|
|
 | | From: | torresD | | Subject: | Point of No Return - Global Warming | | Date: | Sun, 23 Jan 2005 23:20:33 GMT |
|
|
 | http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=603752
He concluded:
"We are risking the ability of the human race to survive."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=603752
Global warming approaching point of no return,
warns leading climate expert
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
23 January 2005
Global warning has already hit the danger
point that international attempts to curb it
are designed to avoid, according to the world's
top climate watchdog.
Dr Rajendra Pachauri,
the chairman of the official
Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC),
told an international conference attended
by 114 governments in Mauritius this month
that he personally believes that the world
has
"already reached the level of dangerous
concentrations of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere"
and called for immediate and "very deep"
cuts in the pollution if humanity is to
"survive".
His comments rocked the Bush administration -
which immediately tried to slap him down -
not least because it put him in his post
after Exxon,
the major oil company most opposed to
international action on global warming,
complained that his predecessor was too
"aggressive" on the issue.
A memorandum from Exxon to the White House
in early 2001 specifically asked it to get
the previous chairman,
Dr Robert Watson,
the chief scientist of the World Bank,
"replaced at the request of the US".
The Bush administration then lobbied
other countries in favour of Dr Pachauri -
whom the former vice-president
Al Gore called the
"let's drag our feet" candidate,
and got him elected to replace Dr Watson,
a British-born naturalised American,
who had repeatedly called for urgent action.
But this month, at a conference of Small Island
Developing States on the Indian Ocean island,
the new chairman,
a former head of India's Tata Energy Research Institute,
himself issued what top United Nations officials described
as a "very courageous" challenge.
He told delegates: "Climate change is for real.
We have just a small window of
opportunity and it is closing
rather rapidly.
There is not a moment to lose."
Afterwards he told The Independent on
unday that widespread dying of coral reefs,
and rapid melting of ice in the Arctic,
had driven him to the conclusion that the
danger point the IPCC had been set up to
avoid had already been reached.
Reefs throughout the world are perishing
as the seas warm up: as water temperatures
rise,
they lose their colours and turn a ghostly white.
Partly as a result,
up to a quarter of the world's
corals have been destroyed.
And in November,
a multi-year study by 300 scientists
concluded that the Arctic was warming
twice as fast as the rest of the world
and that its ice-cap had shrunk by up
to 20 per cent in the past three decades.
The ice is also 40 per cent thinner than
it was in the 1970s and is expected to
disappear altogether by 2070.
And while Dr Pachauri was speaking parts
of the Arctic were having a January
"heatwave",
with temperatures eight to nine
degrees centigrade higher than
normal.
He also cited alarming measurements,
first reported in The Independent on Sunday,
showing that levels of carbon dioxide
(the main cause of global warming)
have leapt abruptly over the past two years,
suggesting that climate change may be
accelerating out of control.
He added that,
because of inertia built into
the Earth's natural systems,
the world was now only experiencing
the result of pollution emitted in the 1960s,
and much greater effects would occur as the
increased pollution of later decades worked
its way through.
He concluded:
"We are risking the ability of the human race to survive."
|
|
| | From: | sparky | | Subject: | Re: Point of No Return - Global Warming | | Date: | Sun, 23 Jan 2005 23:50:40 GMT |
|
|
| Is the Sky Falling, or Cooling, or Warming, or What?
November 9, 1997
By HENRY PAYNE
Copyright 1997 Scripps Howard News Service
A lay public depends heavily on the media to translate the
opaque language of scientific theory. Yet 90 percent of responding
scientists think that the news media do not understand "the tentativeness of
scientific discovery and the complexities of the results," according to a
recent survey by the Freedom Forum.
The simplistic news coverage of the complex global-warming issue
shows that the wariness is well-founded.
Next month, the world's politicians will gather for a global
warming summit in Kyoto, Japan to craft a solution to a problem as yet
undefined. The plan's details will pass through the filter of a news
profession which has profoundly misled public opinion on the science of
climate change for 20 years.
In 1975, Peter Gwynne of Newsweek filed this ominous report from
the climate front: "The central fact is that the Earth's climate seems to be
cooling down. Meteorologists are almost unanimous in the view that the trend
will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the
climate change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting
famines could be catastrophic.
"In England," Gwynne gasped, "farmers have seen their growing
season decline by about two weeks since 1950." Internationally, global
cooling had purportedly caused "the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes
ever recorded."
What to do about this galloping Armageddon? Gwynne confided that
"climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any
positive action to compensate for the climate change or even allay its
effects."
Solutions to the problem _ such as "melting the Arctic ice cap
by covering it with black soot or diverting Arctic rivers" _ were, he
conceded, probably unrealistic. But, unless something was done, coping with
global cooling would become more difficult "once the results were grim
reality."
Twenty-two years later _ Nov. 3, 1997 _ Time magazine warns of a
quite different climate crisis.
"The fact that the world is warming is unmistakable," reporter
Michael Lemonick asserts, "and the argument made by some scientists that
it's just a natural phenomenon has been dashed by new evidence. Mountain
glaciers are melting all over the world. Unusually severe weather has been
frequent in the past few years (and) tropical diseases have begun to move
into regions that were once too cold for insect carriers."
As for President Clinton's proposal to tackle global cooling _
er, warming _ by reducing U.S. carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by
2012, the reporter quotes environmentalist Robert Musil: "a Band-Aid on a
problem that requires a tourniquet."
Nowhere is there an acknowledgment that journalists had
predicted the world would be shivering in hunger by now. Nowhere does
Lemonick mention that many of today's "experts" on a warming apocalypse were
yesterday's Cassandras of the Big Chill.
In fact, there was no scientific consensus on cooling 20 years
ago and there is no consensus on warming today.
A Gallup survey of 400 climate experts finds that "a majority of
scientists involved in global climate research believe average global
temperatures have increased over the past 100 years, but few attribute the
increase to human activity."
The Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Germany finds that
64 percent of climatologists believe global warming is occurring, but 67
percent disagree that "climate models can accurately predict climactic
conditions." These numbers disprove Al Gore's claim _ parroted in the press
_ that 98 percent of scientists perceive a crisis.
Thumbing the professional journals, Science and Nature, one
finds the science is still fluid.
"The question of whether the observed increase in global mean
temperature over the last century is indeed caused by human activities or
natural climate variability remains a controversial issue," writes
climatologist Klaus Hasselman in the May issue of Science.
When Lawrence Livermore Laboratory experts published findings in
June that claimed to identify evidence of human-induced warming, University
of Washington meteorologist Michael Wallace expressed skepticism that "every
time we see something we haven't seen before, it must be due to global
warming."
But the popular press has pronounced the issue settled.
In a shrill Los Angeles Times story berating the Clinton
administration for half-steps on global warming, reporter James Gerstenzang
dismisses "the position of some scientists _ considered out of the
mainstream _ who say that if global warming is taking place, it may simply
be a natural phenomenon."
Even if scientists conclude that man may be exacerbating global
warming, they are uncertain about what that means. Yet the premise of the
Kyoto conference is the certitude that warming means disaster.
In fact, warming trends historically have increased human
prosperity.
During the world's last warming period (1000 to 1300 A.D.),
European agriculture flourished farther north and at higher elevations than
now possible; harvests generally increased.
While scientists surveyed by the Planck Institute split on
whether global warming would help or harm society, 82 percent agree that
"stabilizing CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions will require a fundamental
restructuring of the global economy."
That's because CO2 is the fundamental byproduct of industrial
civilization. The U.N. estimates that just stabilizing current CO2 emissions
would require a devastating cut of 60 percent below 1990 levels. By way of
perspective, the booming U.S. economy has boosted its CO2 emissions by 8
percent this decade. (Clinton had promised to freeze emissions at 1990
levels, but, in the end, it's the economy, stupid.)
The economic consequences of a serious CO2 cap would far
outweigh the detrimental consequences of a warmer climate, plunging
standards of living and stalling the growth of poor nations.
Recall the 1990 Clean Air Act. An authoritative, $500 million
1989 report commissioned by Congress reflected the opinion of a majority of
scientists that acid rain was an insufficiently serious problem to warrant
federal legislation. Yet politicians and journalists ignored the report
("Just because the government threw a load of money at this doesn't mean
it's a precious document," sniffed the Washington Post's Michael Weisskopf)
and urged government action against industrial pollutants.
That action has caused thousands of eastern coal miners to lose
their jobs since 1990.
The price of ignoring the ambiguities of global-warming science
could be much higher.
February 6, 2004: What would President Jesus Drive?
February 11, 2004: Kerry's Michigan Coronation
October 2003: Trouble in the Democrats' Urban Laboratory
August 2003: California: Long Live the Gasoline Engine
July 2003: Putting Preferences to a Vote
November 2002: 8 Mile - Eminem's Real Detroit
November 2001: Anything but Diesel
July 2001: CAFE's Consequences
May 2001: Smoggy Science
March 2001: Where's the Policy?
March 2001: Guns and Poses
November 2000: The Nader Factor
November 2000: Vouchers
September 2000: Combustion Engine Voters
August 2000: Spin Hides Democrats' Intolerance
July 2000: Motor Mouth in the Motor City
July 2000: Car Crazy
June 2000: Untold stories in Elian Case Expose Media Bias
March 2000: Mt. Morris
January 2000: Schizophrenia On Wheels
June 1999: Speeds Increase Fatalities Do Not
October 1998: Green Redlining
August 1998: Green Nonsense, Black Losses
December 1997: Kyoto's Voodoo Economics
November 1997: Is the Sky Falling, or Cooling, or Warming,
or What?
September 1997: Environmental Justice Kills Jobs for the
Poor
December 1996: Killer Mandate
"torresD" wrote in message
news:5jWId.5217$cZ1.1306@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net...
> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=603752
> He concluded:
>
> "We are risking the ability of the human race to survive."
>
>
> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=603752
>
> Global warming approaching point of no return,
> warns leading climate expert
> By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
> 23 January 2005
>
>
> Global warning has already hit the danger
> point that international attempts to curb it
> are designed to avoid, according to the world's
> top climate watchdog.
>
> Dr Rajendra Pachauri,
> the chairman of the official
> Intergovernmental Panel on
> Climate Change (IPCC),
>
> told an international conference attended
> by 114 governments in Mauritius this month
> that he personally believes that the world
> has
>
> "already reached the level of dangerous
> concentrations of carbon dioxide in the
> atmosphere"
>
> and called for immediate and "very deep"
> cuts in the pollution if humanity is to
> "survive".
>
> His comments rocked the Bush administration -
> which immediately tried to slap him down -
> not least because it put him in his post
> after Exxon,
>
> the major oil company most opposed to
> international action on global warming,
> complained that his predecessor was too
> "aggressive" on the issue.
>
> A memorandum from Exxon to the White House
> in early 2001 specifically asked it to get
> the previous chairman,
>
> Dr Robert Watson,
> the chief scientist of the World Bank,
> "replaced at the request of the US".
>
> The Bush administration then lobbied
> other countries in favour of Dr Pachauri -
>
> whom the former vice-president
> Al Gore called the
>
> "let's drag our feet" candidate,
> and got him elected to replace Dr Watson,
> a British-born naturalised American,
> who had repeatedly called for urgent action.
>
> But this month, at a conference of Small Island
> Developing States on the Indian Ocean island,
> the new chairman,
>
> a former head of India's Tata Energy Research Institute,
> himself issued what top United Nations officials described
> as a "very courageous" challenge.
>
> He told delegates: "Climate change is for real.
>
> We have just a small window of
> opportunity and it is closing
> rather rapidly.
>
> There is not a moment to lose."
>
> Afterwards he told The Independent on
> unday that widespread dying of coral reefs,
> and rapid melting of ice in the Arctic,
>
> had driven him to the conclusion that the
> danger point the IPCC had been set up to
> avoid had already been reached.
>
> Reefs throughout the world are perishing
> as the seas warm up: as water temperatures
> rise,
>
> they lose their colours and turn a ghostly white.
>
> Partly as a result,
> up to a quarter of the world's
> corals have been destroyed.
>
> And in November,
> a multi-year study by 300 scientists
> concluded that the Arctic was warming
> twice as fast as the rest of the world
> and that its ice-cap had shrunk by up
> to 20 per cent in the past three decades.
>
> The ice is also 40 per cent thinner than
> it was in the 1970s and is expected to
> disappear altogether by 2070.
>
> And while Dr Pachauri was speaking parts
> of the Arctic were having a January
>
> "heatwave",
>
> with temperatures eight to nine
> degrees centigrade higher than
> normal.
>
> He also cited alarming measurements,
> first reported in The Independent on Sunday,
> showing that levels of carbon dioxide
> (the main cause of global warming)
> have leapt abruptly over the past two years,
> suggesting that climate change may be
> accelerating out of control.
>
> He added that,
> because of inertia built into
> the Earth's natural systems,
> the world was now only experiencing
> the result of pollution emitted in the 1960s,
>
> and much greater effects would occur as the
> increased pollution of later decades worked
> its way through.
>
> He concluded:
>
> "We are risking the ability of the human race to survive."
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
begin 666 spacer.gif
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MV-:O%9Y2^Q%@*+A>5KD%P/KN'+2"'UF%?3=H0!\K$@+H0A4E;<5!> R [1I'
M(+UE17@PI-NVAZA6'!_[Y080*H#!2@]K@2.2\;#&/ I,\SJ96[YQ;@E7^[J,
ML^K.GV,C95F:7T(U"GH^2)VY:;X'M5=U76S(;B-[T-H"86)O_2DXOWX'4R,NLD\LQU%NO",AK31 ,63;QO\ILV8D>
M@7=];NDU52E2!='WGP'[[/$?``?TA=^#(U01`A5H04,%A!AFJ.&&'';HX8<@
&AHA?! `[
`
end
|
|
| | From: | sparky | | Subject: | Re: Point of No Return - Global Warming | | Date: | Sun, 23 Jan 2005 23:49:36 GMT |
|
|
| Scientists add to heat over global warming
by S. Fred Singer
Washington Times, May 5, 1998
The Global Warming Treaty and its shaky science are under attack by the
largest group of scientists ever. A petition, initiated by the Oregon
Institute of Science and Medicine and endorsed by more than 15,000
scientists, urges President Clinton not to sign the Climate Protocol
negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, last December.
But treaty supporters are counterattacking. First off the mark is the
science establishment, represented by the Council of the National Academy of
Sciences. In a widely reported April 20 press release, the NAS Council
grouses not so much about the petition itself but about a scientific summary
paper that was sent to potential signers. The Council, hastily convened by
telephone, does not contest the content of the summary paper, which is based
entirely on peer-reviewed articles from scientific journals; the main
complaint seems to be that the format of the paper may resemble an NAS
publication.
As far as the petition itself is concerned, the council?-minus its
abstaining and nonvoting members and without having polled the NAS
membership as a whole?-states tersely that it "does not reflect the
conclusions of expert reports of the Academy." This statement may well be
correct; but it can better be interpreted as a rejection of the Academy's
conclusions by a large fraction of the scientific community, including many
NAS members who signed the petition.
The 15,000-plus signers, about two-thirds of whom hold advanced academic
degrees, question the uncertain science underlying the Protocol, noting it
does not agree with atmospheric data. (While computer models predict a
strong warming trend, observations from weather satellites and weather
balloons show a cooling trend over the past 20 years.) Many of the signers
are experts in the pertinent scientific fields of atmospheric physics,
meteorology, oceanography, geology, biology, agriculture, and in relevant
engineering specialties. They concur that a modest warming would be
generally beneficial for humanity and, further, that increases in
atmospheric carbon dioxide would improve the growth of agricultural crops
and forests?-about which there is no disagreement. They firmly oppose the
Kyoto Accord, which would raise the cost of energy and all goods, hobble
economic growth and destroy jobs. The Accord supporters? charge that a few
bogus names turned up on the petition is inconsequential when measured
against the credentials of thousands of genuine signatories.
All that the council statement musters in defense of the Kyoto Accord is a
scientifically outdated NAS/National Research Council report, titled "Policy
Implications of Greenhouse Warming." Quoting from this 1991 report, the
Council concludes that "even given the considerable uncertainties in our
knowledge of the relevant phenomena, greenhouse warming poses a potential
threat sufficient to merit prompt responses.... Investment in mitigation
measures acts as insurance protection against the great uncertainties and
the possibility of dramatic surprises." (Unfortunately, little guidance is
given about how much insurance is prudent beyond "no-regrets" policies, like
energy conservation, that make economic sense even in the absence of a
global warming "threat.")
But this exaggerated concern about global warming contrasts sharply with an
earlier NAS/NRC report, "Understanding Climate Change: A Program for
Action." There, in 1975, the NAS "experts" exhibited the same hysterical
fears?-this time, however, asserting a "finite possibility that a serious
worldwide cooling could befall the Earth within the next 100 years."
The 1975 NAS panel claimed to have good reason for their fears: Global
temperatures had been in steady decline since the 1940s. They considered the
preceding period of warming, between 1860 and 1940, as "unusual," following
as it did the "Little Ice Age," which had lasted from 1430 to 1850.
In "The Cooling: Has the next ice age already begun? Can we survive it?",
published in 1975 by Prentice--Hall, its author Lowell Ponte captures the
then prevailing mood: "The NAS report was shocking, for it represented a
warning from some of the world's most conservative scientists that an Ice
Age beginning in the near future . . . was not impossible." Contending that
we may be "on the brink of a [10,000 year] period of colder climate," the
NAS urged an immediate near-quadrupling of funds for research. "We simply
cannot afford to be unprepared for either a natural or man-made climatic
catastrophe [of global cooling]."
At about the: same time, as Mr. Ponte relates, a group of "leading
climatologists," meeting in Bonn, Germany, warned that "the facts of the
present climate change are such that the most optimistic experts would
assign near-certainty to major crop failures within a decade [because of
global cooling]. If national and international policies do not take these
near-certain failures into account, they win result in mass deaths by
starvation and probably in anarchy and violence that could exact a still
more terrible toll . . . ."
By 1975, the climate had indeed been cooling for about 35 years and many
scientists were becoming increasingly convinced that another Ice Age was
imminent. These experts included climatologist Stephen H. Schneider, who
later demonstrated his intellectual flexibility by becoming one of the
strongest proponents of global warming. Lester R. Brown, head of the
Worldwatch Institute, was then a major enthusiast for cooling, crop failures
and famine. Whether freeze or fry, he is still predicting global famine.
Mr. Ponte's book claims that "since 1970, half a million human beings in
Northern Africa and Asia have starved because of floods and droughts caused
by the cooling climate. . . .In the continental United States severe floods
have destroyed billions of dollars' worth of property in the Mississippi
Basin, the Great Lakes region, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. . . . Parts of
the nation were hit with what the National Weather Service called 'record
cold.'. . . Rain and floods described as 'the worst in a century' struck
large areas of Washington state."
In Europe, the 1960s were years of unusual cold, but the "odd warmth" of the
1970s was also considered a feature of global cooling. Warned British
climatologist Hubert H. Lamb, "Like chills and fever, these are an signs of
a planet catching climatic cold."
Mr. Ponte lectures the public: "Global cooling presents humankind with the
most important social, political and adaptive challenge we have had to deal
with for 10,000 years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is
of ultimate importance: the survival of ourselves, our children, our
species."
Any of this sound familiar?
Only a year later, by 1976, global cooling suddenly ended?-but not the
scientific hype about future climate catastrophes. In criticizing the
15,000-plus-signature petition the Council's press release promises to put
any doubts to rest with yet another NAS "expert" report to be issued later
this year. No doubt, given their track record, the solution win involve
massive funding for costly insurance schemes "before it's too late."
"torresD" wrote in message
news:5jWId.5217$cZ1.1306@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net...
> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=603752
> He concluded:
>
> "We are risking the ability of the human race to survive."
>
>
> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=603752
>
> Global warming approaching point of no return,
> warns leading climate expert
> By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
> 23 January 2005
>
>
> Global warning has already hit the danger
> point that international attempts to curb it
> are designed to avoid, according to the world's
> top climate watchdog.
>
> Dr Rajendra Pachauri,
> the chairman of the official
> Intergovernmental Panel on
> Climate Change (IPCC),
>
> told an international conference attended
> by 114 governments in Mauritius this month
> that he personally believes that the world
> has
>
> "already reached the level of dangerous
> concentrations of carbon dioxide in the
> atmosphere"
>
> and called for immediate and "very deep"
> cuts in the pollution if humanity is to
> "survive".
>
> His comments rocked the Bush administration -
> which immediately tried to slap him down -
> not least because it put him in his post
> after Exxon,
>
> the major oil company most opposed to
> international action on global warming,
> complained that his predecessor was too
> "aggressive" on the issue.
>
> A memorandum from Exxon to the White House
> in early 2001 specifically asked it to get
> the previous chairman,
>
> Dr Robert Watson,
> the chief scientist of the World Bank,
> "replaced at the request of the US".
>
> The Bush administration then lobbied
> other countries in favour of Dr Pachauri -
>
> whom the former vice-president
> Al Gore called the
>
> "let's drag our feet" candidate,
> and got him elected to replace Dr Watson,
> a British-born naturalised American,
> who had repeatedly called for urgent action.
>
> But this month, at a conference of Small Island
> Developing States on the Indian Ocean island,
> the new chairman,
>
> a former head of India's Tata Energy Research Institute,
> himself issued what top United Nations officials described
> as a "very courageous" challenge.
>
> He told delegates: "Climate change is for real.
>
> We have just a small window of
> opportunity and it is closing
> rather rapidly.
>
> There is not a moment to lose."
>
> Afterwards he told The Independent on
> unday that widespread dying of coral reefs,
> and rapid melting of ice in the Arctic,
>
> had driven him to the conclusion that the
> danger point the IPCC had been set up to
> avoid had already been reached.
>
> Reefs throughout the world are perishing
> as the seas warm up: as water temperatures
> rise,
>
> they lose their colours and turn a ghostly white.
>
> Partly as a result,
> up to a quarter of the world's
> corals have been destroyed.
>
> And in November,
> a multi-year study by 300 scientists
> concluded that the Arctic was warming
> twice as fast as the rest of the world
> and that its ice-cap had shrunk by up
> to 20 per cent in the past three decades.
>
> The ice is also 40 per cent thinner than
> it was in the 1970s and is expected to
> disappear altogether by 2070.
>
> And while Dr Pachauri was speaking parts
> of the Arctic were having a January
>
> "heatwave",
>
> with temperatures eight to nine
> degrees centigrade higher than
> normal.
>
> He also cited alarming measurements,
> first reported in The Independent on Sunday,
> showing that levels of carbon dioxide
> (the main cause of global warming)
> have leapt abruptly over the past two years,
> suggesting that climate change may be
> accelerating out of control.
>
> He added that,
> because of inertia built into
> the Earth's natural systems,
> the world was now only experiencing
> the result of pollution emitted in the 1960s,
>
> and much greater effects would occur as the
> increased pollution of later decades worked
> its way through.
>
> He concluded:
>
> "We are risking the ability of the human race to survive."
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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M````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
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|
|
| | From: | sparky | | Subject: | Re: Point of No Return - Global Warming | | Date: | Sun, 23 Jan 2005 23:54:02 GMT |
|
|
| Alas! Global cooling strikes!
© 2000 Discerning the Times Digest and NewsBytes
The topsy-turvy world of global temperature sparring is once again
causing confusion and angst among scientists. After cleverly convincing
millions of people around the world that global warming is going to "destroy
life as we know it" by melting glaciers, creating floods (or droughts,
depending on which group issues the scare), El Nińos, destroying the
economy, wiping out vast species of flora and fauna (and in all probability,
humans), could global cooling be the next menace-du-jour to afflict the
earth? Doubtful. When the pendulum of controversy stops swinging, perhaps
mankind will just come to the eye-opening realization that temperature
cycles are just part of God's grand design, and there was never any global
warming danger in the first place.
Icing the global warming fears
The 3000 year temperature of the earth as measured by
sedimentary evidence in the Sargasso Sea off the southeastern United States
shows temperatures 2500 to 3000 years ago were much higher than today.
Rising temperatures over the past 100 years blamed on global warming are in
fact merely a recovery from the Little Ice Age in the 1700s when there was
no solar activity. The global temperature is still over 1oC cooler than it
was in the 1200s during the Medieval Climate Optimum.
It is no wonder that people have been confused by all the conflicting
reports on climate change. Even scientists can't seem to come to any
consensus. Take, for instance, the vast array of news recently. On Tuesday
January 23, The Age revealed that British researchers "have found evidence
that the world has become 10 degrees Celsius chillier in the last 3.2
million years. The cooling off is five times greater than experts had
previously believed." Enough, in fact, to cause humans to "evolve" in order
to adapt to it.
Reuters on January 8 revealed that the United States experienced its
coldest November and December on record last year with a bone-chilling
average national temperature of only 33.8 degrees Fahrenheit which broke a
record that had stood for over 100 years. A Miami Herald article on January
10 concurred with the Reuters story by stating that "Manatees and pelicans
hit by frostbite, sea turtles nearly dead from the cold, fish and shrimp
killed by plummeting water temperatures" were among the casualties of the
severe cold. Curiously, many scientists, possibly through some type of
evolutionary adaptation, are able to overlook news like this in their blind
quest to form a doomsday crisis. (Maybe they just fall asleep during the
evening weather report.)
On the same day, a BBC article told quite a different story. The UN
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has been meeting in
Shanghai, China, issued a report stating that "the world's leading
climatologists say global warming is happening faster than previously
predicted." The most accurate scientific information refutes this assertion,
along with their argument that man is responsible for causing it. Discerning
the Times does, however, agree with one aspect of the report regarding their
uncertain observation techniques which notes that "there are still many gaps
in information and understanding."
The ground based temperature measurements (red) show a rapid
increase in earth's temperature compared to the far more accurate satellite
temperature measurements (blue). It has long been known that ground based
temperatures suffer from errors caused by the heat-Island effect, which
occurs when the once rural meteorological station becomes surrounded by
asphalt as the city expands around it. Just recently it was determined that
the temperatures taken at sea were totally incorrect and skewed the ground
based temperatures by as much as 40 percent too high. Factors like the solar
activity and El Ninős are far more important in determining earth's
temperature than carbon dioxide emissions.
In the article, Dr. Robert Watson, who heads the panel of scientists
advising the United Nations, paints a very bleak picture of the future by
predicting water shortages, disease, and agricultural damage. As reported by
the January 23 Washington Post, Watson claimed that "Earth's average
temperature could rise by as much as 10.4 degrees over the next 100
years" -- the most rapid change in 10 millennia and more than 60 percent
higher than the same group predicted less than six years ago.
"The scientific consensus presented in this comprehensive report about
human-induced climate change should sound alarm bells in every national
capital and in every local community," said Klaus Topfler, head of the U.N.
Environment Program. "We should start preparing ourselves."
Global warming a fraud to support a political agenda
Dr. Robert Watson, director of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) made very misleading, even fraudulent claims at the
January 22 IPCC meeting that global warming could heat the earth by 10oC in
the next 100 years. Watson has a history of politicizing science to advance
the UN drive for global governance.
This is not the first time Dr. Watson has been less than forthright.
Watson chaired the writing of the UN Global Biodiversity Assessment (GBA) in
1993-1994, and was scientific advisor to the president on biodiversity. At
the very time Senate majority leader Senator George Mitchell (D-ME) was
asking the UN for the draft version of the GBA, Watson had it on his desk.
The UN said they had no idea what the Senate was asking for. Watson knew
about the request, yet did not give the Senate or Democratic colleague
George Mitchell a copy of the draft. Dr. Watson clearly has more up his
sleeve than just a concern for the environment. The global warming
"holocaust" is the ticket needed to launch the Biodiversity Treaty and other
dangerous agendas all designed to give the UN control over humanity. In
short, these ecological disasters are a fraud to perpetrate a political
agenda.
"torresD" wrote in message
news:5jWId.5217$cZ1.1306@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net...
> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=603752
> He concluded:
>
> "We are risking the ability of the human race to survive."
>
>
> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=603752
>
> Global warming approaching point of no return,
> warns leading climate expert
> By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
> 23 January 2005
>
>
> Global warning has already hit the danger
> point that international attempts to curb it
> are designed to avoid, according to the world's
> top climate watchdog.
>
> Dr Rajendra Pachauri,
> the chairman of the official
> Intergovernmental Panel on
> Climate Change (IPCC),
>
> told an international conference attended
> by 114 governments in Mauritius this month
> that he personally believes that the world
> has
>
> "already reached the level of dangerous
> concentrations of carbon dioxide in the
> atmosphere"
>
> and called for immediate and "very deep"
> cuts in the pollution if humanity is to
> "survive".
>
> His comments rocked the Bush administration -
> which immediately tried to slap him down -
> not least because it put him in his post
> after Exxon,
>
> the major oil company most opposed to
> international action on global warming,
> complained that his predecessor was too
> "aggressive" on the issue.
>
> A memorandum from Exxon to the White House
> in early 2001 specifically asked it to get
> the previous chairman,
>
> Dr Robert Watson,
> the chief scientist of the World Bank,
> "replaced at the request of the US".
>
> The Bush administration then lobbied
> other countries in favour of Dr Pachauri -
>
> whom the former vice-president
> Al Gore called the
>
> "let's drag our feet" candidate,
> and got him elected to replace Dr Watson,
> a British-born naturalised American,
> who had repeatedly called for urgent action.
>
> But this month, at a conference of Small Island
> Developing States on the Indian Ocean island,
> the new chairman,
>
> a former head of India's Tata Energy Research Institute,
> himself issued what top United Nations officials described
> as a "very courageous" challenge.
>
> He told delegates: "Climate change is for real.
>
> We have just a small window of
> opportunity and it is closing
> rather rapidly.
>
> There is not a moment to lose."
>
> Afterwards he told The Independent on
> unday that widespread dying of coral reefs,
> and rapid melting of ice in the Arctic,
>
> had driven him to the conclusion that the
> danger point the IPCC had been set up to
> avoid had already been reached.
>
> Reefs throughout the world are perishing
> as the seas warm up: as water temperatures
> rise,
>
> they lose their colours and turn a ghostly white.
>
> Partly as a result,
> up to a quarter of the world's
> corals have been destroyed.
>
> And in November,
> a multi-year study by 300 scientists
> concluded that the Arctic was warming
> twice as fast as the rest of the world
> and that its ice-cap had shrunk by up
> to 20 per cent in the past three decades.
>
> The ice is also 40 per cent thinner than
> it was in the 1970s and is expected to
> disappear altogether by 2070.
>
> And while Dr Pachauri was speaking parts
> of the Arctic were having a January
>
> "heatwave",
>
> with temperatures eight to nine
> degrees centigrade higher than
> normal.
>
> He also cited alarming measurements,
> first reported in The Independent on Sunday,
> showing that levels of carbon dioxide
> (the main cause of global warming)
> have leapt abruptly over the past two years,
> suggesting that climate change may be
> accelerating out of control.
>
> He added that,
> because of inertia built into
> the Earth's natural systems,
> the world was now only experiencing
> the result of pollution emitted in the 1960s,
>
> and much greater effects would occur as the
> increased pollution of later decades worked
> its way through.
>
> He concluded:
>
> "We are risking the ability of the human race to survive."
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
|
|
| | From: | \The Right One\ | | Subject: | Re: Point of No Return - Global Warming | | Date: | Mon, 24 Jan 2005 00:16:19 GMT |
|
|
| The global warming nazies thnk that EMC2 was arrived at by a show of hands
--
Terry Pearson
http://www.rightpoint.org
There are two types of values
in Canada. Moral and Liberal.
"sparky" wrote in message
news:uOWId.655$4K3.213657@monger.newsread.com...
> Alas! Global cooling strikes!
> © 2000 Discerning the Times Digest and NewsBytes
> The topsy-turvy world of global temperature sparring is once again
> causing confusion and angst among scientists. After cleverly convincing
> millions of people around the world that global warming is going to
"destroy
> life as we know it" by melting glaciers, creating floods (or droughts,
> depending on which group issues the scare), El Nińos, destroying the
> economy, wiping out vast species of flora and fauna (and in all
probability,
> humans), could global cooling be the next menace-du-jour to afflict the
> earth? Doubtful. When the pendulum of controversy stops swinging, perhaps
> mankind will just come to the eye-opening realization that temperature
> cycles are just part of God's grand design, and there was never any global
> warming danger in the first place.
> Icing the global warming fears
>
>
> The 3000 year temperature of the earth as measured by
> sedimentary evidence in the Sargasso Sea off the southeastern United
States
> shows temperatures 2500 to 3000 years ago were much higher than today.
> Rising temperatures over the past 100 years blamed on global warming are
in
> fact merely a recovery from the Little Ice Age in the 1700s when there was
> no solar activity. The global temperature is still over 1oC cooler than it
> was in the 1200s during the Medieval Climate Optimum.
> It is no wonder that people have been confused by all the
conflicting
> reports on climate change. Even scientists can't seem to come to any
> consensus. Take, for instance, the vast array of news recently. On Tuesday
> January 23, The Age revealed that British researchers "have found evidence
> that the world has become 10 degrees Celsius chillier in the last 3.2
> million years. The cooling off is five times greater than experts had
> previously believed." Enough, in fact, to cause humans to "evolve" in
order
> to adapt to it.
>
> Reuters on January 8 revealed that the United States experienced its
> coldest November and December on record last year with a bone-chilling
> average national temperature of only 33.8 degrees Fahrenheit which broke a
> record that had stood for over 100 years. A Miami Herald article on
January
> 10 concurred with the Reuters story by stating that "Manatees and pelicans
> hit by frostbite, sea turtles nearly dead from the cold, fish and shrimp
> killed by plummeting water temperatures" were among the casualties of the
> severe cold. Curiously, many scientists, possibly through some type of
> evolutionary adaptation, are able to overlook news like this in their
blind
> quest to form a doomsday crisis. (Maybe they just fall asleep during the
> evening weather report.)
>
> On the same day, a BBC article told quite a different story. The UN
> Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has been meeting
in
> Shanghai, China, issued a report stating that "the world's leading
> climatologists say global warming is happening faster than previously
> predicted." The most accurate scientific information refutes this
assertion,
> along with their argument that man is responsible for causing it.
Discerning
> the Times does, however, agree with one aspect of the report regarding
their
> uncertain observation techniques which notes that "there are still many
gaps
> in information and understanding."
>
>
> The ground based temperature measurements (red) show a rapid
> increase in earth's temperature compared to the far more accurate
satellite
> temperature measurements (blue). It has long been known that ground based
> temperatures suffer from errors caused by the heat-Island effect, which
> occurs when the once rural meteorological station becomes surrounded by
> asphalt as the city expands around it. Just recently it was determined
that
> the temperatures taken at sea were totally incorrect and skewed the ground
> based temperatures by as much as 40 percent too high. Factors like the
solar
> activity and El Ninős are far more important in determining earth's
> temperature than carbon dioxide emissions.
> In the article, Dr. Robert Watson, who heads the panel of scientists
> advising the United Nations, paints a very bleak picture of the future by
> predicting water shortages, disease, and agricultural damage. As reported
by
> the January 23 Washington Post, Watson claimed that "Earth's average
> temperature could rise by as much as 10.4 degrees over the next 100
> years" -- the most rapid change in 10 millennia and more than 60 percent
> higher than the same group predicted less than six years ago.
>
> "The scientific consensus presented in this comprehensive report
about
> human-induced climate change should sound alarm bells in every national
> capital and in every local community," said Klaus Topfler, head of the
U.N.
> Environment Program. "We should start preparing ourselves."
>
> Global warming a fraud to support a political agenda
>
>
> Dr. Robert Watson, director of the UN Intergovernmental Panel
on
> Climate Change (IPCC) made very misleading, even fraudulent claims at the
> January 22 IPCC meeting that global warming could heat the earth by 10oC
in
> the next 100 years. Watson has a history of politicizing science to
advance
> the UN drive for global governance.
> This is not the first time Dr. Watson has been less than forthright.
> Watson chaired the writing of the UN Global Biodiversity Assessment (GBA)
in
> 1993-1994, and was scientific advisor to the president on biodiversity. At
> the very time Senate majority leader Senator George Mitchell (D-ME) was
> asking the UN for the draft version of the GBA, Watson had it on his desk.
> The UN said they had no idea what the Senate was asking for. Watson knew
> about the request, yet did not give the Senate or Democratic colleague
> George Mitchell a copy of the draft. Dr. Watson clearly has more up his
> sleeve than just a concern for the environment. The global warming
> "holocaust" is the ticket needed to launch the Biodiversity Treaty and
other
> dangerous agendas all designed to give the UN control over humanity. In
> short, these ecological disasters are a fraud to perpetrate a political
> agenda.
>
>
> "torresD" wrote in message
> news:5jWId.5217$cZ1.1306@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net...
> > http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=603752
> > He concluded:
> >
> > "We are risking the ability of the human race to survive."
> >
> >
> > http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=603752
> >
> > Global warming approaching point of no return,
> > warns leading climate expert
> > By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
> > 23 January 2005
> >
> >
> > Global warning has already hit the danger
> > point that international attempts to curb it
> > are designed to avoid, according to the world's
> > top climate watchdog.
> >
> > Dr Rajendra Pachauri,
> > the chairman of the official
> > Intergovernmental Panel on
> > Climate Change (IPCC),
> >
> > told an international conference attended
> > by 114 governments in Mauritius this month
> > that he personally believes that the world
> > has
> >
> > "already reached the level of dangerous
> > concentrations of carbon dioxide in the
> > atmosphere"
> >
> > and called for immediate and "very deep"
> > cuts in the pollution if humanity is to
> > "survive".
> >
> > His comments rocked the Bush administration -
> > which immediately tried to slap him down -
> > not least because it put him in his post
> > after Exxon,
> >
> > the major oil company most opposed to
> > international action on global warming,
> > complained that his predecessor was too
> > "aggressive" on the issue.
> >
> > A memorandum from Exxon to the White House
> > in early 2001 specifically asked it to get
> > the previous chairman,
> >
> > Dr Robert Watson,
> > the chief scientist of the World Bank,
> > "replaced at the request of the US".
> >
> > The Bush administration then lobbied
> > other countries in favour of Dr Pachauri -
> >
> > whom the former vice-president
> > Al Gore called the
> >
> > "let's drag our feet" candidate,
> > and got him elected to replace Dr Watson,
> > a British-born naturalised American,
> > who had repeatedly called for urgent action.
> >
> > But this month, at a conference of Small Island
> > Developing States on the Indian Ocean island,
> > the new chairman,
> >
> > a former head of India's Tata Energy Research Institute,
> > himself issued what top United Nations officials described
> > as a "very courageous" challenge.
> >
> > He told delegates: "Climate change is for real.
> >
> > We have just a small window of
> > opportunity and it is closing
> > rather rapidly.
> >
> > There is not a moment to lose."
> >
> > Afterwards he told The Independent on
> > unday that widespread dying of coral reefs,
> > and rapid melting of ice in the Arctic,
> >
> > had driven him to the conclusion that the
> > danger point the IPCC had been set up to
> > avoid had already been reached.
> >
> > Reefs throughout the world are perishing
> > as the seas warm up: as water temperatures
> > rise,
> >
> > they lose their colours and turn a ghostly white.
> >
> > Partly as a result,
> > up to a quarter of the world's
> > corals have been destroyed.
> >
> > And in November,
> > a multi-year study by 300 scientists
> > concluded that the Arctic was warming
> > twice as fast as the rest of the world
> > and that its ice-cap had shrunk by up
> > to 20 per cent in the past three decades.
> >
> > The ice is also 40 per cent thinner than
> > it was in the 1970s and is expected to
> > disappear altogether by 2070.
> >
> > And while Dr Pachauri was speaking parts
> > of the Arctic were having a January
> >
> > "heatwave",
> >
> > with temperatures eight to nine
> > degrees centigrade higher than
> > normal.
> >
> > He also cited alarming measurements,
> > first reported in The Independent on Sunday,
> > showing that levels of carbon dioxide
> > (the main cause of global warming)
> > have leapt abruptly over the past two years,
> > suggesting that climate change may be
> > accelerating out of control.
> >
> > He added that,
> > because of inertia built into
> > the Earth's natural systems,
> > the world was now only experiencing
> > the result of pollution emitted in the 1960s,
> >
> > and much greater effects would occur as the
> > increased pollution of later decades worked
> > its way through.
> >
> > He concluded:
> >
> > "We are risking the ability of the human race to survive."
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
|
|
| | From: | Noeta | | Subject: | Re: Point of No Return - Global Warming | | Date: | Sun, 23 Jan 2005 16:47:31 -0600 |
|
|
|
""The Right One"" wrote in message
news:n7XId.153872$Xk.78337@pd7tw3no...
> The global warming nazies thnk that EMC2 was arrived at by a show of hands
> --
>
In fact, EMC2 sort of was arrived at by a show of hands. This is how science
works:
Scientist A dreams up something like EMC2, evolution, or global warming.
Scientist A publishes the theory for review.
Scientists B-Z read the review, argue, debate, and try to disprove or prove
Scientist A's theory.
Over time enough scientists argue against or disprove the theory and it is
refined or scrapped, or enough of them start to agree/ prove it that the
theory edges towards fact.
Essentially the theory becomes fact when most of the scientific community
raises their hands and agrees with it.
In the early 1500 Copernicus theorized that the stars did not spin around
earth, but rather that earth and the planets spun around a fixed sun. About
100 years later when Galileo agreed with Copernicus the theory was still
suspect.
Problem with Global Warming is we may not have 100 years to decided if it's
true or not.
|
|
| | From: | Richard Dell | | Subject: | Re: Point of No Return - Global Warming | | Date: | Mon, 24 Jan 2005 02:56:54 -0000 |
|
|
| "Noeta" wrote in message
news:sqWdnfAQUt-X2GncRVn-vA@centurytel.net...
| In fact, EMC2 sort of was arrived at by a show of hands. This is how science
| works:
|
| Scientist A dreams up something like EMC2, evolution, or global warming.
| Scientist A publishes the theory for review.
| Scientists B-Z read the review, argue, debate, and try to disprove or prove
| Scientist A's theory.
| Over time enough scientists argue against or disprove the theory and it is
| refined or scrapped, or enough of them start to agree/ prove it that the
| theory edges towards fact.
| Essentially the theory becomes fact when most of the scientific community
| raises their hands and agrees with it.
|
| In the early 1500 Copernicus theorized that the stars did not spin around
| earth, but rather that earth and the planets spun around a fixed sun. About
| 100 years later when Galileo agreed with Copernicus the theory was still
| suspect.
We are not dealing with "theories" here. All the Physics is well known. We are
talking about simulations of climate using large and complex computer models. In
these models are a number of parameters (such as the reflectance coefficient of
clouds) that have to be determined experimentally. Computer power has only
recently been adequate to include both atmosphere and ocean circulation, and
their interaction. The atmosphere includes many gases which have different
effects on radiation absorption and retention. Only recently, for example, was
it determined that the effect of particulates on solar reflection due to clouds
was ten times as powerful as previously estimated.
So the simulations are slowly getting more accurate and accounting for more
effects. All the models point in the same direction. We do not have a right or
wrong question here, but a question of degree of accuracy. Recent extreme
weather events, predicted by the models, strongly indicate that the problem is
real and urgent.
| Problem with Global Warming is we may not have 100 years to decided if it's
| true or not.
Indeed. We have about 20 years before positive feedback effects may take matters
out of our control. And the experience of the fisheries suggests that political
action will be far too little, far too late.
|
|
|
