global warming?

[Amie]

Do you have a position about the issue and if so, how did you arrive at it?

This website lists evidence after evidence of growing glaciers: http://www.iceagenow.com/Growing_Glaciers.htm

Over and over again, I see articles like this one claiming that polar bears are starving and melting ice is possibly releasing methane and will be making the oceans' waters rise: http://news.aol.com/article/sea-level-rise/483569?icid=main|classic|dl1|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fne ws.aol.com%2Farticle%2Fsea-level-rise%2F483569

Amie

[Lou]

There is no science behind “Global Warming” it’s just bovine scatology. The progressives have to create a global “Armageddon” of global warming to control the world and seize our property.

As I was watching Al Gore’s movie a inconsistent truth and as he told how when C02 levels rose global warming always followed. He had a nice chart that showed how that had been the case over hundreds of thousands of years. Though it sounded good it hit me to check that “fact” for my self. What I found the data showed that the warming came first then the C02 levels would rise. As the oceans temperature rise so did the decay rate that caused the C02 to rise.

There was a time when some one would say that the government would tax the air we breathe it would get a laugh. It’s not funny now, in the last week they tried. We breathe C02.

[Paige]

I'm more inclined to believe we are in for some cooling, due to our "silent sun."


The solar wind – which is comprised of electrically charged particles streaming out from the star – is weaker than at any time since scientists began accurate observations in the 1950s, and the number of sunspots in 2008 may be the lowest since the 19th century.

…no one knows how long the Sun is likely to stay quiet. One extreme would be a continued period of inactivity, with very few sunspots or solar storms, that could last for decades. The last such suspension of the 11-year solar cycle occurred between 1645 and 1715, a period known by historians of astronomy as the Maunder Minimum, which coincided with the coldest period of the past millennium, known as the “little ice age”.



Up here in the north, we'd like to avoid another Maunder Minimum...

[Me Again]

as usual, the gov't is driving the science, and screwing the whole thing up. While focusing on a non-existent problem, they draw everyone's attention away from the larger issues, even environmental ones, that could be solved by everyday citizens - but we are so busy trying to keep the gov't from taking over the economy -

oops too late. Between Obama and Bush, they've already got a good start

[jlv]

Global warming is real. Mars has global warming. So does Venus. How are we causing this?

CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing, at about 5 times the rate we are producing it. The CO2 increase is not man made and is caused by, not the cause of the temperature increase.

[Lou]

Aerosols May Drive a Significant Portion of Arctic Warming04.08.09 Aerosols can influence climate directly by either reflecting or absorbing the sun's radiation as it moves through the atmosphere. The tiny airborne particles enter the atmosphere from sources such as industrial pollution, volcanoes and residential cooking stoves. Credit: NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio
> Larger image Though greenhouse gases are invariably at the center of discussions about global climate change, new NASA research suggests that much of the atmospheric warming observed in the Arctic since 1976 may be due to changes in tiny airborne particles called aerosols.

Emitted by natural and human sources, aerosols can directly influence climate by reflecting or absorbing the sun's radiation. The small particles also affect climate indirectly by seeding clouds and changing cloud properties, such as reflectivity.

A new study, led by climate scientist Drew Shindell of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, used a coupled ocean-atmosphere model to investigate how sensitive different regional climates are to changes in levels of carbon dioxide, ozone, and aerosols.

The researchers found that the mid and high latitudes are especially responsive to changes in the level of aerosols. Indeed, the model suggests aerosols likely account for 45 percent or more of the warming that has occurred in the Arctic during the last three decades. The results were published in the April issue of Nature Geoscience.

Though there are several varieties of aerosols, previous research has shown that two types -- sulfates and black carbon -- play an especially critical role in regulating climate change. Both are products of human activity.

Sulfates, which come primarily from the burning of coal and oil, scatter incoming solar radiation and have a net cooling effect on climate. Over the past three decades, the United States and European countries have passed a series of laws that have reduced sulfate emissions by 50 percent. While improving air quality and aiding public health, the result has been less atmospheric cooling from sulfates.
Researchers used an electron microscope to capture these images of black carbon attached to sulfate particles. The spherical structures in image A are sulfates; the arrows point to smaller chains of black carbon. Black carbon is shown in detail in image B. Image C shows fly ash, a product of coal-combustion, that's often found in association with black carbon. While black carbon absorbs radiation and contributes to warming, sulfates reflect it and tend to cool Earth. Credit: Peter Buseck, Arizona State University
> Larger image At the same time, black carbon emissions have steadily risen, largely because of increasing emissions from Asia. Black carbon -- small, soot-like particles produced by industrial processes and the combustion of diesel and biofuels -- absorb incoming solar radiation and have a strong warming influence on the atmosphere.

In the modeling experiment, Shindell and colleagues compiled detailed, quantitative information about the relative roles of various components of the climate system, such as solar variations, volcanic events, and changes in greenhouse gas levels. They then ran through various scenarios of how temperatures would change as the levels of ozone and aerosols -- including sulfates and black carbon -- varied in different regions of the world. Finally, they teased out the amount of warming that could be attributed to different climate variables. Aerosols loomed large.

The regions of Earth that showed the strongest responses to aerosols in the model are the same regions that have witnessed the greatest real-world temperature increases since 1976. The Arctic region has seen its surface air temperatures increase by 1.5 C (2.7 F) since the mid-1970s. In the Antarctic, where aerosols play less of a role, the surface air temperature has increased about 0.35 C (0.6 F).

That makes sense, Shindell explained, because of the Arctic's proximity to North America and Europe. The two highly industrialized regions have produced most of the world's aerosol emissions over the last century, and some of those aerosols drift northward and collect in the Arctic. Precipitation, which normally flushes aerosols out of the atmosphere, is minimal there, so the particles remain in the air longer and have a stronger impact than in other parts of the world.

Since decreasing amounts of sulfates and increasing amounts of black carbon both encourage warming, temperature increases can be especially rapid. The build-up of aerosols also triggers positive feedback cycles that further accelerate warming as snow and ice cover retreat.

In the Antarctic, in contrast, the impact of sulfates and black carbon is minimized because of the continent’s isolation from major population centers and the emissions they produce.

"There's a tendency to think of aerosols as small players, but they're not," said Shindell. "Right now, in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere and in the Arctic, the impact of aerosols is just as strong as that of the greenhouse gases."

Since the 1890s, surface temperatures have risen faster in the Arctic than in other regions of the world. In part, these rapid changes could be due to changes in aerosol levels. Clean air regulations passed in the 1970s, for example, have likely accelerated warming by diminishing the cooling effect of sulfates. Credit: Drew Shindell, Goddard Institute for Space Studies
> Larger image (pdf) The growing recognition that aerosols may play a larger climate role can have implications for policymakers.

"We will have very little leverage over climate in the next couple of decades if we're just looking at carbon dioxide," Shindell said. "If we want to try to stop the Arctic summer sea ice from melting completely over the next few decades, we're much better off looking at aerosols and ozone."

Aerosols tend to be quite-short lived, residing in the atmosphere for just a few days or weeks. Greenhouses gases, by contrast, can persist for hundreds of years. Atmospheric chemists theorize that the climate system may be more responsive to changes in aerosol levels over the next few decades than to changes in greenhouse gas levels, which will have the more powerful effect in coming centuries.

"This is an important model study, raising lots of great questions that will need to be investigated with field research," said Loretta Mickley, an atmospheric chemist from Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. who was not directly involved in the research. Understanding how aerosols behave in the atmosphere is still very much a work-in-progress, she noted, and every model needs to be compared rigorously to real life observations. But the science behind Shindell’s results should be taken seriously.

"It appears that aerosols have quite a powerful effect on climate, but there's still a lot more that we need to sort out," said Shindell.

NASA’s upcoming Glory satellite is designed to enhance our current aerosol measurement capabilities to help scientists reduce uncertainties about aerosols by measuring the distribution and microphysical properties of the particles.

source: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/warming_aerosols.html
bold & underline by Lou


Why does the “Global Warming” extremist ignore the facts and legislate us into the dark ages when facts prove them wrong?

[jlv]

Why does the “Global Warming” extremist ignore the facts and legislate us into the dark ages when facts prove them wrong?

Because the "Global Warming extremist" wants power. Legislating us into the dark ages will prove he has it.

[Lou]

The EPA just came out and said that the “Cap and Tax” scheme would send US jobs over seas. The progressives must not think the 600,000+ jobs a month we are loosing now isn’t enough.

[davo]

Re the "jobs over seas" -- no doubt it will all balance out then because they're using the same sort of rhetoric here as well... :cool:

[Me Again]

Davo,
yes, but at least you (and many others now) have lower taxes on the corporations and investors. Although cap-n-trade will drive up taxes everywhere, you're starting from a lower point than the U.S.

Cato did a whole book on the Global Tax Revolution, showing how different countries around the world are growing economically because they've cut taxes on investments. Trillions poured out of the U.S. into these other countries (e.g., Ireland, Australia). The U.S. has remained a high tax country (in regards to the corporations and business). McCain (unknowingly, his advisors told him to say it) ran on the idea of cutting corporate business taxes in order to stimulate growth; Obama ran on the opposite - "Raise taxes" on the evil rich.

It's Carter-redeux, but with a whole lot more international competition. Worries me something fierce...

[Amie]

Isn't globalization the future though?

Amie

[Me Again]

Sure, globalization is the future; and personally, a darn good one I think. My point was that, with Carter, when he did his economy squashing stuff, he didn't have to worry about the type of competition that we now face as a society. This nation cannot afford to be the highest taxing, highest spending, imperialistic force in the world. We will lose, as is evidenced by the current economic situation.

Of course other nations are facing a global recession; mainly because America is the main consumer nation in the world. We suffer, they all suffer - at least temporarily. I think that these other nations are going to move on and leave us in the dust, quite frankly. Unless we get some common sense about how we approach economics (and I'm not even talking about pure libertarian free-markets here). We proved for years that a mixed economy is workable (as these other countries are as well); not necessarily beneficial, but workable. Some of the most prosperous nations right now have national health care. Does that mean I think that's the best for our nation? Not at all, nor is it best for theirs, but it's currently working for them, with all the necessary (and damaging) restrictions. With our current situation economically, we cannot afford national health care. In fact, I'd like to see a total moratorium on health insurance. It's what has driven up the cost of medical procedures, and the government mandates have driven up the cost of the insurance.

To be competitive, we need to cut taxes, cut spending, and get rid of right-wing moralistic non-violent and no-victim crimes (like the War on Drugs and prostitution). Then, perhaps, we might be able to afford some kind of national health plan - even though I think it's a bad idea.

[Amie]

I gotcha Ed, and I'm glad that I asked!

Amie

[Amie]

Our local weatherman (Steve Browne (http://www.ksat.com/station/112525/detail.html)) reported that global warming is caused by solar activity, ie: http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/glob-warm.html

[Me Again]

Yes, any warming is caused by solar.

The problem is that, here in Northern Michigan, it is June 10th, and we haven't had a day with temps over 70 degrees yet. Our winter lasted until well into March (frost, snow, and freezing temps). Our "spring" was from the middle of March until now, and as I said, temps only went about 70 a couple of times, and only for a day.

All of my "global warming enthusiasts" that I work with aren't talking very much these days. Same as in regards to war - their candidate (they've found out he's a liar just like the last guy) INCREASED the number of troops in the Middle East. So much for "War is NOT the answer."

Politicians are useless. Trust in God, and in your family (which includes your "fictive kin," i.e., the folks you trust - um, that would be you guys).

[Jotham]

I couldn't resist ; )

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang/images/snowmen-rally.jpg

[Lou]

It’s been so cold here a farmer down the road was attacked by a Polar Bear when he was trying to bust the ice on his pond so his cattle could get a drink.

[Jotham]

LOL Lou : )
http://www.accrete.com/emo/Winter_Snowman2.gif

[Barry]

I couldn't resist ; )

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang/images/snowmen-rally.jpg



LOL I really liked that one!
Barry

[Mystic]

According to the FA we are in for cooler weather across the US in 2010. And where the temps will be "slightley warmer" in the winter months, those same area's will experience cooler temps in the summer. I just give all praise to God that we survived the 'Ice Age' during the 70's. hee hee

[Me Again]

but will the evidence be enough to avoid the largest tax increase in the history of this country (cap-and-trade)? If not, we won't be able to afford the heat we'll need to keep us warm next winter.

This is how the politicians will work it: they will pass this horrific bill. Next summer will be cooler, so few people will use their air conditioning. Less energy use will lead to a decline in CO2 emissions. The politicians will claim that their legislation is what caused the "positive outcomes" and we'll go into next winter with the higher fuel costs. People will literally freeze in their homes, especially the elderly who are on fixed incomes (and won't be getting a COLA increase this year for Social Security).

People dying will make the environmentalists happy since they believe that people are what is causing the environmental degradation (while it is actually government enforcing environmental policy that is causing it).

argh

[Lou]

I stole the polar bear thing from Art Laffer. Besides we know it couldn’t be true because “global warming” killed all the polar bears.

Ed “global warming” has nothing to do with facts it’s just to get a knee jerk emotion from people.

[Me Again]

I can't believe there's still people out there buying this stuff

we're freezing our collective asses off here, and I LIVE IN MICHIGAN. It's supposed to be cold here, but 2 coats? I've never worn a hat since becoming old enough to make that choice, now I don't go out with my hoodie up. Geesh

[Me Again]

Oh, and I wore long johns for the first time in years last week

[Lou]

It snowed in Miami and Disney World. The Coldest Florida has seen in seventy years. They can destroy data that disagrees with them, claim the debate is over with out letting debate but this cold is making people rethink what is really going on.

[David Timm]

I can't believe there's still people out there buying this stuff

we're freezing our collective asses off here, and I LIVE IN MICHIGAN. It's supposed to be cold here, but 2 coats? I've never worn a hat since becoming old enough to make that choice, now I don't go out with my hoodie up. Geesh


It snowed in Miami and Disney World. The Coldest Florida has seen in seventy years. They can destroy data that disagrees with them, claim the debate is over with out letting debate but this cold is making people rethink what is really going on.

The south is getting hit hard again with snow! I think climategate, the Fox News Channel, and talk radio are helping wake a lot of people up to this junk science. Unfortunately, it sounds like cap and tax (cap and trade) may be forced onto the American people by the politicians. That was the impression I got listening to the state of the union address.

[David Timm]

Here politicians during the last few years said it causes less snow:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d70iXVN5EVM


And a few days ago Dylan Ratigan said it causes more snow (a clip from Glenn Beck's show):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMWfDEPT2W4

[Lou]

As of today we have snow on the ground in “49" states. What are they going to say when it is on the beaches of Hawaii.

[Me Again]

As of today we have snow on the ground in “49" states. What are they going to say when it is on the beaches of Hawaii.

They are going to claim that it is "climate change" and cover up every reference to global warming in the literature. I'll bet that Gore's movie will be re-released where "climate change" is dubbed in over each occurrence of "global warming."

I've already faced the climate change argument whenever I mock global warming (it's colder than hell up here). So, I'm sure we'll see more of it.