ClimateGate: The Fix is In

[Ardan]

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/epa-declare...ory?id=9272194
I agree that the gases are harmful to us if they continue to build in the atmosphere.


Ardan

[taekwondodo]

Just a power grab. Lets see them try to regulate volcanoes (which are huge sulpher and CO2 generators).

[Darrell Ward]

If and when the REAL data is presented to the public we will see the climate has been in a cooling trend for decades and will most likely continue
this trend for another 40 or 50 years.

I guess this explains why the polar ice cap is melting right?

[scottthomas]

I'm old enough to remember when the huge scare was a giant hole in the ozone layer caused by pollution and aerosal cans. Then in the 70s there was scientific data that showed we were heading to a new ice age. I guess with global warming we were able to avoid that huge disaster.

[brewmaster15]

I'm old enough to remember when the huge scare was a giant hole in the ozone layer caused by pollution and aerosal cans. Then in the 70s there was scientific data that showed we were heading to a new ice age. I guess with global warming we were able to avoid that huge disaster.

I wish we were heading into another ice age... since the geological record shows that they take thousands of years to take place.... that same record shows fluctuations in the earths temperature and in the glaciers and ice sheets melting and freezing...but these changes no longer span thousands of years...they span less than decades... that in itself is something to be concerned about..whatever you want to attribute as a a cause...

I've mentioned this before... Forget the larger divisive issue of global warming ..break it down to smaller more quantifiable issues... for those so inclined...take a close look at something like Krill and ice sheets.. No Ice sheets.. Krill populations crash... and that tiny critter is a key component of the food chain in the oceans....the same food chain that humans and many other species rely on.... take out the key component of a food chain and the down stream effect is not speculation or political ...its extinction for many species....and thats a fact.

-al

[Rod]

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=41854

Some not so pretty pictures

[scottthomas]

I am also concerned about how we are treating the planet. It is worrisome how the oceans are being polluted and over fished. The pictures that Rod posted of what is often referred to as the Asian Brown Cloud are affecting temperatures in Asia and threatening to alter monsoon patterns. I for one believe we are facing a host of environmental problems that are potentially no reversible. However, I feel that the global warming issue is mostly a political tool used by some to make fundemental changes in our society with the goal of saving the environment being secondary at best. However, I am not alone in being just as disturbed at how issues like global warming are mostly driven by politics. Have you seen the problems in Copenhagen with demonstrations by socialists and communists. There are just as many experts in the US who have described how cap and trade proposals will hurt our economy as there are experts who preach the dangers of global warming. There has already been massive fraud and corruption with new cap and trade legislation and the selling of emission allowances in Europe and in California. Polls show that most Americans do not agree with ideas from our legislators such as selling "pollution allowances" The earth does not really care which country is doing the polluting. I would rather see the United States not give the world 100 billion annually that we cant afford and intead use our tax dollors to research alternatives to fossil fuels. The free market IMO can better solve our environmental problems. So, while I understand that greenhouse gases could change climate. Shouldnt we be skepitical that suddenly this is the #1 issue when millions starve each year and die from malaria? etc. etc. etc. There are, believe it or not, even larger problems on our planet.

[Rod]

It seems to me that we humans have got our priorities out of whack. Recently a report i read states that Australia now has the largest homes on average on this planet. Our thirst (humans in general) for having the biggest and the best, the most technology, in short keeping up with the Jones's regardless of how that technology is produced and the amount of finite natural resources required to built them, and the ongoing use of finite natural resources to maintain them and power them, really i believe is quite alarming. We are a throw away society, barely anything we own is worth repairing. Even large cost items are throw away ,such as cars and other large luxury items. We also have a thirst for objects that really are quite destructive and dangerous to produce. How many of us want the most precious stones, gold, silver and other precious metals, a tiny % of which is used in a practical, industrial or scientific way. Mostly these objects are for decoration, for investments, for keeping up with the jones's.
What will you tell your great grandchildren when they ask why the planet is so dirty? How come the creeks and the ocean is so dirty? and how come these animals and plants in this picture book no longer exist? I'm not preaching to anyone, i have my own guilt to contend with. But wouldn't it be better to be part of nature, to live with this planet instead of on this planet. To cherish nature, to cherish the air we breathe and be impressed by nature, by our arts and crafts, instead of being impressed by objects that reduce our natural resources. We can all use the natural resources more wisely, and in a more sustainable way.
We are so successful as a species, we are the dominant large animal alive today. We are so successful that we have overcrowded this planet utterly, perhaps too much so that there is not enough to go round for everyone, perhaps too the point of no return. I don't have an answer, only questions. Whatever the cost, whatever fears we may have about change, whatever our chances of saving our planet, i want to be able to tell my unborn family members something, this is how i tried to do the right thing! We can all act a little better locally, encourage those practices which support us in a renewable way, treat with contempt any action which reduces our nature no matter the cost, treat nature as a friend and ally rather than as a slave to do our bidding. We are a very intelligent being, i see no reason why we cannot use our brain power to overcome our situation, but first we need a change of priorities. I don't care what the Jones's are doing, this is what i am doing instead.

Rod

[scottthomas]

I agree.

[rickscics]

Interesting read for those interested in a scientific rarther than political prospective .
Ice In The Greenhouse:
Earth May Be Cooling, Not Warming

By Jens Bischof


Climate change has become a topic of great public interest. Hardly a week goes by without newspaper articles proclaiming global warming, the greenhouse effect, melting polar ice caps and retreating glaciers. No self-respecting weather forecaster can resist the temptation to see a connection between slightly abnormal weather patterns and El Nino, the eternal culprit. And while it is clear that the burning of fossil fuels such as petroleum, coal and wood, and the ensuing rise of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere must trigger a reaction of the global climate system, it is completely unknown exactly what kind of reaction will occur.

Indeed, there are signs from some natural systems that global warming is under way. Observations of the pack-ice thickness of the Arctic Ocean from submarines with upward-looking sonar, for example, show a thinning trend since the 1970s. The margin of permafrost is moving north, and the vegetation in the high northern parts of the world is changing toward more temperate forms. But it is by no means clear whether these signs indicate real, worrying proof of manmade, permanent and potentially disastrous climate change, or just regular, naturally occurring variations in the Earth’s climate system.

If proven a reality, the most troubling aspect of global warming is that it would cause melting of the polar ice caps, which in turn would cause the global sea level to rise and flood some of the most densely populated regions on Earth. Other effects could be changes in rainfall patterns, which could lead to widespread droughts and threaten agricultural production. One need not be a prophet to imagine the ultimate consequences: forced emigration of unprecedented scale into higher elevations, straining the economies and societies of the involuntary host nations, causing political turmoil and, knowing how humans traditionally react to such changes, most likely war.

But are these assumptions correct? In science, as in other sectors of public life, outcomes of investigations are very often guided, if not determined, by an a priori idea, a tenet. One could also call it a belief. In the case of global warming, this belief is that, if enormous amounts of greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere, a temperature rise must occur. This prior assumption has guided scientific thinking and triggered a true deluge of investigations, all desperately trying to prove just that. What has been totally forgotten is the fact that natural climate changes occur as well as manmade ones, and on time scales on the order of decades, in some cases.

Overdue Cold Snap

I believe the only way to detect these changes is from the geologic record of marine sediments. In the high northern latitudes, those sediments contain ice-rafted debris, or IRD. The IRD is deposited on or within ice sheets, portions of which eventually calve as icebergs and then travel on vast ocean currents. The composition and movement of this drifting ice can provide insights into the future direction of climate change. Contrary to the prevailing beliefs inside and out of the scientific community, my studies indicate that warming may not be the direction in which global climate is headed after all.

The last 10,000 years of geological history are referred to as the Holocene Era. During that time, global climate has been relatively stable, with swings from warmer temperatures to cooler and back again. On average, however, there has not been the kind of extreme climate oscillation that has in the distant past led to periods of glaciation. Nevertheless, Earth is overdue for a cold snap. Close examination of the way ice is presently traveling in ocean water, from frigid to warmer regions of the globe, suggests that the mechanisms for widespread planetary cooling may once again be engaging.

Ice rafting is a simple idea: particles such as stones, pebbles and fine grains become embedded in ice. As that ice drifts, it melts, depositing those particles in oceanic sediments, leaving a “drift track” indicative of its source. Geologists are then able to reconstruct past ice-drift directions by finding a method by which particles can be connected to a specific point of origin.

The process of ice rafting is intimately connected to temperature changes on global and regional scales. The physical movement of excessive amounts of ice from polar regions to lower latitudes by shifting ocean currents can lead to substantially lower temperatures. If, for example, the air pressure distribution over the Arctic Ocean was such that winds blew from the Bering Strait across the North Pole toward Fram Strait, then massive amounts of pack ice would be moved into the Norwegian Greenland Sea. In the winter, this process would continuously produce additional sea ice in the open leads created by offshore winds in the Bering Strait region, setting in motion a veritable “ice machine.” The regional extent of ice and snow cover in the Greenland Sea would increase, cooling the region, and boosting the albedo, or amount of solar radiation reflected back into space, further amplifying cooling.

Depending on the strength and duration, this process could lead to an episode of relatively cold climate over the North Atlantic region, perhaps lasting from a few years up to decades. But if it were sufficiently strong and durable, it could set the stage for global climate to return to full glaciation.

Ice As Predictor

If sea ice were to thicken and expand by other means, such as cooling forced by celestial mechanisms, including variation in solar radiation or orbital changes, declining temperatures would occur seasonally, during winter and summer, but also on much longer time scales, such as thousands and tens of thousands of years. Polar fronts would be pushed toward the Equator. Such cooling is self-perpetuating, increasing the extent of snow- and ice-covered regions, thus augmenting the albedo. The albedo increase, in turn, further amplifies the cooling trend, creating a positive feedback loop that leads to additional cooling, which leads to more ice and snow, higher albedo and more cooling.

Global cooling brought on by ice drift, however, does not require an external motor, such as the periodic variation in the Earth’s orbit that brings it closer to or farther away from the Sun, or a slight change in the tilt of the Earth’s axis, also periodic. Rather, a mere change of the ice-drift direction in the Arctic could set cooling on its way, possibly even on a global scale. The geologic record is certainly clear: The climate pendulum has repeatedly swung between a relatively warmer worldas we experience today, and glacial climates during which much of Earth was submerged under thick sheets of ice.

In my book Ice Drift, Ocean Circulation And Climate Change, I look not just at older data that otherwise would never have seen the light of day but also new data that I believe is persuasive that ice drifting can be as predictive as it is archival. That is, to understand the future, at least in terms of climate, one must understand the past. Any computer model designed to predict future climate change such as greenhouse gas-induced global warming must also reproduce the reconstructed past changes of ice drift in order to be considered reliable. Ice rafting is not just a passive recorder of past surface-ocean circulation, but also actively influences and changes present ocean circulation as well.

At present we do not yet know if the circulation changes occur over one or more decades relevant to humans. This is simply because the low, and in some cases, very low sedimentation rates of the polar oceans do not permit time resolution at these short scales. But recent progress in the analysis of Arctic Ocean sediments has shown that it is possible to find areas with high resolution. This, and the prospect of new equipment in the form of a polar icebreaker able to be on station 200 days per year, hold the promise that the mystery of the driving forces of climate change may be eventually solved.

In the meantime, we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that our cherished ideas about global warming may be, if not dead wrong, only partially correct. Intriguing recent evidence gathered from ice-rafted debris looks remarkably similar to a much older pattern that preceded an ice age. We may have to entertain the possibility that Earth’s natural climate development may be on a return to another such period, or at least to colder conditions than we now experience. If so, and ironically, the very greenhouse warming we fear may either mitigate the cooling or cancel it altogether.

Jens Bischof is author of Ice Drift, Ocean Circulation And Climate Change and is a research assistant professor in Old Dominion’s Department of Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

[Rod]

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bran...9.1_index.html

4 sides to this argument!

[rich815]

I get all my information on Global Climate issues from links posted by people at a tropical fish forum.

[scottthomas]

I think some of the scientists get their information here too!

[terps]

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archive.../12/025239.php

In the wake of Climategate, common sense deniers like to say that there is lots of other evidence for global warming, in addition to that which has been debunked by the East Anglia whistleblower. Actually, however, the scientific evidence for AGW is remarkably weak. At Icecap, Lee Gerhard, geologist and reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, sums up the key scientific evidence with admirable brevity:

It is crucial that scientists are factually accurate when they do speak out, that they ignore media hype and maintain a clinical detachment from social or other agendas. There are facts and data that are ignored in the maelstrom of social and economic agendas swirling about Copenhagen. Greenhouse gases and their effects are well-known. Here are some of things we know:

• The most effective greenhouse gas is water vapor, comprising approximately 95 percent of the total greenhouse effect.

• Carbon dioxide concentration has been continually rising for nearly 100 years. It continues to rise, but carbon dioxide concentrations at present are near the lowest in geologic history.

• Temperature change correlation with carbon dioxide levels is not statistically significant.

• There are no data that definitively relate carbon dioxide levels to temperature changes.

• The greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide logarithmically declines with increasing concentration. At present levels, any additional carbon dioxide can have very little effect.

We also know a lot about Earth temperature changes:

• Global temperature changes naturally all of the time, in both directions and at many scales of intensity.

• The warmest year in the U.S. in the last century was 1934, not 1998. The U.S. has the best and most extensive temperature records in the world.

• Global temperature peaked in 1998 on the current 60-80 year cycle, and has been episodically declining ever since. This cooling absolutely falsifies claims that human carbon dioxide emissions are a controlling factor in Earth temperature.

• Voluminous historic records demonstrate the Medieval Climate Optimum (MCO) was real and that the "hockey stick" graphic that attempted to deny that fact was at best bad science. The MCO was considerably warmer than the end of the 20th century.

• During the last 100 years, temperature has both risen and fallen, including the present cooling. All the changes in temperature of the last 100 years are in normal historic ranges, both in absolute value and, most importantly, rate of change.

Contrary to many public statements:

• Effects of temperature change are absolutely independent of the cause of the temperature change.

• Global hurricane, cyclonic and major storm activity is near 30-year lows. Any increase in cost of damages by storms is a product of increasing population density in vulnerable areas such as along the shores and property value inflation, not due to any increase in frequency or severity of storms.

• Polar bears have survived and thrived over periods of extreme cold and extreme warmth over hundreds of thousands of years extremes far in excess of modern temperature changes.

• The 2009 minimum Arctic ice extent was significantly larger than the previous two years. The 2009 Antarctic maximum ice extent was significantly above the 30-year average. There are only 30 years of records.

• Rate and magnitude of sea level changes observed during the last 100 years are within normal historical ranges. Current sea level rise is tiny and, at most, justifies a prediction of perhaps ten centimeters rise in this century.

The present climate debate is a classic conflict between data and computer programs. The computer programs are the source of concern over climate change and global warming, not the data. Data are measurements. Computer programs are artificial constructs.

Public announcements use a great deal of hyperbole and inflammatory language. For instance, the word "ever" is misused by media and in public pronouncements alike. It does not mean "in the last 20 years," or "the last 70 years." "Ever" means the last 4.5 billion years.

For example, some argue that the Arctic is melting, with the warmest-ever temperatures. One should ask, "How long is ever?" The answer is since 1979. And then ask, "Is it still warming?" The answer is unequivocally "No." Earth temperatures are cooling. Similarly, the word "unprecedented" cannot be legitimately used to describe any climate change in the last 8,000 years.


http://icecap.us/index.php/go/new-an...limate_debate/

[taekwondodo]

Saw "Avitar" last night - the effects and 3D were absolutely stunning (A+), but I now feel guilty for for living in a country where the indigenous population was wiped out in order to advance the benefit of the rest of the country... We killed grandmother willow! Time to sell the poisonous gas-generating cars, disconnect from the grid, burn my home to the ground, and live in a tree for the remainder of my days...