RiversideGator on August 18, 2008, 05:32:40 PM
Both satellite and ocean temperature readings show cooling.

and I assume the satellite readings also show the polar ice caps getting larger too!

They are larger than this time last year.  See the above post on that topic.

Quote
Within "five to less than 10 years," the Arctic could be free of sea ice in the summer, said NASA ice scientist Jay Zwally.

"It also means that climate warming is also coming larger and faster than the models are predicting and nobody's really taken into account that change yet," he said.

Five climate scientists, four of them specialists on the Arctic, told The Associated Press that it is fair to call what is happening in the Arctic a "tipping point." NASA scientist James Hansen, who sounded the alarm about global warming 20 years ago before Congress, said the sea ice melt "is the best current example" of that.

Last year was an unusual year when wind currents and other weather conditions coincided with global warming to worsen sea ice melt, Serreze said. Scientists wondered if last year was an unusual event or the start of a new and disturbing trend.

This year's results suggest the latter because the ice had recovered a bit more than usual thanks to a somewhat cooler winter, Serreze said. Then this month, when the melting rate usually slows, it sped up instead, he said.

The most recent ice retreat primarily reflects melt in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska's northwest coast and the East Siberian Sea off the coast of eastern Russia, according to the center.

The Chukchi Sea is home to one of two populations of Alaska polar bears.

Federal observers flying for a whale survey on Aug. 16 spotted nine polar bears swimming in open ocean in the Chukchi. The bears were 15 to 65 miles off the Alaska shore. Some were swimming north, apparently trying to reach the polar ice edge, which on that day was 400 miles away.

Polar bears are powerful swimmers and have been recorded on swims of 100 miles but the ordeal can leave them exhausted and susceptible to drowning.

And the melt in sea ice has kicked in another effect, long predicted, called "Arctic amplification," Serreze said.

That's when the warming up north is increased in a feedback mechanism and the effects spill southward starting in autumn, he said. Over the last few years, the bigger melt has meant more warm water that releases more heat into the air during fall cooling, making the atmosphere warmer than normal.

On top of that, researchers were investigating "alarming" reports in the last few days of the release of methane from long frozen Arctic waters, possibly from the warming of the sea, said Greenpeace climate scientist Bill Hare, who was attending a climate conference in Ghana. Giant burps of methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas, is a long feared effect of warming in the Arctic that would accelerate warming even more, according to scientists.

Overall, the picture of what's happening in the Arctic is getting worse, said Bob Corell, who headed a multinational scientific assessment of Arctic conditions a few years ago: "We're moving beyond a point of no return."

___

Science Writer Seth Borenstein reported from Washington and Dan Joling reported from Anchorage, Alaska. AP writer Arthur Max contributed from Accra, Ghana.

___

Quote from: gatorback on August 27, 2008, 08:13:14 PM
OK. We're calling 'less ice' coverage 'more ice'.  Gotcha ;)

I didn't get the memo.  ::)

Quote from: gatorback on August 19, 2008, 03:39:08 PM

Quote from: RiversideGator on August 19, 2008, 12:29:22 AM

That the models we were all supposed to be so concerned about have not accurately predicted the present or near past.  Hence their predictive powers vis a vis the future are quite in doubt.

Do you smoke pot for a living?  Seriously, that does not make sense man.  Maybe your cosmetologist is getting "models" confused.  We're not talking about Claudia Schiffer or Twiggy, although I do doubt their predictives powers, we're talking about how something works.

People in science don't use models to predict the future.  We use models to show how things have worked in the past based on evidence.  And the evidence we have shows the Earth is getting warmer.

QuoteObama vows quick action to curb warming
In surprise speech, he says U.S. to help lead 'new era of global cooperation'

LOS ANGELES - He wasn't expected to make an appearance, let alone a splash, but President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday delivered a videotaped message to a climate change summit convened by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, vowing quick action to curb emissions and engage in international talks.

"You can be sure that the United States will once again engage vigorously in these negotiations, and help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change," he told hundreds of scientists, executives, governors and even foreign officials gathered in Los Angeles.

President George W. Bush has refused to formally participate in the U.N.-hosted negotiations, instead sending observers in recent years. He has also refused mandatory curbs on emissions, instead focusing on technological solutions.

Quote
Tonight                  
   
Allow for Wind

Clear / Wind
Clear / Wind    Low
36° F
Precip:         0%
Clear and windy. Near record low temperatures. Low 36F. Winds N at 15 to 25 mph.
      
Tomorrow

Sunny
Sunny    High
56° F
Precip:         0%
Sunny skies. High 56F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph.
      
Tomorrow Night     

Clear
Clear    Low
38° F
Precip:         0%
A mostly clear sky. Near record low temperatures. Low 38F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph.

QuoteThe world has never seen such freezing heat

By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 16/11/2008

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.

If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change. (He was recently in the news here for supporting the Greenpeace activists acquitted of criminally damaging a coal-fired power station in Kent, on the grounds that the harm done to the planet by a new power station would far outweigh any damage they had done themselves.)

Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.

Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising "very much faster" than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.

Dr Pachauri, a former railway engineer with no qualifications in climate science, may believe what Dr Hansen tells him. But whether, on the basis of such evidence, it is wise for the world's governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought.

Quote from: Midway on November 19, 2008, 04:08:23 PM
You will be celebrated in the annals of history for being the only person possessing the perspicacity to not have been bamboozled by this GW hysteria.

Or, maybe not so much.

Quote from: RiversideGator on November 19, 2008, 03:28:00 PM
This GW hysteria is nothing more than a stalking horse for socialism.  This was one of the tools used to scare people into voting for Obama who will implement as much of the socialist agenda as possible once he is in office.  The suburbanites who voted for Obama were naive enough to believe what they have been told by the deceivers in the media.  One day, however, this global warming claptrap will be laughed at by future generations who will wonder why we were so foolish to believe in it.

Quote from: jandar on November 19, 2008, 04:13:24 PM
Any man that thinks that they know what the earth is doing with only 150 years of accurate scientific measurements (and decent guessses for a few hundred thousand years) when the planet is 4.5 billion years old is either an ego driven know it all or foolish or both.

Quote from: gatorback on November 20, 2008, 11:12:48 AM

Quote from: jandar on November 19, 2008, 04:13:24 PM
Any man that thinks that they know what the earth is doing with only 150 years of accurate scientific measurements (and decent guessses for a few hundred thousand years) when the planet is 4.5 billion years old is either an ego driven know it all or foolish or both.

Jandar, clearly you've not read this thread otherwise you would have know that our ice core samples are a little older then 150 years.  I think they go back like way back.  Like millions of years.

Try reading the thread and you'll gain some understanding of what we are talking about. 

Quoteonly 150 years of accurate scientific measurements (and decent guessses for a few hundred thousand years)

Quote from: Bostech on November 20, 2008, 01:13:53 PM
you Republicans should be stripped of any opinion,you got everything wrong lately...Remember 8 years ago talkign how american was to drive gas guzzling vehicles,not preserving money and spending like there is no tommorow,war in Iraq will be over in 6 months,Iraqis will accept us with flowers and on and on.
Oh yeah and economy is DOING GREAT.
And now global warming doesn't exist and it is not man made,we still want to pollute earth as much as posible it is american thing to do.

Anybody sane should not trust your judgment at all,you haven't get anything right.


And did I get that right,scientist can not make right decision about global warming  based on 150 years of data while YOU can make decision that global warming doesn't exist?


Do you guys work for Satan???

Quoteyou Republicans should be stripped of any opinion

Quote from: Bostech on November 20, 2008, 01:13:53 PM
you Republicans should be stripped of any opinion,you got everything wrong lately...Remember 8 years ago talkign how american was to drive gas guzzling vehicles,not preserving money and spending like there is no tommorow,war in Iraq will be over in 6 months,Iraqis will accept us with flowers and on and on.
Oh yeah and economy is DOING GREAT.
And now global warming doesn't exist and it is not man made,we still want to pollute earth as much as posible it is american thing to do.

Anybody sane should not trust your judgment at all,you haven't get anything right.


And did I get that right,scientist can not make right decision about global warming  based on 150 years of data while YOU can make decision that global warming doesn't exist?


Do you guys work for Satan???

Quote
Information gleaned from a Greenland ice core by an international science team shows that two huge Northern Hemisphere temperature spikes prior to the close of the last ice age some 11,500 years ago were tied to fundamental shifts in atmospheric circulation.

The ice core showed the Northern Hemisphere briefly emerged from the last ice age some 14,700 years ago with a 22-degree-Fahrenheit spike in just 50 years, then plunged back into icy conditions before abruptly warming again about 11,700 years ago. Startlingly, the Greenland ice core evidence showed that a massive "reorganization" of atmospheric circulation in the Northern Hemisphere coincided with each temperature spurt, with each reorganization taking just one or two years, said the study authors.

Quote from: Midway on November 20, 2008, 01:52:44 PM
Just because they get everything wrong 100% of the time does not mean they don't know what they are doing, does it?

Halliburton was almost bankrupt 8 years ago, now it's doing great! That may not benefit "Joe the Plumber", but is sure does help Cheney and the rest of his "gang", though.

Quote from: gatorback on November 20, 2008, 11:12:48 AM

Quote from: jandar on November 19, 2008, 04:13:24 PM
Any man that thinks that they know what the earth is doing with only 150 years of accurate scientific measurements (and decent guessses for a few hundred thousand years) when the planet is 4.5 billion years old is either an ego driven know it all or foolish or both.

Jandar, clearly you've not read this thread otherwise you would have know that our ice core samples are a little older then 150 years.  I think they go back like way back.  Like millions of years.

Try reading the thread and you'll gain some understanding of what we are talking about. 

Quote from: Midway on November 20, 2008, 01:52:44 PM
Just because they get everything wrong 100% of the time does not mean they don't know what they are doing, does it?

Halliburton was almost bankrupt 8 years ago, now it's doing great! That may not benefit "Joe the Plumber", but is sure does help Cheney and the rest of his "gang", though.

Quote from: gatorback on November 20, 2008, 02:10:54 PM

Quote from: Midway on November 20, 2008, 01:52:44 PM
Just because they get everything wrong 100% of the time does not mean they don't know what they are doing, does it?

Halliburton was almost bankrupt 8 years ago, now it's doing great! That may not benefit "Joe the Plumber", but is sure does help Cheney and the rest of his "gang", though.

They got the war in Iraq for oil right. ;)

Quote from: RiversideGator on November 20, 2008, 04:38:18 PM

Quote from: Midway on November 20, 2008, 01:52:44 PM
Just because they get everything wrong 100% of the time does not mean they don't know what they are doing, does it?

Halliburton was almost bankrupt 8 years ago, now it's doing great! That may not benefit "Joe the Plumber", but is sure does help Cheney and the rest of his "gang", though.

Perhaps it is time to revisit some of your wildly inaccurate predictions, midway.    ;)

Quote from: RiversideGator on November 20, 2008, 04:40:42 PM

Quote from: gatorback on November 20, 2008, 02:10:54 PM

Quote from: Midway on November 20, 2008, 01:52:44 PM
Just because they get everything wrong 100% of the time does not mean they don't know what they are doing, does it?

Halliburton was almost bankrupt 8 years ago, now it's doing great! That may not benefit "Joe the Plumber", but is sure does help Cheney and the rest of his "gang", though.

They got the war in Iraq for oil right. ;)

The Iraq war was won.  Saddam and his thug sons are dead.  Mission accomplished.   ;)

Quote from: Midway on November 20, 2008, 05:08:38 PM

Quote from: RiversideGator on November 20, 2008, 04:38:18 PM

Quote from: Midway on November 20, 2008, 01:52:44 PM
Just because they get everything wrong 100% of the time does not mean they don't know what they are doing, does it?

Halliburton was almost bankrupt 8 years ago, now it's doing great! That may not benefit "Joe the Plumber", but is sure does help Cheney and the rest of his "gang", though.

Perhaps it is time to revisit some of your wildly inaccurate predictions, midway.    ;)

You mean like Bush Jr. would lose the election?

And BTW, it's almost time for your annual review, so we will be shortly be revisiting all of your wildly inaccurate predictions made during this year. So, you might want to parse and delete some of those clunkers.

Quote from: Midway on July 02, 2008, 08:48:01 PM

Quote from: RiversideGator on June 30, 2008, 11:47:40 PM
But if we were having truly massive inflation across the board as in the 1970s, we would see wages and property values continue to go through the roof.  This is obviously not happening.  I agree that demand played a role in the run up but this is no lessening, supply is increasing and prices are increasingly unhinged from reality.

Bubble bursting!

Oil declines precipitously from $141.85 to $144.50 per BBL today!

Quote from: Midway on May 05, 2008, 08:52:33 PM
Looks like all the predictions of "metal prices coming down" and "all the increases are being caused by speculators" might not be quite on the mark. Duh, never realized it takes electricity to make metal! I thought they just dug up big sheets of it out of the ground, brushed off the dirt and made SUV's out of it.

But I'm sure that a 50 year drought in Chile and surging demand in China coupled with a lack of electrical and energy infrastructure in China can just be waved away with the flick of RG's wrist and the copious posting of charts and diagrams, as well as explaining that Bloomberg news is just a left wing tool.

Quote from: Bostech on November 20, 2008, 01:13:53 PM
you Republicans should be stripped of any opinion

Quoteyou got everything wrong lately...Remember 8 years ago talkign how american was to drive gas guzzling vehicles,not preserving money and spending like there is no tommorow,war in Iraq will be over in 6 months,Iraqis will accept us with flowers and on and on.
Oh yeah and economy is DOING GREAT.
And now global warming doesn't exist and it is not man made,we still want to pollute earth as much as posible it is american thing to do.

Anybody sane should not trust your judgment at all,you haven't get anything right.

Quote from: Midway on November 21, 2008, 04:51:53 PM
It speaks to the increased probability that RSG is also wrong about this.

QuoteIm sorry that you don't really understand the facts or pertinent concerns of Global Warming, Jandar.

Perhaps before you respond you should check out the IPCC white paper on Global Warming.

Quote from: stephendare on December 05, 2008, 06:07:53 PM
Im sorry that you don't really understand the facts or pertinent concerns of Global Warming, Jandar.

QuoteHow much water is there on Earth?

There's a whole lot of water on Earth! Something like 326,000,000,000,000,000,000 gallons (326 million trillion gallons) of the stuff (roughly 1,260,000,000,000,000,000,000 liters) can be found on our planet. This water is in a constant cycle -- it evaporates from the ocean, travels through the air, rains down on the land and then flows back to the ocean.

The oceans are huge. About 70 percent of the planet is covered in ocean, and the average depth of the ocean is several thousand feet (about 1,000 meters). Ninety-eight percent of the water on the planet is in the oceans, and therefore is unusable for drinking because of the salt. About 2 percent of the planet's water is fresh, but 1.6 percent of the planet's water is locked up in the polar ice caps and glaciers. Another 0.36 percent is found underground in aquifers and wells. Only about 0.036 percent of the planet's total water supply is found in lakes and rivers. That's still thousands of trillions of gallons, but it's a very small amount compared to all the water available.

The rest of the water on the planet is either floating in the air as clouds and water vapor, or is locked up in plants and animals (your body is 65 percent water, so if you weigh 100 pounds, 65 pounds of you is water!). There's also all the soda pop, milk and orange juice you see at the store and in your refrigerator… There's probably several billion gallons of water sitting on a shelf at any one time!

QuoteThe main ice covered landmass is Antarctica at the South Pole, with about 90 percent of the world's ice (and 70 percent of its fresh water). Antarctica is covered with ice an average of 2,133 meters (7,000 feet) thick. If all of the Antarctic ice melted, sea levels around the world would rise about 61 meters (200 feet). But the average temperature in Antarctica is -37°C, so the ice there is in no danger of melting. In fact in most parts of the continent it never gets above freezing.

QuoteIn 1995 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report which contained various projections of the sea level change by the year 2100. They estimate that the sea will rise 50 centimeters (20 inches) with the lowest estimates at 15 centimeters (6 inches) and the highest at 95 centimeters (37 inches). The rise will come from thermal expansion of the ocean and from melting glaciers and ice sheets. Twenty inches is no small amount -- it could have a big effect on coastal cities, especially during storms.

Quote from: stephendare on December 05, 2008, 06:07:53 PM
Im sorry that you don't really understand the facts or pertinent concerns of Global Warming, Jandar.

Perhaps before you respond you should check out the IPCC white paper on Global Warming.

Quote from: Lunican on December 09, 2008, 09:58:20 AM
That chart shows warming.

Quote from: stephendare on December 09, 2008, 02:44:50 PM
Leave it to River to produce fraudulent charts.

Awesome as always.

QuoteUN Blowback: More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims

Study: Half of warming due to Sun! â€"Sea Levels Fail to Rise? - Warming Fears in 'Dustbin of History'   
POZNAN, Poland - The UN global warming conference currently underway in Poland is about to face a serious challenge from over 650 dissenting scientists from around the globe who are criticizing the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore.  Set for release this week, a newly updated U.S. Senate Minority Report features the dissenting voices of over 650 international scientists, many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have now turned against the UN. The report has added about 250 scientists (and growing) in 2008 to the over 400 scientists who spoke out in 2007. The over 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.

The U.S. Senate report is the latest evidence of the growing groundswell of scientific opposition rising to challenge the UN and Gore. Full Report Set To Be Released in the Next 24 Hours â€" Stay Tuned…

A hint of what the upcoming report contains:   

“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” - Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.   

“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical.” -  Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology  and formerly of NASA who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.” 

Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” - UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist. 

“The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn’t listen to others. It doesn’t have open minds… I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists,” - Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia at Punjab University and a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet. 

“The models and forecasts of the UN IPCC "are incorrect because they only are based on mathematical models and presented results at scenarios that do not include, for example, solar activity.” - Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico 

“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” - U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.

“Even doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide will virtually have little impact, as water vapour and water condensed on particles as clouds dominate the worldwide scene and always will.” â€" . Geoffrey G. Duffy, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering of the University of Auckland, NZ.

“After reading [UN IPCC chairman] Pachauri's asinine comment [comparing skeptics to] Flat Earthers, it's hard to remain quiet.” - Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who specializes in the statistics of forecast evaluation, serves on the American Meteorological Society's Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review. 

“For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?" - Geologist Dr. David Gee the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress who has authored 130 plus peer reviewed papers, and is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden. 

“Gore prompted me to start delving into the science again and I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic camp…Climate models can at best be useful for explaining climate changes after the fact.” - Meteorologist Hajo Smit of Holland, who reversed his belief in man-made warming to become a skeptic, is a former member of the Dutch UN IPCC committee. 

“Many [scientists] are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined.” - Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh.

“Creating an ideology pegged to carbon dioxide is a dangerous nonsense…The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning.” - Environmental Scientist Professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder of the Numerical Weather Forecast group, has more than 150 published articles.

“CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or another….Every scientist knows this, but it doesn’t pay to say so…Global warming, as a political vehicle, keeps Europeans in the driver’s seat and developing nations walking barefoot.” - Dr. Takeda Kunihiko, vice-chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University in Japan.

“The [global warming] scaremongering has its justification in the fact that it is something that generates funds.” - Award-winning Paleontologist Dr. Eduardo Tonni, of the Committee for Scientific Research in Buenos Aires and head of the Paleontology Department at the University of La Plata.

Quote from: stephendare on December 10, 2008, 11:03:56 AM
...The group of 'scientists' as has already been pointed out to River in many many other posts is not composed of climatologists, nor is it of the size he reported.

They put out email sheets at conventions so that people could sign up to check out more info, then claimed all of those people as 'members'.

Most of the people who signed that were actually climate scientists were appalled to find out that their names were included in the 'membership list'.

Its fraudulent from top to bottom, and whats worse is that River already knew that before he posted.

Quote from: Ocklawaha on December 05, 2008, 06:50:38 PM
As the world goes to hell in a handbasket, and the Southern USA floods 30 feet deep, I sure hope I'm around for a 50 yard line seat. Damn, we're so screwed. At least I'd like to be one of the Neanderthals that SAW the meteor! Would make for some cool converstation in Heaven... "Ya know, I was just there on the beach and man, I saw like this mountain screaming down on us..."

OCKLAWAHA

Quote from: stephendare on December 10, 2008, 10:53:53 AM
more intentionally deceptive lies published by River.

Nice job, troll.  You never give up do you?

Quote from: stephendare on December 10, 2008, 11:03:56 AM
yeah. actually.  The report is pushed by Inhofe, the displaced former chairman who began this fraudulent website to further his own politics.

The group of 'scientists' as has already been pointed out to River in many many other posts is not composed of climatologists, nor is it of the size he reported.

They put out email sheets at conventions so that people could sign up to check out more info, then claimed all of those people as 'members'.

Most of the people who signed that were actually climate scientists were appalled to find out that their names were included in the 'membership list'.

Its fraudulent from top to bottom, and whats worse is that River already knew that before he posted.

Quote from: stephendare on December 10, 2008, 12:01:04 PM
sure river, keep repeating that.

Ever wonder why this "international conference" is in Poland?

Quote from: stephendare on December 10, 2008, 01:50:18 PM
Everything is 'hysterical' to you, isnt it?

QuoteRemember your sneering denunciations of all the people who werent willing to take the word of the likes of Inhofe on the economy?

You sure did reprint alot of worthless 'proof' that the economy was strong back then.

Where is it all now?

QuoteProblem with your postings on this, is that you are posting out of ideology, not knowledge.

Quoteyou have already admitted that you have never read the actual IPCC report on climate change, and you have made it clear that you arent a climatologist able to come to independent decisions.

Your basic points in all these is that the environmentalists, if left to their own devices will wreck the economy.

QuoteMaybe you should pull your head out of that place where you keep your brain and reconsider that whole economy thing?

ya think?

QuoteSurprise flurries warm Houston hearts
Fluffy flakes bring delight to some, consternation to others â€" and tie a 64-year-old record

By ERIC BERGER,, JENNIFER LATSON and JENNIFER LEAHY
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Dec. 10, 2008, 11:09PM

Falling snowflakes glimmered in streetlights, so wide that they billowed to the ground like parachutes, and so tantalizing that even awestruck adults reached out their hands or stuck out their tongues to catch one.

By Wednesday evening, the flakes were big enough to hold their shape for a moment on the street before melting into the pavement, and a dusting had collected on parked cars in some parts of town.

The flurries tied a record for Houston's earliest snowfall ever and warmed the hearts of winter weather lovers who have pined for snow since it last made an appearance on Christmas Eve 2004.

"I've got a pot roast in the Crock-Pot, and I'm going to go home, change into my warmest pajamas and eat pot roast and enjoy what may be the only real winter day we have all year," said Tina Arnold, an Illinois native who took advantage of the wintry backdrop to pick up Christmas presents Wednesday at The Woodlands Mall.

Since 1895, records indicate, snow has fallen this early just once â€" on Dec. 10, 1944.

QuoteSleet, snow tail off in New Orleans
by The Times-Picayune
Thursday December 11, 2008, 12:00 PM

For the first time in nearly four years, snow fell across the New Orleans region this morning, with flurries reported on the north shore and in the city, Metairie, Kenner, LaPlace and other parts of the south shore. By around 10 a.m., the snow had mostly stopped, replaced by freezing rain in many places, making driving treacherous. By noon, the precipitation had mostly ceased altogether.

By mid-morning, enough snow had accumulated on the ground in some areas to lure children and adults onto their front lawns to build snowmen or have snowball fights. In the city, neutral grounds remained blanketed in white, though the streets generally remained clear as the wet stuff melted upon hitting the pavement.

In Mandeville, where the snow was heavier, lawns were covered with thicker blankets of white fluff as school buses filled with squealing students made the rounds. Children, most seeing snow for the first time Christmas Day 2004, tried to catch flakes in their hands as the buses rumbled along.
Eliot Kamenitz/The Times-PicayuneNew Orleans Metro area residents woke up to falling snow on Thursday, December 11, 2008.

Snow in New Orleans is a rarity. The last time it snowed was Christmas 2004; before that, the last snow recorded was in 1989, according to Jim Vasilj, a forecaster with the National Weather Service. Since 1850, snow had fallen in "measurable amounts" rather than traces in the city just 17 times, Vasilj said. Of the 17, today's snowfall was the earliest in the season recorded.

As much as 6 inches had piled up in Livingston Parish as of 10 a.m., Vasilj said. Similar amounts were reported in Bogalusa and St. Helena Parish, while in Mandeville, between 2 and 3 inches had accumulated, according to Vasilj.

While snow in the Deep South is a pleasant novelty, the weather did cause trouble for some. A handful of schools and universities shut down for the day, bus service was disrupted, and flights at Armstrong International were cancelled or delayed.

Outages were also reported in St. Tammany and Washington parishes, with the majority in the Franklinton area, according to Cleco spokeswoman Robbyn Cooper. Cleo has a total of nearly 7,000 power outages statewide, most of them in Allen, Evangeline, Acadia and St. Landry parishes.
John McCusker / The Times-PicayuneAngele McClain delights in the snow falling around her lakefront home in New Orleans Thursday morning. Rain turned to sleet which was followed by flurries by 8 am.

The metro area remains under a winter weather advisory for rain mixed with sleet and snow. Several bridges closed due to icy conditions, and numerous accidents were reported, especially on the north shore, because of slick roadways.

There were no road closures or hazardous conditions reported in New Orleans and no accidents on the Causeway Bridge, which is operating with a 45 mph speed limit.

Temperatures today are expected to remain in the 40s throughout the day, but the wind chill will make it feel more like in the 30s. Winds are from the northwest at 15 to 25 miles per our today, shifting to the north tonight.

The winter weather advisory is in effect until noon, but the chance of rain will linger until about mid-afternoon. Lows tonight will be in the mid-30s.

Quote from: gatorback on December 11, 2008, 03:49:41 PM
I thought it was warming.  Oh, wait, RSG said it was cooling.  You're right again oh Westside Oracle.

Quote from: RiversideGator on December 11, 2008, 05:16:50 PM
I am thinking more of Narcissus actually.

QuoteIce melting across globe at accelerating rate, NASA says

Between 1.5 trillion and 2 trillion tons of ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted at an accelerating rate since 2003, according to NASA scientists, in the latest signs of what they say is global warming.

Using new satellite technology that measures changes in mass in mountain glaciers and ice sheets, NASA geophysicist Scott Luthcke concluded that the losses amounted to enough water to fill the Chesapeake Bay 21 times.

QuoteAlaskan Glaciers Grow for First Time in 250 years

Michael Asher (Blog) - October 16, 2008 9:48 AM

Glacier Bay National Park. Two and a half centuries ago, the entire area was covered by thick sheets of ice.
High snowfall and cold weather to blame.

A bitterly cold Alaskan summer has had surprising results. For the first time in the area's recorded history, area glaciers have begun to expand, rather than shrink. Summer temperatures, which were some 3 degrees below average, allowed record levels of winter snow to remain much longer, leading to the increase in glacial mass.

"In mid-June, I was surprised to see snow still at sea level in Prince William Sound", said glaciologist Bruce Molnia. "In general, the weather this summer was the worst I have seen in at least 20 years".

"On the Juneau Icefield, there was still 20 feet of new snow on the surface [in] late July. At Bering Glacier, a landslide I am studying [did] not become snow free until early August."

Molnia, who works for the US Geological Survey, said it's been a "long time" since area glaciers have seen a positive mass balance -- an increase in the total amount of ice they contain.

Since 1946, the USGS has maintained a research project measuring the state of Alaskan glaciers. This year saw records broken for most snow buildup. It was also the first time since any records began being that the glaciers did not shrink during the summer months.

Those records date from the mid 1700s, when the region was first visited by Russian explorers.  Molnia estimates that Alaskan glaciers have lost about 15% of their total area since that time -- an area the size of Connecticut.

One of the largest areas of shrinkage has been at the national park of Glacier Bay. When Alexei Ilich Chirikof first arrived in 1741, the bay didn't exist at all -- only a solid wall of ice. From that time until the early 1900s, the ice retreated some 50 miles, to form the bay and surrounding area.

Accordingly to Molnia, a difference of just 3 or 4 degrees is enough to shift the mass balance of glaciers from rapid shrinkage to rapid growth. From the 1600s to the 1900s, that’s just the amount of warming that was seen, as the planet exited the Little Ice Age.

Molnia says one cold summer doesn't mean the start of a new climatic trend. At least years like this, however, might mark the beginning of another Little Ice Age.

As DailyTech reported earlier, Arctic sea ice this year has also increased substantially from its low in 2007.

QuoteSnowstorm hits Las Vegas

'Significant historical event' forces road closures, strands travelers at airport, closes schools

By BRIAN HAYNES
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

A rare winter storm swept through Southern Nevada Wednesday, dumping the most snow on the valley in nearly three decades, grounding flights at the airport, forcing the closure of major highways and closing schools for today.

"This is the most snow we've had in Las Vegas in almost 30 years," said Chris Stachelski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. "It's a significant historical event."

At 9:50 p.m. Wednesday, the weather service measured a record-breaking 3.6 inches of snow at its office location southwest of McCarran International Airport. It was the highest snow accumulation recorded in the month of December in Las Vegas since the start of official records in 1937. The previous record was 2 inches of snow, which fell on Dec. 15, 1967.

The weather service dubbed the storm as "the eighth greatest snowstorm ever in official Las Vegas weather records for any month."

Quote from: RiversideGator on December 18, 2008, 11:58:58 AM
Yes.  I forgot the party line:  cold weather events are now actually signs of global warming.   :D

It is great how the GW crowd has changed their mantra to "climate change" to allow them to attempt to argue that any unusual weather (hot or cold) is "proof" of their preconceived notion of GW.  So, if it is hot in Vegas, that is proof of GW.  Or, if it is cold in Vegas, that is also proof of GW.  They cant lose.   :D

Quote from: Jason on December 18, 2008, 12:03:26 PM


Are you serious?!

Just because a snow storm happens in Nevada, doesn't mean the theory of global warming is debunked. 

Quote from: Jason on December 18, 2008, 02:25:14 PM
...A single weather event is not a guage to either support or debunk global warming.

Quote from: Charleston native on December 18, 2008, 03:44:59 PM
This is a legitimate scientific view...regardless of politics or religion. However, since you and others have literally become part of the climate changer cult, we could discuss how ludicrous the concept of this new religion is, especially if you believe in God who ultimately is in control of His planet. If you don't believe that God is in control, as a Climate Changer, your fearless leaders are the Goracle and the Obamessiah. Oh yeah, and Hansen is their prophet.

Politically, we all know why climate change is such an essential tenet in liberalism and the Democrat party: more control over people.

So Jason, how are we supposed to live our lives then? If you are a believer, then you make constant efforts to...be green. If you are not a believer, you live your life as you always have. If you are in the middle, what exactly do you do? Bottomline, if you are making efforts to be green, you are subconsciously already conceding that man-made climate change is real. In some instances, you may want to save a few bucks, but by making those green efforts, you still provide credence to this insane religion.

This cooling pattern started 1-2 years ago, so it's not just one season. There is a trend. And astronomers back it up with their findings on other planets and observations of the sun.

Quote from: Lunican on December 18, 2008, 12:58:53 PM
River, I see after all these years you still don't even know what global warming is. Do you have any idea by how many degrees global warming is expected to raise the earths temperature by?

Quote from: BridgeTroll on December 18, 2008, 01:37:17 PM
But see... here is the problem.  In this thread some are arguing how dire the future is and how we should drastically cut carbon emissions... while in another thread some are tearing down any thought of nuclear reactors to provide clean, reliable, electricity at a reasonable cost.

Quote from: Jason on December 18, 2008, 05:04:53 PM
Furthermore, I have stated no stance, belief, or opinion on the sun's interaction with the Earth's climate and weather patterns.  That said, I DO believe that the sun plays a significant role, however, do not believe that it is the only factor to consider.  The "valley" I spoke of, in regards to your stated cooling trend, may very well be a legitimate argument that global warming is false. 

My point, as stated before, is that I don't believe the data is conclusive enough for anyone to make a solid statement that global warming either is or is not real, much less exactly what is causing it.  Until I see hard evidence that is supported by the majority of a multitude of scientific disciplins, I will maintain my stance.

Quote from: Lunican on December 18, 2008, 05:14:12 PM
I think Charleston Native and RiversideGator are the only two that have come to a conclusion on this issue.

Quote from: Charleston native on December 18, 2008, 05:28:36 PM
We will continue to disagree here, then. The sun indeed is not the only factor, but I think that the other factors are natural such as wind currents, ocean currents, and geothermal movements. Man is insignificant in this respect, IMO.

I understand your stance on conservation on energy, even though I do not agree with the premise behind it. My whole point is that the methods you use for conservation are the exact same methods that the climate change believers want you to use as well as everybody else on the planet; while your premises are different from each other, your methodology is the same. While you think you may have not taken the same stance as climate changers, you already have by your actions.

Quote from: Lunican on December 18, 2008, 05:52:33 PM
CN: Your views are extremist. Not even RiversideGator can agree with you on this.

Quote from: Charleston native on December 18, 2008, 05:28:36 PM
My whole point is that the methods you use for conservation are the exact same methods that the climate change believers want you to use as well as everybody else on the planet; while your premises are different from each other, your methodology is the same. While you think you may have not taken the same stance as climate changers, you already have by your actions.

Quote from: Lunican on December 19, 2008, 11:41:18 AM
Refusing to do anything that might be considered environmentally conscious because you fear it's what the "climate changers" want you to do is extremist and silly.

Quote
Top 10 dud predictions

Andrew Bolt

December 19, 2008 12:00am

GLOBAL warming preachers have had a shocking 2008. So many of their predictions this year went splat.

Here's their problem: they've been scaring us for so long that it's now possible to check if things are turning out as hot as they warned.

And good news! I bring you Christmas cheer - the top 10 warming predictions to hit the wall this year.

Read, so you can end 2008 with optimism, knowing this Christmas won't be the last for you, the planet or even the polar bears.

1. OUR CITIES WILL DIE OF THIRST

TIM Flannery, an expert in bones, has made a fortune from books and lectures warning that we face global warming doom. He scared us so well that we last year made him Australian of the Year.

In March, Flannery said: "The water problem is so severe for Adelaide that it may run out of water by early 2009."

In fact, Adelaide's reservoirs are now 75 per cent full, just weeks from 2009.

In June last year, Flannery warned Brisbane's "water supplies are so low they need desalinated water urgently, possibly in as little as 18 months".

In fact, 18 months later, its dams are 46 per cent full after Brisbane's wettest spring in 27 years.

In 2005, Flannery predicted Sydney's dams could be dry in just two years.

In fact, three years later its dams are 63 per cent full, not least because June last year was its wettest since 1951.

In 2004, Flannery said global warming would cause such droughts that "there is a fair chance Perth will be the 21st century's first ghost metropolis".

In fact, Perth now has the lowest water restrictions of any state capital, thanks to its desalination plant and dams that are 40 per cent full after the city's wettest November in 17 years.

Lesson: This truly is a land "of drought and flooding rains". Distrust a professional panic merchant who predicts the first but ignores the second.

2. OUR REEF WILL DIE

PROFESSOR Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, of Queensland University, is Australia's most quoted reef expert.

He's advised business, green and government groups, and won our rich Eureka Prize for scares about our reef. He's chaired a $20 million global warming study of the World Bank.

In 1999, Hoegh-Guldberg warned that the Great Barrier Reef was under pressure from global warming, and much of it had turned white.

In fact, he later admitted the reef had made a "surprising" recovery.

In 2006, he warned high temperatures meant "between 30 and 40 per cent of coral on Queensland's great Barrier Reef could die within a month".

In fact, he later admitted this bleaching had "a minimal impact".

In 2007, he warned that temperature changes of the kind caused by global warming were again bleaching the reef.

In fact, the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network last week said there had been no big damage to the reef caused by climate change in the four years since its last report, and veteran diver Ben Cropp said this week that in 50 years he'd seen none at all.

Lesson: Reefs adapt, like so much of nature. Learn again that scares make big headlines and bigger careers.

3. GOODBYE, NORTH POLE

IN April this year, the papers were full of warnings the Arctic ice could all melt.

"We're actually projecting this year that the North Pole may be free of ice for the first time," claimed Dr David Barber, of Manitoba University, ignoring the many earlier times the Pole has been ice free.

"It's hard to see how the system may bounce back (this year)," fretted Dr Ignatius Rigor, of Washington University's polar science centre.

Tim Flannery also warned "this may be the Arctic's first ice-free year", and the ABC and Age got reporter Marian Wilkinson to go stare at the ice and wail: "Here you can see climate change happening before your eyes."

In fact, the Arctic's ice cover this year was almost 10 per cent above last year's great low, and has refrozen rapidly since. Meanwhile, sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere has been increasing. Been told either cool fact?

Yet Barber is again in the news this month, predicting an ice-free Arctic now in six years. Did anyone ask him how he got his last prediction wrong?

Lesson: The media prefers hot scares to cool truths. And it rarely holds its pet scaremongers to account.

4. BEWARE HUGE WINDS

AL Gore sold his scary global warming film, An Inconvenient Truth, shown in almost every school in the country, with a poster of a terrible hurricane.

Former US president Bill Clinton later gloated: "It is now generally recognised that while Al Gore and I were ridiculed, we were right about global warming. . . It's going to lead to more hurricanes."

In fact, there is still no proof of a link between any warming and hurricanes.

Australia is actually getting fewer cyclones, and last month researchers at Florida State University concluded that the 2007 and 2008 hurricane seasons had the least tropical activity in the Northern Hemisphere in 30 years.

Lesson: Beware of politicians riding the warming bandwagon.

5. GIANT HAILSTONES WILL SMASH THROUGH YOUR ROOF

ROSS Garnaut, a professor of economics, is the guru behind the Rudd Government's global warming policies.

He this year defended the ugly curved steel roof he'd planned at the rear of his city property, telling angry locals he was protecting himself from climate change: "Severe and more frequent hailstones will be a feature of this change," he said.

In fact, even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admits "decreases in hail frequency are simulated for Melbourne. . ."

Lesson: Beware also of government advisers on that warming wagon.

6. NO MORE SKIING

A BAD ski season three years ago - right after a great one - had The Age and other alarmists blaming global warming. The CSIRO, once our top science body, fanned the fear by claiming resorts such as Mt Hotham and Mt Buller could lose a quarter of their snow by 2020.

In fact, this year was another boom one for skiing, with Mt Hotham and Mt Buller covered in snow five weeks before the season started.

What's more, a study this year in the Hydrological Sciences Journal checked six climate models, including one used by the CSIRO.

It found they couldn't even predict the regional climate we'd had already: "Local model projections cannot be credible . . ."

It also confirmed the finding of a study last year in the International Journal of Climatology that the 22 most cited global warming models could not "accurately explain the (global) climate from the recent past".

As for predicting the future. . .

Lesson: The CSIRO's scary predictions are near worthless.

7. PERTH WILL BAKE DRY

THE CSIRO last year claimed Perth was "particularly vulnerable" and had a 90 per cent chance of getting less rain and higher temperatures.

"There are not many other parts of the world where the IPCC has made a prediction that a drop in rainfall is highly likely," it said.

In fact, Perth has just had its coldest and wettest November since 1991.

Lesson: As I said, don't trust the CSIRO's model or its warnings.

8. ISLANDS WILL DROWN

THE seas will rise up to 100m by 2100, claims ABC Science Show host Robyn Williams. Six metres, suggests Al Gore. So let's take in "climate refugees" from low-lying Tuvalu, says federal Labor. And ban coastal development, says the Brumby Government.

In fact, while the seas have slowly risen since the last ice age, before man got gassy, they've stopped rising for the last two, according to data from the Jason-1 satellite.

"There is no evidence for accelerated sea-level rises," the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute declared last month.

Lesson: Trust the data, not the politicians.

9. BRITAIN WILL SWELTER

The British Met Office is home to the Hadley Centre, one of the top centres of the man-made global warming faith.

In April it predicted: "The coming summer is expected to be a 'typical British summer'. . ."

In fact, in August it admitted: "(This) summer . . . has been one of the wettest on record across the UK." In September it predicted: "The coming winter (is) likely to be milder than average."

In fact, winter has been so cold that London had its first October snow in 74 years -- and on the day Parliament voted to fight "global warming".

Lesson: If the Met can't predict the weather three months out, what can it know of the climate 100 years hence?

10. WE'LL BE HOTTER

SPEAKING of the Met, it has so far predicted 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005 and 2007 would be the world's hottest or second-hottest year on record, but nine of the past 10 years it predicted temperatures too high.

In fact, the Met this month conceded 2008 would be the coldest year this century.

That makes 1998 still the hottest year on record since the Medieval Warm Period some 1000 years ago. Indeed, temperatures have slowly fallen since around 2002.

As Roger Pielke Sr, Professor Emeritus of Colorado State University's Department of Atmospheric Science, declared this month: "Global warming has stopped for the last few years."

Lesson: Something is wrong with warming models that predict warming in a cooling world, especially when we're each year pumping out even more greenhouse gases. Be sceptical.

Those, then, are the top 10 dud predictions of that hooting, screaming and screeching tribe of warming alarmists. Look and laugh.

And dare to believe the world is bright and reason may yet triumph.

QuoteBeijing's coldest December day in 57 years
Posted by Eric Mu, December 22, 2008 12:37 PM

The Beijing News
December 22, 2008

Winter truly arrived in Beijing yesterday with the highest temperature of the day down to minus 8.8 ℃. Media reports say it was "the coldest day in December in the last 57 years."

QuoteWill Canada see its first white Christmas since '71?

Updated Sun. Dec. 21 2008 9:19 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

The first day of winter brought wind-chill warnings, snow and a bevy of storms to cities across Canada on Sunday, potentially laying the groundwork for the first cross-country white Christmas in nearly four decades.

Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips told CTV Newsnet that "it looks like a very good chance" it will be a white Christmas for all parts of Canada for the first time since 1971.

"It's just sort of the beginning of winter, and it's a little much to expect when we have so many different climatic types in this country for it to be frozen and snow-covered from right across the huge country," he told CTV Newsnet on Sunday.

QuoteSEVERE COLD WAVE TO HIT EUROPE

The development of a major blocking high pressure system over the north atlantic and its subsequent backing west is about to throw most of Europe into the coldest winter weather pattern in many a year. In fact, Temps over the next month or so are liable to average 6-10 degrees F below normal over the center part of the continent with the northwest coldest last, but still getting into the games. Intuitive with this is the likelihood of more than normal snow and ice. As the upper block backs west, arctic discharges from the north and east are liable to bring shots of severe cold back into England and with it enhanced snowfall.

QuoteBitter cold, high winds chill Midwest

Dec 22, 8:17 AM (ET)

By MICHAEL TARM

CHICAGO (AP) - Heavily bundled Midwesterners were shuffling quickly from place to place in a bid to spend as little time as possible outside in bone-chilling, subzero cold that was expected to last through Monday morning.

"It's so cold, it feels like needles are pricking my eyes," grumbled 19-year-old Ashley Sarpong of Chicago, a fur-lined hood pulled around her face Sunday as she crossed a wind-swept bridge that crossed the Chicago River. "This is the coldest I've felt all year."

The big freeze was expected to last through Monday morning, the first full day of the official winter season, when wind chill advisories for the region were to expire.

Snowfall was scant after the frigid air mass rolled in, but ice and high winds whipped up snow along roadways and made driving hazardous for holiday travelers.

But the worst danger was from the cold - exacerbated by 20-to-30 mph winds that drove wind chills to 25 degrees below zero, or even lower, according to the National Weather Service.

Monday morning commuters in Dayton, Ohio, were greeted with zero-degree temperatures, the National Weather Service reported. It was in the single digits in Toledo, Cincinnati and Columbus.

Social service workers in Chicago conducted well-being checks and hosted more than 100 people in an overnight warming center, while officials activated an automatic phone message system that called residents to warn them of the cold.

At kickoff in Cleveland for the Browns-Bengals football game Sunday, the temperature was 18 degrees with winds up to 40 mph. Temperatures dipped to minus-6 degrees in two Iowa cities, with wind gusts of 40 mph that made it feel like 35 below zero in areas.

The gusty winds and cold also added to power-outage headaches, with more than 7,100 Ameren customers without power Sunday night, mostly in the Peoria area. In northwest Ohio, about 5,000 homes were without power.

In western New York, a 134-mile stretch of the state Thruway between Buffalo and the Pennsylvania border reopened around 8 a.m. Monday after being closed for about six hours because of blowing snow.

Indiana State Police said weather was a factor Sunday night when a car spun out of control on an icy toll road near New Carlisle, crossed the median and was struck by a semitrailer. All four people in the car were killed.

In southwestern Michigan, about 30 vehicles were involved in a deadly series of pileups on a six-mile stretch of Interstate 94 north of Stevensville, about 175 miles west of Detroit. An Illinois doctor died when his car slammed into a semi-truck that had stopped on the highway in whiteout conditions.

Flights were canceled and delayed at airports on both coasts. Hundreds of travelers were stranded at airports in Phoenix; SeaTac, Wash.; and Arlington, Va.

"There was a lot of people sleeping on the floor, it was a hard cold floor, and the doors kept opening," Rebecca Gray, 30, of South Berwick, Maine, said Monday morning from Reagan National Airport, where she spent the night with about 250 other people including her 3-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son. "There were babies last night sleeping out there. Women and children shouldn't have been left like that while people said it's not our problem and went home.'"

The winter blast continued to be felt in the Pacific Northwest. In Seattle, the National Weather Service was predicting up to 4 inches more by the Monday morning commute - a lot in a city with few plows and hilly streets.

The heavy snow was believed to have caused the collapse of a large tent over a temporary ice-skating rink in Bellevue, Wash., briefly trapping some of the 10 people inside and slightly injuring one girl. Snow was also suspected in the collapse of an unoccupied building housing a storage business in rural Waitsburg in eastern Washington.

Arizona's third storm in a week was expected to roll in Monday afternoon, bringing up to 10 inches of snow to higher elevations and rain in Phoenix.

Authorities in Boston, no stranger to chilly weather, canceled public schools Monday and Tuesday in the face of an overnight freeze and wind gusts of up to 50 mph.

In North Dakota, the National Weather Service said Bismarck was on track to break a 1916 record for snowfall in December. The city has had 19 inches of snow so far this month, and with 4 more expected Monday night, the record of 21.7 inches could be shattered.

QuoteHeatwave fans fires ahead of tourism season 

December 09 2008 at 05:37PM 

Deadly fires around South Africa's coastal city of Cape Town have destroyed hundreds of homes and left three dead ahead of the peak summer tourist season, municipal officials said.

Dry conditions in Cape Town's summer, characterised by gale force winds, have sparked brushfires in the mountains as well as accidental home fires in the shacks that fill informal settlements around the city.

Temperatures soared to 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit) over the weekend, and by Monday a thick pall of smoke was cast over the city as nine fires raged.

"Over the weekend, in informal settlements we responded to about 27 incidents. There were three deaths that I know of," said the city's chief fire officer Ian Schnetler.

QuoteAdelaide heatwave the longest in recorded history

James Luffman, Tuesday March 11, 2008 - 12:59 EDT

By almost any measure the extended heatwave currently affecting the south of the country is the longest since temperature records began over 120 years ago, according to weatherzone.com.au

Adelaide has reached a maximum temperature of 35 degrees or more each day since the third of this month, today taking the run to nine consecutive days. This sets a new autumn record for the southern capital, where temperature records commenced in 1887.

On Thursday it is likely Adelaide’s run of 35 degree days will reach 11 â€" beating the longest for any month previously set during the heatwave of January 1939, which included the notorious ‘Black Friday’ bushfire disaster across southeast Australia.

No significant cool change is likely to bring relief to the heat across South Australia until at least the middle part of next week.

- Weatherzone

© Weatherzone 2008

QuoteSouth Australia on the brink of new heatwave record

by Steph Ball

South Australia has been suffering in the scorching heat this last week, in a heatwave which is currently on track to become their longest on record. The heatwave is made even more extraordinary in that it has arrived in what is now the start of autumn across Australia.

On Monday temperatures in Adelaide reached 37C (99F) in the city and 38C (100F) at Adelaide Airport. This makes it the eighth consecutive day that temperatures in Adelaide have exceeded 35C (95F). In doing so it has equalled the record set in 1934, making it Adelaide’s longest hot spell in over 70 years.

However, records go back to the 1860’s and if the city reaches 35C (95F) on Tuesday, it will set a new all time record for the state. It may be a close call though since the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has forecast a high of 34C (93F) on Tuesday. Tomorrow is expected to be the “cooler” of the week, with the sweltering heat expected to carry on into the weekend. Temperatures from Wednesday are expected to be in the mid to high 30C’s (95-102F).

The hot, dry weather is very much in contrast to cool and wet conditions being experienced further north, across Queensland and parts of New South Wales. Here, low pressure has brought frequent storms across the region and severe floods.

Quote2008 among 10 warmest years on record, UN reports

17 December 2008 â€" The year 2008 is likely to rank as the 10th warmest year on record since the beginning of the instrumental climate records in 1850, although the global average temperature was slightly lower than previous years of the 21st century, according to the United Nations meteorological agency.
The combined sea-surface and land-surface air temperature for 2008 is estimated at 0.31 degrees Celsius (C) or 0.56 Fahrenheit (F), above the 1961-1990 annual average of 14C, or 57.2F, while the Arctic Sea ice volume during the melt season was its lowest since satellite measurements began in 1979, the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said.

The average temperature of 2008 was moderated by La Niña, a weather phenomenon that shrinks the warm pool water in the central and western Pacific, which developed in the latter half of 2007.

Climate extremes, including devastating floods, severe and persistent droughts, snowstorms, and heat and cold waves, were recorded in many parts of the world, with above-average temperatures all over Europe and a remarkably cold winter over Eurasia stretching from Turkey to China, causing hundreds of casualties in Afghanistan and China.

QuoteJust a few simple questions that I am sure has no simple answer...  We often see these headlines...

2008 among 10 warmest years on record, UN reports

Is there an official record?  Where is it kept?  Who keeps it?  How far back to they go?  Is it generalized and vague or is it precise with date, time, temp, pressure etc...?  If I want to know these things for say... the entire month of July in Jacksonville in 1812 could I get that info?

Quote from: stephendare on December 22, 2008, 01:23:18 PM
You do know that climate change is an 'average' temperature, right?

Like an 'average' height?

Quote from: Lunican on December 08, 2008, 01:36:16 PM
According to this link, a 50 foot sea level rise would turn Atlanta into an oceanfront city.

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/sealevel

Quote from: Jason on December 22, 2008, 03:06:57 PM
Everyone has their own database, I guess.  That's why I'm holding out for a solid general consensus amongst the scientific community.  To come to that consensus, I would imagine they would all have to pool their data and consult eachother.

Quote2008 among 10 warmest years on record, UN reports

QuoteDoes the error matter?

Quoteactually core samples are remarkably accurate.

Quoteand we dont need daily measurements

QuoteIrrespective of the error if it is 5% or 50%, if the trend is up or down it is up or down; and lsince the industrial revolution the trend is up.

Quote from: BridgeTroll on December 23, 2008, 07:49:24 AM

QuoteIrrespective of the error if it is 5% or 50%, if the trend is up or down it is up or down; and lsince the industrial revolution the trend is up.

Wow... okay.  Thank you... you have just summed up the entire science of weather prediction.

QuoteOnce again it's CLIMATE not weather! And thank you. I do what I can.

Quote from: gatorback on December 22, 2008, 11:38:57 PM
Bridge, dont take my words out of context it is completely beneath you--leave that to the river.  Irrespective of the error if it is 5% or 50%, if the trend is up or down it is up or down; and since the industrial revolution the trend is up.

QuoteNow geographer Robert Baker of the University of New England, Armidale, in Australia, has linked solar magnetic activity to Earth's climate--at least regionally. Using sunspot counts and Australian meteorological data, as well as NASA satellite data for more recent years, he tracked sunspots and rainfall in Australia from 1876 to 2006. In this month's issue of Geographical Research, Baker reports that the amount of rainfall in most regions of the country tracked the 22-year magnetic cycle almost exactly. "It was unbelievable," Baker says. At the height of magnetic activity, rainfall across most of the country was plentiful. At the other end of the cycle, many of those same regions experienced severe droughts. The findings are particularly compelling, Baker says, because even though the lengths of the magnetic cycles are not precise and can vary by several years, the rainfall patterns followed them.

QuoteI am not missing the point.  I understand the point.  What I am saying is you are using mixed data.  Over the past 100 years we have extremely accurate data.  Yes?  We can all agree.  I also agree that tree ring and such data are accurate for what it is.