Ron Sims' "Global Warming Action Plan" is intended to "invest the money needed to adapt to less snow in the mountains". A week and a half ago we were told that the local snowpack this year is "slightly above normal". In today's news: "Heavy Snow Leaves Avalanche Danger In Cascades"
Elsewhere in the U.S., record snowfall in Alaska, Indiana, Maine, Vermont and New York.
Also, a leading climate scientist throws, um, cold water on the latest warming scare with the finding that
Approximately 125,000 years ago, Earth was 3 to 5 degrees Celsius warmer on average than it is today, and sea levels were 4 to 6 meters higher.Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at February 20, 2007 10:04 AM | Email This
Snow pack is different from snow fall. With the warming, as with the glaciers worldwide, the stable snow pack in the Cascades has shrunk. Meaning the mountains retain much less water (stored as ice) through the seasons. And what water is stored as snow gets released as runoff much faster than before.
This is a major bummer.
One of the side effects is increased flooding. Another is that the forests are drier, increasing the potential for fires.
I'd have to dig a little to remember why snow fall increases under the climate change scenario. I dimly recall that as the atmosphere warms, moisture (humidity) increases, so there's more water available to fall, as rain and snow.
Posted by: zappini on February 20, 2007 09:58 AMThanks Shark. LOL
Posted by: Army Medic/Vet on February 20, 2007 10:05 AMAs New Media grows, and more people have the ability to make up their own minds based on publicly available information, Marxists just cringe. Progressive perish the thought that an Average Joe look at the IPCC findings and conclude that mere inches of change over decades does not constitute an emergency for himself or even for his children or grandchildren. And Nanny Staters like Nickels and Sims worry even more when Average Joe starts to waiver when "scientists" say things like "the debate is over," and that "consensus has been reached." And the thing that really strikes fear into the heart of a Marxist (do they have hearts?) is when Average Joe starts to recall (or use the Internet to help him recall) that there have been many previous doomsday predictions about Starvation, Disease, Overpopulation, Global Cooling, Alar, Power Lines, Avian Flu, etc. that have all failed to materialize.
Darn those pesky facts and changing supply and demand. Look for the Marxists to ban the Internet soon (hint, that's what they do in China with Google's willing help) to prevent Average Joe from reaching any conclusions on his own that big-brother would not like.
Posted by: Jeff B. on February 20, 2007 11:08 AMBut Anthropogenig GW kooks have been pointing to the less snowfall than historically as evidence of Anthropogenic GW.
They make the evidence fit their assumptions and that is why this whole snowjob is rapidly comming unraveled before their eyes.
Posted by: JDH on February 20, 2007 12:05 PMI like the quote from H. L. Mencken "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it."
Bill H
Posted by: Bill H on February 20, 2007 12:13 PMhttp://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches_quote04.html
Posted by: JDH on February 20, 2007 12:13 PMCheck out recent policy statement.
Posted by: John Bailo on February 20, 2007 12:22 PMHave you ever noticed how GW has all the trappings of a religion.
Umm. Not exactly. Faith in objective reality, empirical data, and falsifiable (Hopperian) theories is called "science".
Religion is system of beliefs which cannot be proven either true or false.
The two systems of beliefs don't overlap.
Unfortunately, that is NOT what you have with global warming--what you have is "consensus"--which is politics, not science. The models that have been created to support this religion have continually been wrong and have vastly overstated global warming. In fact, the recent release by the UN has dropped back their previous "estimates" of potential warming and sea level impacts substantially from what they were "estimating" just a few years ago.
These alarmists are from the same group that predicted the great global cooling 30 years ago. See Time magazine's "Another Ice Age?" in 1974 and Newsweek's "The Cooling World" in 1975.
Bill H
Posted by: Bill H on February 20, 2007 12:58 PMThe big flaw in that panic was that it set a date certain. Anybody have trouble starting your car on January 1st? Suddenly nobody ever mentioned Y2K again. The beauty of global warming is that its predictions are about 100 years away. None of us will be around to be embarrassed at that time. Yet it still offers rational for sweeping legislation and regulation.
By the way, the science behind Y2K was a lot better than any science behind global warming.
It won't take long. Al Gore is a genius at playing the fool. If it takes the average politician or major figure 10 years to become a laughing-stock, Al can cut that in half.
Give it about five years and folks will start to wonder where the doom and gloom is, and it will only get better from there. By the end of Al Gore's life, he will only be remembered as being another cassandra.
Posted by: Jeff B. on February 20, 2007 03:35 PMwhat you have is "consensus"--which is politics, not science
What you call "consensus" I call "best available science".
These alarmists are from the same group that predicted the great global cooling 30 years ago.
As I was still playing with my Legos, I didn't have an opinion at the time. But the way I understand it, atmospheric pollution in the form of aerosol sulpher was in fact responsible for a cooling effect. Alas, anti-pollution measures removed that factor.
Pacific Grove Phlash @ 17:
Limo Lib Michel Crichton is full of hot air
No one I know would accuse Crichton of being a liberal. A xenophobic, misogynist, Luddite, ignorant, alarmist suck-up, definitely. But not a liberal. The show 'ER' wasn't entirely awful, so I guess it balances out.
RBW @ 16:
Yea, all that Y2K alarmism was pretty funny. A lot of people made good money off all those survivialists.
A few years back, The Economist had a pretty good historical summary of popular apocalyptic movements in America. I hope the rest of the world gets a good laugh from our folly.
There were side benefits to Y2K. The $300b spent fueled the tech industry. A much greater effect than the so-called "Internet Boom". Notice what happened in 2000? Investment stopped cold turkey. A lot of companies got hammered. (My employer at the time, for instance.)
Even if someone continues to doubt anthropocentric climatic change, there's plenty of solid, good reasons to switch off of fossil fuels.
I'd think that conservatives would be all about energy independence, improving national security, economic security (oil is a huge fraction of trade imbalance; we borrow money from China to buy oil from OPEC at inflated prices), and revitalizing our domestic industries.
So, some die-hard conservatives don't believe in anthrocentric climate change. For whatever reason. Who cares?
The goals of both the greens and conservatives are in complete alignment. Who cares what each party's the motivation is?
I understand that I have a non-traditional view of most things. So be it.
But from where I'm sitting, the people continuing to dig in their heels over CO2 emissions are missing a golden opportunity to make common cause in order to further each side's agenda.
> Hmmmm .... Maybe an alligator got him?
No, actually, the weather got me. As you know, there was a cold front over the weekend. Following the cold front, as is normal, are several days of absolutely stunning weather.
I visited the beaches and parks along the Gulf coast today, travelling from Longboat Key to St. DeSoto Park. Visited five different beautiful places.
I did not see any alligators today (alligators are never found on the beach, they prefer fresh water), but I did see a pod of dolphins and plenty of other animals.
I watched the sunset at the Ft. DeSoto Long Fishing Pier. The sun sank down into the Gulf of Mexico with dolphins playing in the distant foreground, then the moon and Venus appeared. By the time I got home the stars were shining bright with Orion high in the sky and Sirius' blue glow underneath.
How is the weather in Seattle?
Posted by: David Mathews on February 20, 2007 04:55 PMBest Available Science, often represented by the acronym BAS in government documents, requires something more than "consensus". It requires science, and it generally requires that the science used be the best available. There are exceptions, but thats the gist of what it means.
So lets now examine the "science" of the Global Warming Alarmists Cult.
1. We have an unproven hypothysis and plenty of "peer reviewed" journal articles on what would happen if the hypothysis were true.
2. We have computer models, also based on the unproven hypothysis being true, that project potential future climate trends.
I will grant that a good deal of the efforts involved in the above follow general scientific principles, but they ignore one of the most basic tenets of science. They forgot to check and see if the their initial assumptions were valid.
This kind of science is not new. For 70-plus years science in the Soviet Union relied on a basic assumption that only socialism could produce valid data on which any theory could based. For much of this 70 years it was even a crime to use foriegn sources of data. As a result Soviet science in many areas lagged far behind the west. In a way though they used "best available science".
When the Global Warmists cult gets its head out of its collective (and collectivist) ass and proves that its most important assumption is valid, I, and indeed most other skeptics as well, will come around.
But they aren't doing this becasue they know what I know. It takes multiple decades of careful record keeping (i.e. collection of basic climate data) to even get a close approximation of whether their theory is right. In the mean-time they rely on very rough estimates called proxies.
This has nothing to do with conservative or any other political belief - this is about scientific integrity.
Gore and his Political/Religeous/Environmental Cult are nothing more than modern-day snake oil salesmen peddling bogus pseudoscience to the unwary.
Believe what you will Zapper, but remember what happened to chicken little and the boy who cried wolf.
Posted by: deadwood on February 20, 2007 05:21 PM> This has nothing to do with conservative or any other political belief - this is about scientific integrity.
Hee. Hee. Hee.
You fill your posts with political drivel. Where is the scientific integrity?
I'd be pleased to find a little glimmer of scientific curiousity in these conservatives and cannot find any.
Where is the scientific integrity?
And ... how is the weather in Seattle?
I can assure you that the weather is absolutely astonishing in Florida: yesterday, today, and (I am confident) tomorrow.
That's why I love cold fronts. Did you know that Florida went through a period of two months without a cold front this winter?
Florida's had a hot winter. Maybe it means something. Maybe it means nothing. But this is the most disturbing, unusual winter that I have ever experienced in my life.
Ad hominem. Nice. Very persuasive.
requires something more than "consensus". It requires science
Kind of like how peanut butter and jelly toast requires both peanut butter and jelly. And toast. Right?
1. We have an unproven hypothysis
You've tediously repeated an unfortunately common misunderstanding about science. Science is about falsifiability, not provability.
Not only that you dimwits lionize the guy. Check out the awards from every group that is behind anthropogenic GW he recieved. He is not alone, on the contrary he is the model that the leftist cabal that is behind this nonsense strives to emulate. I would say.
Posted by: JDH on February 20, 2007 06:59 PM> Not only that you dimwits lionize the guy. Check out the awards from every group that is behind anthropogenic GW he recieved. He is not alone, on the contrary he is the model that the leftist cabal that is behind this nonsense strives to emulate. I would say.
I hate to burst your bubble, JDH, but Al Gore is mentioned about a thousand times more often among conservatives than among those who believe that Global Warming is a problem & had reached that conclusion long before Al Gore's movie came out.
I watched Al Gore's movie. He did an excellent job. I watched a handful of Al Gore's interviews (both American and British), and Al Gore did a great job in drawing attention to the problem.
But I encountered the Global Warming idea long ago and was skeptical at first but eventually became convinced by the preponderance of evidence. This process began & was completed before Al Gore's movie came out.
I read Al Gore's book, Earth in the Balance, back in 1995. At the time I objected to the message on political grounds (I am not a Democrat) but that wasn't the end of my investigation of the subject.
I am always looking at different viewpoints and testing my own conclusions. The Global Warming concept and the problems with pollution/environmental degradation are not easily dismissed.
I have a certain affection for the living world which has existed from my earliest youth, too. I hate what humankind has done & continues to do to this world.
Humans have made a mess of the world. This behavior does have consequences, and when combined with the overpopulation problem these consequences attain truly apocalyptic form.
Just be happy that you are alive now rather than a hundred years from now. Future generations will pay a terrible price for the sins of this generation.
Posted by: David Mathews on February 20, 2007 07:17 PMPlease define "ad hominem". I hear this word very often from zipperhead zombies like youself. ALong with other fancy words like "shill" - what does THAT mean?
And "falsifiability"?
Obviously, unlike yourself, I did not study as deeply into the philosophy of science. I was too busy doing stuff like making observations and searching for solutions to the puzzles these observations presented. Not unlike science, eh?
Posted by: deadwood on February 20, 2007 08:10 PMUsed in a sentence: The weather is always changing.
Dave,
I guess you missed the memo, the industrial nationals population growth is barely reaching replacement, the population growth in those nations is due to immigration.
Any sinkholes near where you live?
Posted by: ronk on February 20, 2007 09:02 PMI would like to take this time to thank (sarcastically) China and India for the pollution and the greenhouse gases that they contribute in increasing amounts every year to the atmosphere. Their sins will cause future generations havoc, more fear and apoplexy and seriously an increase in the incidence of cancer !
Posted by: KS on February 20, 2007 09:20 PMGlobal warming has become a new religion. No one is supposed to question whether it is a fact. I did and for my trouble I was labeled a "moron," a "liar;" one who wants to "blow up the world," and just plain "evil" to name a few from a mass of mail I received.
In particular, my article stated that there is no scientific evidence to support claims of man-made global warming. I pointed out that there is division among scientists and that there is no "consensus" among them.
I also reported that there are scientists who promote political agendas over truth to keep the grants coming in. And I said that the UN's 1996 report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was edited at the last minute to remove two very important paragraphs that specifically said science showed no clear evidence of man-made climate change. Those were all facts.
Apparently I'm a moron for reporting them because as one letter said, "Everyone knows global warming is real."
In response to these Luddites, I simply present this: A federal hurricane research scientist named Chris Landsea has resigned from the UN-sponsored climate assessment team because his group's leader had politicized the process. Landsea said there was little evidence to justify Kevin Trenberth's assertion in October that global warming was responsible for the strong hurricanes experienced this past year and that "the North Atlantic hurricane Season of 2004 may well be a harbinger of the future."
Said Landsea in his resignation letter, "It is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity had been due to global warming. My view is that when people identify themselves as being associated with the IPCC and then make pronouncements far outside current scientific understandings that this will harm the credibility of climate change science and will in the longer term diminish our role in public policy."
Landsea closed his resignation letter by saying, "I personally cannot in good faith contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound."
There you have it. Two kinds of scientists. One standing for true science based on the facts. The other pushing a political agenda that says science be damned, our global religion is at stake.
Global Warming has become a religion that the faithful have vowed to follow no matter what the true facts may show. Global Warming is a theory, nothing more, and large numbers of scientists around the world are beginning to question its validity. There is no consensus of support.
The fact is the Kyoto Protocol will have absolutely no effect on climate change, but the faithful demand that it be implemented anyway, because "we have to do something." In 1990, Timothy Wirth, who later became Bill Clinton's Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs said, "We've got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong we will be doing the right thing..."
Global Warming is nothing more than a euphemism for redistribution of wealth from the rich, development nations to jealous dictatorships who refuse to allow their citizens the right to gain their own wealth through free markets. It's about political redistribution from strong, independent sovereign nations into the hands of a power-hungry global elite cowering in the United Nations. These are the same cowardly scoundrels who used to try to rule the world through global communism. Today they pretend that the same lies have something to do with protecting the environment.
The truth is there is no man-made global warming. There's only the scam of an empty global religion designed to condemn human progress and sucker the feeble minded into worldwide human misery. I rest my case. Amen.
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4139
Take a look here, for starters, and educate yourself about how one progress from hypothesis to theory and on to fact. But be forewarned facts are only recognized as such until they run up against a single piece of evidence that disproves them...as Newtonian physics did. Global warming as preached by Gore has been blown out of the water years ago. It is not a fact, in fact it is not even a valid theory at this point.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
> I guess you missed the memo, the industrial nationals population growth is barely reaching replacement, the population growth in those nations is due to immigration.
Overpopulation is a global problem with global consequences. The human population is climbing up to nine billion although the Earth can only barely sustain a human population of seven billion.
> Any sinkholes near where you live?
No sinkholes, no problems, just sun and sand.
Posted by: David Mathews on February 21, 2007 04:55 AM> I would like to take this time to thank (sarcastically) China and India for the pollution and the greenhouse gases that they contribute in increasing amounts every year to the atmosphere. Their sins will cause future generations havoc, more fear and apoplexy and seriously an increase in the incidence of cancer !
The United States of America, China, and India all bear responsibility for the apocalypse which is approaching. But the United States is most guilty because China & India are merely following America's example of obesity & gluttony.
> I'm freezing, David. Still, I'd rather have that than gators and sharks. Slugs are smooshy, but they don't bite. Saw a possum this evening. He looked cold too. Enjoy your sun and sand!
I did see an opossum yesterday at Emerson Point Preserve in Palmetto. That possom wasn't freezing, though.
The alligators are "mostly harmless", they are not aggressive. They are more into conflict avoidance. This is the reason why I approach alligators slowly. By moving slowly you can get relatively close to a gator.
Sharks are everywhere, but I have never seen a shark in the wild. They don't spend much time in the shallow waters near the coast.
Today looks to be an absolutely stunning, beautiful day. The cold front has worked its magic.
Last night I slept with the windows open. That's the sort of weather that I expect during Florida's winter.
Posted by: David Mathews on February 21, 2007 05:03 AMYour life must really be a mess.
Posted by: Army Medic/Vet on February 21, 2007 06:33 AMBut I encountered the Global Warming idea long ago and was skeptical at first but eventually became convinced by the preponderance of evidence. This process began & was completed before Al Gore's movie came out.
Last year, I browsed the stacks of Scientific American magazines at the U of W's Engineering Library. I was looking for a specific article on ceramic internal combustion engines.
I was struck by how early SciAm was talking about pretty much all of today's pressing problems. They were reporting on the climate change issue in the late 80's.
I personally became convinced in the late 90's. (I don't keep a journal, so can't be more specific.) Everything since then has just been refinement.
I now wish I had kept my collection of back issues. The cover art for SciAm is great. Paging through all the old issues brought back lots of memories. I imagine that's how comic and album collectors feel.
Posted by: zappini on February 21, 2007 06:35 AMWhat are you saying here?
1. That GW isn't a big deal because we can reverse things in just a couple of decades?
or
2. We should reintroduce aerosol sulpher to counter the warming effects?
Posted by: Right said Fred on February 21, 2007 07:57 AMHeating Up Over Nothing: Some Facts About Global Warming
By Tim Phares
It is ironic that as a major cold snap sweeps the eastern and central United States, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an agency of the United Nations, has released a report warning us of global warming and insisted that it was caused primarily by human activity.
The United Nations does not have a high record of reliability. The Los Angeles Times reported when one of the UN's agencies wrote a report a few years which disagreed with conventional wisdom on second-hand smoke that the UN suppressed the report. The UN is also well known for its anti-Americanism.
Nobody denies that the climate is changing. It has been changing ever since Earth came into being. That is why there are no longer dinosaurs, mastodons, and other life forms that used to roam the planet. But over the past 100 years, the average temperature has gone up seven tenths of a degree Celsius, or about a degree Fahrenheit, most of that before 1940.
As Jonah Goldberg writes in the February 8 issue of the Los Angeles Times, "The Earth got about 0.7 degrees Celsius warmer in the 20th century while it increased its GDP by 1,800%, by one estimate." He goes on to say, "Given the option of getting another 1,800% richer in exchange for another 0.7 degrees Celsius warmer, I'd take the heat in a heartbeat." So would I.
But the Marxist Luddites of the "global warming" movement don't see it that way. They would prefer to subject the United States to the restrictions of the Kyoto protocol (which the U.S. Senate defeated 95-0 during the Clinton-Gore Administration), despite the fact that China, India, and other Third World countries are exempt and that pollution is much worse in the Third World then in the industrialized world.
In an excellent article published February 5 at the Canada Free Press website, Dr. Timothy Ball, a doctor of climatology and Chairman of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, wrote that "Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification." He notes that 30 years ago, we were being warned about global cooling by the same interests.
That is not even taking into account the fact that the polar ice caps are melting on Mars and there is even some melting on Pluto. Now, I wonder how the human race made that happen.
Interestingly, these changes coincide with an increase in solar activity. According to scientists with the Max Planck Institute, sunspot activity is at its highest in 1000 years.
It also fails to account for the fact that there was a significant warm period in the Middle Ages (roughly 800-1300 AD) in which the Vikings farmed Greenland and wine grapes grew in Nova Scotia. This was followed by a major cooling during the Renaissance, lasting from about 1350 until about 1900. Since then, we've been in a warming cycle. Like the current warm cycle, the medieval warm period (which was warmer than today, by most reports) coincided with increased activity on the Sun. Columnist Jack Kelly of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette notes that "The Medieval Warm Period was a time (mostly) of peace and plenty; the little Ice Age (mostly) of starvation and war."
But, but, but...there's a scientific consensus, the "global warming" advocates say. Well, it was that kind of scientific consensus that got Galileo imprisoned. You can't do science by consensus. Dr. Ball writes, "Temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980 and in the early 1970's global cooling became the consensus. This proves that consensus is not a scientific fact."
Besides, there isn't really all that much of a consensus. The actions of the "global warming" activists underline that fact. Note the recent controversy at the Weather Channel. Heidi Cullen, a self-proclaimed "climate expert" for the Weather Channel, called for silencing any meteorologist who questions man-made "global warming" by decertifying them. Cullen said, "It's like allowing a meteorologist to go on-air and say that hurricanes rotate clockwise and tsunamis are caused by the weather. It's not a political statement...it's just an incorrect statement." Of course, she apparently did not know that in the Southern Hemisphere, hurricanes do rotate counterclockwise. On December 17, 2006, her program, "The Climate Code," featured Grist Magazine's Dave Roberts calling for Nuremberg trials for anyone who questioned man-made "global warming." Cullen is a contributor to the IPCC report. Yet all responsible meteorologists admit that the climate goes in cycles. But that apparently doesn't matter to Cullen and her friends.
The meteorologists and climatologists who promote the alarmist theory of global warming told us that the 2006 hurricane season would be dramatically worse than the 2005 season. It was not nearly as bad. If they were that for off on a short-term projection like that, why are we supposed to take their word for it on a long-term theory such as anthropogenic global warming?
When physician-scientist-author Michael Crichton suggested that climate change theories be reviewed by double-blind studies and evidentiary standards akin to what the Food and Drug Administration uses for new medicine, he was verbally vandalized by Senator Barbara Boxer. Senators Susan Collins ("R"-Maine) and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) have demanded that Exxon Mobil stop funding research that questions man-made global warming, something it hasn't been doing at least since 2005.
Former Vice President Al Gore cancelled an interview with a Danish newspaper (one which had been long scheduled) rather than appear with Bjorn Lonborg, a former member of Greenpeace who is a global-warming skeptic. Yet Gore remains a major stockholder in Occidental Petroleum.
Why do the advocates of the man-made warming viewpoint have to resort to these intimidation tactics if there is a scientific consensus? The answer is because there isn't.
Recently, Fred Singer and Dennis Avery wrote a book called Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years in which they show that there is evidence of 600 warmings in the last million years.
Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia is one of a group of hundreds of climate scientists who question the man-made global warming hypothesis. Another is Canadian Professor Tim Patterson of Carleton University. He says, "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years."
Vladimir Shaidurov of the Russian Academy of Sciences argues that the small increase in temperatures may be caused by atmospheric changes not related to human activity. He notes that until early in the 20th century, temperatures were going down. Shaidurov explains that the most common greenhouse gas is water and very small changes in the water vapor in the atmosphere can contribute to significant changes in the temperature of the Earth's surface. We have little control over the amount of water vapor.These are just a few of the hundreds of climate scientists who diverge from the theory of man-made "global warming." Yet the effort to force us to embrace extreme solutions to this problem, solutions that could damage our standard of living, continues. Are we getting all heated up over nothing?
Enough with the pesky facts and thought provoking arguments. Global Warming is about feeling and emotions. Global Warming believers want to feel good about what they are doing. If someone tells them they are hurting the earth, then they hear the emotion and don't think to question whether they actually are or are not hurting the earth.
Global Warming is a manufactured crisis of sufficient ambiguity and scientific extreme so as to be applied wherever necessary to get people to stop thinking and start feeling.
Just look at almost all of the arguments put forth by the enthusiastic Global Warming advocates in these comment threads, they are appeals to emotion.
It's not going to be possible to rationally convince those emotionally involved in Global Warming any more than it would be possible to convince them to leave a bad relationship in which they were involved. Emotions can lead people to do very irrational things. Folks that are hypnotized by the Global Warming emotion need counseling, and not factual arguments to help them see that there is a reality regardless of what they feel.
But for those still open to reason, great article.
Posted by: Jeff B. on February 21, 2007 09:29 AMThis may be O.K. for the slack-jawed halfwits that followed Opra down the Alar path, but I am not willing to concede anything, including good intentions, to people who's aim is to keep millions of people in poverty and if you doubyt that this is their aim....just read what David Mathews has said on the subject. If it is so damn great why doesn't he pack his bags and head to teh middle east or to North Korea and live in the Utopia he is advocating others, including myself, live their lives in.
Posted by: JDH on February 21, 2007 10:07 AMJeff B, Have you noticed that they "skip over" whether or not anthropogenic GW and get right to what the consequences would be if it were fact? They either gloss over the FACT that Anthropogenic GW is a THEORY or they present it as fact and then get right to the sob stories.
This may be O.K. for the slack-jawed halfwits that followed Opra down the Alar path, but I am not willing to concede anything, including good intentions, to people who's aim is to keep millions of people in poverty and if you doubt that this is their aim.... just read what David Mathews has said on the subject. If it is so damn great why doesn't he pack his bags and head to the Middle East or to North Korea and live in the Utopia he is advocating others, including myself, live their lives in.
Also, how about stating your credentials relevant to the subject at hand and let your audience be the judge or does that sound too threatening ?
Posted by: KS on February 21, 2007 12:39 PMHow can we stop it!
> Notice that dm seldom if ever provides any web links to support his responses. Therefore, based on the tone, it is concluded that most of his comments are heresay or talking points without substanitive proof. What say you other readers ?
I need not provide weblinks for supportive evidence when that material is already well known and therefore easily available to anyone here.
The conclusions of science have been expressed by the scientists.
> Also, how about stating your credentials relevant to the subject at hand and let your audience be the judge or does that sound too threatening ?
My credentials are classified.
Actually, I approach this subject without any sort of credentials whatsoever. Those who have credentials have already published their conclusions. Why do you reject the conclusions of the climatologists?
Posted by: David Mathews on February 21, 2007 08:26 PM> Oh NO! In the next 100 years the oceans are going to rise .7 (seven tenths of an inch)of an inch.
You have calculated incorrectly, Bill. The best-case estimate is more on the order of 3 feet of sea level rise within the next century. That may not have much of an impact where you live, but in Florida the consequences are catastrophic: The barrier islands, gone; the Everglades, gone; and the coastal cities exposed to the full harshness of hurricanes.
Not a pretty picture. Not at all. At least we'll all be dead by then, so who cares?
What might terrify you a little more is another certainty about life a hundred years from now:
Humankind will exhaust the Earth's supply of fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, coal) within the next century. Imagine how difficult life will become once these fuel sources are gone.
Not a pretty picture. At least we'll all be dead by then, so it won't be our problem. Someone else will inherit it, and they will inherit hell-on-Earth.
Posted by: David Mathews on February 21, 2007 08:41 PMWhat are you saying here?
Your amazing inference of my meaning reminds me of one of my favorite jokes.
Q: How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Fish!
Ah, haha. That one still cracks me up.
Posted by: zappini on February 22, 2007 08:37 AM