weather ≠ climate
GLOBAL WARMING - "Snowfalls are a thing of the past"
by Nathan Natas 92 Replies latest jw friends
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VIII
What OTWO said, +1
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besty
gregor says:
When did the evironmentalist industry transition from the phrase "Global Warming" to the wiggle room friendly "Global Climate Change"?
then gregor says:
using the terms climate change or global warming is not the debate.
You made it the debate. You were shown up to be wrong. Again. Why should we trust anything else you say?
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besty
OTWO
I agree with the personal approach you suggest. Aiming for a more efficient lifestyle is usually agreed to be 'a good thing'.
I agree with your position on localized environmental disasters usually eventually 'getting better'.
Climate change is linked with 4 out of 5 of the mass extinction events according to some experts - maybe you should be concerned with slight temperature variations.
The big problem you don't address is the rising concentration of atmospheric CO2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeling_Curve
The effect of increasing CO2 is well understood with a high degree of certainty for over a hundred years now. The temperature will go up. And thats exactly what we are observing.
The question is what we as a global community are going to do about it.
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Gregor
gregor says:
When did the evironmentalist industry transition from the phrase "Global Warming" to the wiggle room friendly "Global Climate Change"?
then gregor says:
using the terms climate change or global warming is not the debate.
You made it the debate. You were shown up to be wrong. Again. Why should we trust anything else you say?
Missed the part where I was "shown up" to be wrong. Are you referring to bohms heavily edited gag video complete with skateboard wipe outs? Why should you trust anything else I say? mainly because I have not invested my ego into the new enviro-religion like some who post here who just got over being a JW (and a Christer at that) and have suddenly found a substitute that feels as comfortable as an old shoe. They'll be goddamned if the're going to pick the wrong horse twice within three years.
My second statement above was my way of acknowledging that the term "man made" is apparently vital to establish two quite different debates. You chose not to quote the rest of that statement.
Why do so many polls show that the overwhelming majority reject the man-made climate warming global...etc , religion?
The effect of increasing CO2 is well understood with a high degree of certainty for over a hundred years now. The temperature will go up. And thats exactly what we are observing. I call BS ("Besty Says") on this statement.
...and what is the Global Community going to do about it?
I beg your pardon, what "Global Community" are you talking about or did you just think it sounded good?
Are you unaware of the results of the last few international, official, Global Warming conferences ?
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besty
Missed the part where I was "shown up" to be wrong.
If you go back a page you will see where you were shown to be wrong. You raised arguably the dumbest denier talking point - "they changed it from global warming to climate change" - and I replied:
The scientific use of these terms has been clear for almost 30 years. They have been used and abused interchangeably by the media, politicians, special interest groups and the public. I'm unclear on your point here gregor - it has been pointed out numerous times on this board that the Frank Luntz 2002 strategy memo to the Bush Administration called for the use of "climate change" in place of "global warming". Ignoring the underlying inaccuracy of replacing one term with one with a different meaning, it is bizarre that you now claim to see evidence of duplicity on the part of the "environmental industry". Like I say - I'm unclear on your point.
Are you clear on this now? Worried that science was closing against them in 2002 no less, the Bush Administration were instructed to use climate change instead of global warming. Clear? Not the loony environmentalists, not the tree huggers, not the eco-warriors. The Bush Administration. Worried that the science was almost settled in 2002.
Why do so many polls show that the overwhelming majority reject the man-made climate warming global...etc , religion?
The same polls show the same people accepting that the earth is less than 10,000 years old. Half the people you meet are below average intelligence. Go figure. You are making an argumentum ad populam. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum
The effect of increasing CO2 is well understood with a high degree of certainty for over a hundred years now. The temperature will go up. And thats exactly what we are observing. I call BS ("Besty Says") on this statement.
Educate yourself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_science
...and what is the Global Community going to do about it? I beg your pardon, what "Global Community" are you talking about or did you just think it sounded good? Are you unaware of the results of the last few international, official, Global Warming conferences?
I simply meant us - the human race in general. Sorry if 'global community' confused you.
Is there any reason why you post everything in bold? Been meaning to ask you that for a few years now. Should we all do that if its a good idea?
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Gregor
If I choose to post in bold, who's to say me nay? Other posters do the same. I have explained my reason before. What the hell does that have to do with anything?
Thanks for confirming my guess as to your response to polls that don't support your cult -
" Half the people you meet are below average intelligence. Go figure. You are making an argumentum ad populam. " This is the Besty view of those who disagree with his BS in a nutshell.
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OnTheWayOut
ME: But we don't need to be fanatics about slight temperature variations. The glaciers melting has little to do with man's actions and much to do with trends of the planet.
BESTY: Climate change is linked with 4 out of 5 of the mass extinction events according to some experts - maybe you should be concerned with slight temperature variations.
"Concerned" and "fanatics" are not the same. My point isn't that the change isn't happening, nor is my point that the change isn't serious. The change is serious. The slight changes in temperature toward warming have melted glaciers and may very well cause a mass extinction. My point was that man has had a "virtual" negligible effect on the temperature. (There- I admit "virtual" because spewing auto/factory exhaust into the air cannot be said to be good for the air.) The earth goes through these stages. If it warms up to kill off the planet, our impact might bring it about a few days earlier. If the planet were in a cooling trend, nobody would care that man is adding a slight temperature variance to the planet. If man never existed, the glaciers would still be melting, the planet would still be warming, but I will grant that there would be cleaner air in some places. Earth will get rid of our pollution when man is either extinct or stops polluting. We need to clean up our act for our own lungs and our own quality of life.
Should we learn to be better about our "impact" on the world? YES. But people in developed nations seem to demand that the emerging third world nations don't get rich as quick as the developed nations did in the past, because we learned from our mistakes. That's all fine and good for the developed nations, but then we have to share our wealth with the rest of the world. Instead of demanding that the world "do something," every person on the planet who already has a measure of wealth would have to be prepared to give it up.
And all that massive politics to acheive what I suggest in the above paragraph will do WHAT? Buy earth a few days before the mass extinction happens anyway? That's why I say, "Do your part, but don't get upset at others who do less." How in the world could we expect Asians and Africans to take Europeans and Americans seriously when we tell them they have to do a better job of being more responsible to the environment? They know we raped the land and air and seas to get where we got. Better to stick with our "feel good" efforts at home with "paper or plastic."
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BurnTheShips
Stumbled on this article today about global warming alarmism. It strikes me as being as apocalyptic, and we all know about that.
Hot Sensations Vs. Cold Facts
The media owe us better coverage on the climate than alarmism.
As 2010 draws to a close, do you remember hearing any good news from the mainstream media about climate? Like maybe a headline proclaiming "Record Low 2009 and 2010 Cyclonic Activity Reported: Global Warming Theorists Perplexed"? Or "NASA Studies Report Oceans Entering New Cooling Phase: Alarmists Fear Climate Science Budgets in Peril"? Or even anything bad that isn't blamed on anthropogenic (man-made) global warming--of course other than what is attributed to George W. Bush? (Conveniently, the term "AGW" covers both.)
Remember all the media brouhaha about global warming causing hurricanes that commenced following the devastating U.S. 2004 season? Opportunities to capitalize on those disasters were certainly not lost on some U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change officials. A special press conference called by IPCC spokesman Kevin Trenberth announced "Experts warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense activity."
But there was a problem. Christopher Landsea, a top U.S. expert on the subject, repeatedly notified the IPCC that no research had been conducted to support that claim--not in the Atlantic basin, or in any other basin. After receiving no replies, he publicly resigned from all IPCC activities. And while the press conference received tumultuous global media coverage, Mother Nature didn't pay much attention. Subsequent hurricane seasons returned to average patterns noted historically over the past 150 years, before exhibiting recent record lows with no 2010 U.S. landfalls.
Much global warming alarm centers upon concerns that melting glaciers will cause a disastrous sea level rise. A globally viewed December 2005 BBC feature alarmingly reported that two massive glaciers in eastern Greenland, Kangderlugssuaq and Helheim, were melting, with water "racing to the sea." Commentators urgently warned that continued recession would be catastrophic.
Helheim's "erratic" behavior reported then was recently recounted again in a dramatic Nov. 13 New York Times article titled "As Glaciers Melt, Science Seeks Data on Rising Seas."Reporters somehow failed to notice that only 18 months later, and despite slightly warmer temperatures, the melting rate of both glaciers not only slowed down and stopped, but actually reversed. Satellite images revealed that by August 2006 Helheim had advanced beyond its 1933 boundary.
According to two separate NASA studies, one conducted by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the other by the Langley Research Center, the oceans now appear to be heading into another natural periodic cooling phase within a typical 55- to 70-year dipolar warm/cool pattern. Although Greenland has recently been experiencing a slight warming trend, satellite measurements show that the ice cap has been accumulating snow growth at a rate of about 2.1 inches per year. Temperatures only recently began to exceed those of the 1930s and 1940s when many glaciers were probably smaller than now. (We can't be certain, because satellites didn't exist to measure them.)
A recent study conducted by U.S. and Dutch scientists that appeared in the journal Nature Geoscience concluded that previous estimates of Greenland and West Antarctica ice melt rate losses may have been exaggerated by double. Earlier projections apparently failed to account for rebounding changes in the Earth's crust following the last Ice Age (referred to as "glacial isostatic adjustment").
Nils-Axel Morner, head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden, argues that any concerns regarding rising sea levels are unfounded. "So all this talk that sea level rising, this comes from the computer modeling, not from observations. ... The new level, which has been stable, has not changed in the last 35 years. ... But they [IPCC] need a rise, because if there is no rise, there is no death threat ... if you want a grant for a research project in climatology, it is written into the document that there 'must' be a focus on global warming. ... That is really bad, because you start asking for the answer you want to get."
Studies by the International Union for Quaternary Research conclude that some ocean levels have even fallen in recent decades. The Indian Ocean, for example, was higher between 1900 and 1970 than it has been since.
Other world climate alarm bells chimed when it was reported in the media that September 2007 satellite images revealed that the Northwest Passage--a sea route between the U.K. and Asia across the top of the Arctic Circle--had opened up for the first time in recorded history. (This "recorded history" dates back only to 1979 when satellite monitoring first began, and it should also be noted that the sea route froze again just a few months later (winter 2007-2008).
The Northwest Passage has certainly opened up before. Diary entries of a sailor named Roald Amundson confirm clear passage in 1903, as do those of a Royal Canadian Mounted Police Arctic patrol crew that made regular trips through there in the early 1940s. And in February 2009 it was discovered that scientists had previously been underestimating the re-growth of Arctic sea ice by an area larger than the state of California (twice as large as New Zealand). The errors were attributed to faulty sensors on the ice.
But these aren't the sorts of observations that most people generally receive from the media. Instead, they present sensational statements and dramatic images that leave lasting impressions of calving glaciers, drowning polar bears and all manner of other man-caused climate calamities.
Many intentionally target impressionable young minds and sensitive big hearts with messages of fear and guilt. Take, for example, a children's book called The North Pole Was Here, authored by New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin. It warns kids that some day it may be "easier to sail than stand on the North Pole in summer." Imagine such images through their visualization: How warm it must be to melt that pole way up north. Poor Santa! And Rudolph! Of course it's mostly their parents' fault because of the nasty CO2 they produce driving them to school in SUVs.
Lots of grown-ups are sensitive people with big hearts too. Don't we all deserve more from the seemingly infinite media echo chamber of alarmism than those windy speculations, snow jobs and projections established on theoretical thin ice?
Weekly columnist Larry Bell is a professor at the University of Houston and author of Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax, which will be released on Jan. 1, 2011. It can be previewed at:www.climateofcorruption.com..
http://www.forbes.com/2010/12/23/media-climate-change-warming-opinions-contributors-larry-bell.html
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whereami
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/12/29/naidoo.climate.weather/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn
Amsterdam (CNN) -- I recently returned to Amsterdam from the latest round of U.N. climate talks in Cancun, Mexico, and found this city of canals covered in snow. It was a beautiful sight. Yet rather than filling me with joy, it caused me concern.
Over the past few years, climate-change skeptics have repeatedly used cold snaps as proof that our planet is not heating up.
This argument ignores NASA's recent analysis of 2010 as the warmest year on record and the World Meteorological Organization's pronouncement of the first decade of this century as the hottest since records began.
Global warming does not simply mean that temperatures are always climbing. What it does mean is that although our planet is steadily heating up, a delicate set of climatic imbalances creates an increase in extreme weather events.
These may include both dramatic heat spells and powerful snowstorms, such as those that have blanketed parts of Europe not used to seeing such weather -- as well as the more southerly reaches of the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S.
Most scientists tell us that we must dramatically curb greenhouse gas emissions if we are to avert catastrophic climate change. To do this, it will be necessary to mobilize people around the globe who are not yet concerned about the issue.
But if the scientific evidence can be buried, in the eyes of some, by a single heavy snowfall, then we must have new strategies that generate interest in this complex issue and sustain public and political support for action.
Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Joel Pett may have hit upon something with a cartoon he drew for last year's climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark. It shows a scientist addressing a large audience at a climate summit. A spectator at the left side of the panel asks his neighbor: "What if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?" The answer emerges on the right side of the panel where the following list appears on a chalkboard: energy independence, preserve rainforest, sustainability, green jobs, livable cities, renewables, clean water and air, healthy children, etc., etc.
There is indeed something for almost everyone in climate protection.
A small nonprofit group called the Climate and Energy Project ran with this idea in 2007. It sponsored a yearlong competition between six towns in Kansas with the goal of getting them to lower carbon emissions. They did this by reducing their energy consumption and accepting renewable sources of energy.
A study had shown that a majority of residents in that region believed either that climate change was a hoax or that recent dramatic weather events were simply the result of natural climate cycles. Organizers decided to highlight the more immediate benefits of cutting carbon emissions, including energy independence, development of the local economy and financial savings. The New York Times reported in October that the project's strategy seems to have worked.
In a year, the article read, "energy use in the towns declined as much as 5 percent relative to other areas -- a giant step in the world of energy conservation, where a program that yields a 1.5 percent decline is considered successful."
Most of the world's major religions also offer reasons to engage in climate protection. Because taking care of the poor and needy (often disproportionately affected by climate-related disasters) and protecting God's planet are tenets of most of the world's major faith-based organizations, environmental protection is commonly becoming part of what they preach.
Some Muslim and Hindu groups, for example, are working on special product labeling that would inform consumers about environmental impacts of the items being purchased.
Similarly, around the globe, diverse organizations -- including trade unions, churches, non-governmental organizations and governments -- are coming together to find solutions to climate change.
In 2010, the fossil fuel industry offered, albeit by accident, one of the greatest motivations to take action on global warming. BP's Deepwater Horizon oil spill resulted in the death of 11 rig workers; local economies suffered deeply, and wildlife in the region could take decades to recover.
The continued disintegration of public trust in government and business policy and procedures surrounding the disaster will, justifiably, have repercussions for a long time to come.
Speaking with a Dutch friend, I commented that the snow -- which has caused great travel difficulties around Europe -- was at least a wonderful thing for children, who are out in force making snowmen. "Yes," he replied, but when I was growing up, winters were so cold the canals would freeze over every year, and we could skate on them. Last year was the first time this happened again in over a decade.
The world is no longer as we knew it. It is not possible to backtrack on climate change. It is, however, still within our power to help preserve our planet for future generations.