it's global warming, stupid!

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There's no doubt in my mind that human activities have had an impact with these storms. I just wish the damh politicians would accept this. The behavior of the Bush Administration in regards to this is irresponsible and reckless.
 
Irvine511 said:
why does global warming, more than any other scientific theory i can think of, inspire such skepticism? is it because it asks us to modify our behavior?
Because global climate is such a complex beast of a thing to understand.

Our picture of the climate throughout geological history is marked by periods of massive glaciations and others with rises in sea level

Because plate tectonics has ensured that over long periods of time things change, e.g. the formation of the gulf stream.

Because the anthropogenic contribution to global carbon dioxide while quite large is dwarfed by natural processses. Also that the ammount of CO2 in the atmosphere today is a fraction of what it has been at points in the earths past.

That there are other mechanisms at work on global weather, dynamic interactions, for instance Milankovitch cycles.

That the evidence of past sea levels shows rapid fluctuations and variations throuh entirely natural means. How much of these effects are natural.

We need to understand what feedback mechanisms are at work here, will curbing emissions actually have any effect at all? Balancing the cost of action to benefit is important.

Looking at the effects of any rise in global tempreture; it is not going to bring about an apocalypse, some things will change. some for better and some for worse.
 
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I remember there was an article posted here a few weeks ago, which listed the top 10 hurricanes in the US in terms of cost in dollars, cost in lives, and intensity. Most of the deadliest hurricanes were bunched towards the first half of the century and the costliest hurricanes all occured in the second half of the century. Both of those stats make sense. But when it came to the most intense hurricanes, most of the occured before 1950. Considering everyone's pointing to the environmental policies of the past 50 years as a reason for increased intensity, that doesn't exactly match up.

I'm not saying it won't become a problem, but it seems like it's more than a little inaccurate to say "it's global warming, stupid!" :wink:
 
nbcrusader said:


Irvine is FYM's own Drudge :wink:



guilty as charged.

i just want you to read my threads!

however ... just to toss this into the mix ...



Editorial
Time to Connect the Dots
Published: September 28, 2005

Along with ruined homes and upended trees, the recent hurricanes left behind a revived debate about global warming. While some environmentalists point to the wreckage as a kind of retribution for America's failure to control greenhouse gas emissions, right-wing talk show hosts repeat, over and over, that even if global warming did exist, there is no proof it had anything to do with Rita and Katrina.

In a way, they're all right. It is impossible to link Katrina or Rita, or any particular hurricane, specifically to global warming. This does not mean that President Bush and the rest of us should not be connecting the dots. These are natural disasters - but with human fingerprints.

Hurricanes derive their strength from warm ocean waters. Ocean temperatures have been rising over the last 100 years, along with atmospheric temperatures. Hurricanes have therefore become bigger and more destructive and are likely to grow even more violent in the future.

This cycle cannot be reversed any time soon. But one thing humans can do is to reduce their own contribution to global warming by controlling industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The alarm bells have been ringing for a long time, but Katrina and Rita should serve as yet another warning to an administration that has belittled the science of global warming.

The emerging hurricane problem is size, not quantity. The scientists who have studied the issue have not detected any increase in the number of hurricanes. Yet these same scientists - in research reports appearing in reputable journals like Science, Nature and The Journal of Climate - have detected increases of up to 70 percent in hurricane intensity, a measure that combines the power of a hurricane and its duration. There has been a commensurate increase in damage, mainly because more and more people have stubbornly put themselves at risk by moving to low-lying coastal areas. But the hurricanes' added strength has clearly contributed to the ever-higher toll in lives and property damage.

Being cautious folk, the scientists point out that cyclical lulls and surges in hurricane activity may also have something to do with stronger storms. But even if they are completely wrong in linking warming to intensity, which seems unlikely, global warming will have other undesirable consequences, including a significant rise in sea level. In the last century, sea level rose 4 to 8 inches around the world, and most scientists expect a further rise of 2 to 3 feet in this century.

According to one government study, a 20-inch rise in sea level by 2100 could put 3,500 square miles of the southern coast of the United States underwater - rendering efforts to restore the Everglades and the Louisiana coastline essentially pointless. A large-scale breakup of the polar ice sheets would, of course, make matters much worse. Dikes could protect some regions, like Manhattan and the Netherlands, but most coastlines would be inundated.

Humanity cannot avoid a warmer Earth and some rise in sea level, largely because of the gases we have already deposited in the atmosphere. But the worst outcomes may be avoided if the world takes concerted action to stabilize industrial emissions of greenhouse gases.

This, of course, presupposes aggressive leadership from the United States, which produces more than a quarter of these emissions. But this is a role that Mr. Bush has shown no appetite for at all.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/28/opinion/28wed1.html?ex=1128052800&en=a1b1297bbd1c924d&ei=5070
 
also, it behooves me to note that Republicans, struggling to find more junk scientists to discredit the fact of human-induced global warming, have called up Michael Chrichton to testify today before (frothy, foaming right wing) Sen. Inhofe's Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

i'll let my straight girlfriend, Wonkette, run with the rest:

His qualifications, you ask? He's written a novel about on the subject, and--we hope you're sitting down--the book in question, State of Fear, is, in the words of our tipster, "a heart-pounding, edge-of-your-seat story about its hero's struggle against those who are trying to dupe the world into thinking global warming is a real problem."

Wow. The GOP must have officially run out of obliging junk scientists. Still, we're glad to have this precedent set. We hotly anticipate future Senate hearings in which Tom Clancy unveils the dark conspirators who have kept American military power a soul-sapping leash, Nelson DeMille shows us the real killer is. . . the colonel's daughter, and the grad finale, in which Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins conduct all the GOP senators except those with memberships in the Gang of 14 to their eternal reward. As an encore, of course, they will return briefly to Earth to demonstrate that Russ Feingold is indeed the Antichrist.
 
Global warming causing record Arctic ice melt

CTV.ca News Staff

A new study is raising more concerns about global warming in the Canadian Arctic and the potentially catastrophic effects on wildlife.

According to new data from U.S. scientists, the coverage of sea ice in the Arctic has declined for a fourth consecutive year, indicating an alarming long-term trend.

The amount of sea ice in 2005 up to September -- the month when it typically reaches its minimum -- is anticipated to be the lowest in a century.

"Having four years in a row with such low ice extents has never been seen before in the satellite record. It clearly indicates a downward trend, not just a short-term anomaly," said Walt Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

Scientists from NSIDC and NASA tracked the ice melt using satellite images.

The data show that on Sept. 21, 2005, the area covered by ice shrank to 5.32 million square kilometres, the lowest recorded since 1978, when satellite records became available.

"In 2005, it's the lowest on the record. We've watched that retreat from year after year," Environment Canada climatologist Tom Agnew told CTV News in Toronto.

Scientists estimate that the current rate of decline in end-of-summer Arctic ice is now approximately eight per cent per decade.

If the current rates of decline continue, the Arctic in the summertime could be completely ice-free well before the end of this century, researchers say.

There is also evidence that the ice is not building back up in the winter, leaving it even more susceptible to warmer summer temperatures.

"We're concerned that it's not going to recover, that the sea ice will eventually disappear within the next fifty to a hundred years," said Agnew.


http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20050928/arctic_sea_ice_050928/20050928?hub=CTVNewsAt11
 
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