Global warming, anyone?

[ronaldrwl]

"Global warming, anyone?"

Yes, please

[jmg8550]

And the NYT has been right about so many issues. Seriously, there is nothing we can do about it. And I'll be dead and gone by the time the sea levels supposedly rise that amount. Nature has found a way to adapt to the environment, and it always will.

[RARGUNS]

"Researchers have recently been startled to see big changes unfold in both Greenland and Anarctica.
As a result of recent calculations that take the changes into account, many scientists now say that the sea level is likely to rise perhaps three feet by 2100-an increase that should it come to pass, would pose a threat to coastal regions the world over.

So the previous calculations were obviously wrong. Who's to say these calculations are right this time?

A large majority of climate scientists argue that heat trapping gases are almost certainly playing a role in what is happening to the worlds land ice.

This too, has also bean PROVEN to be inaccurate. The large majority of climatological scientist signed a paper saying there is no scientific evidence to back up climate warming claims.

They add that the lack of polices to limit omissions raising the risk that the ice will go into irreversible decline before this century is out, a development that would make a three-foot rise in the sea look trival.

You ever notice how all these limits will be achieved by taxing Americans and giving the proceeds to green companies who's products have again been proven to be ineffeicent, more expensive and in some cases create more pollution than they remove? If there is a viable solution to lowering emissions, the government won't have to fund it.

Melting ice is by no means the only sign that the earth is warming. Therometers on land, in the sea and aboard satellites show warming. Heat waves, flash floods and other extreme weather events are increasing. Plants are blooming earlier, coral reefs are dying and many changes are afoot that most climate scientists attribute to global warming.

It has been proven that thermometers data has been manipulated time and time again. It has also been proven that we have been in a cooling trend for over ten years with no end in sight. The global warmers say "that will probably change". Sorry, Probably doesn't cut it when it comes to science.

Satellite and other measurements suggest that thru the 1990's, Greenland was gaining about as much ice through snowfall as it lost to the sea every year. But since then, the warmer water has invaded the fjords, and air temperatures in Greeland have increased markedly. The overall loss of ice seems to be accelerating, an ominous sign given that the island contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by more than 20 feet.

Suggest? About? Seems? Not very scientific words. Seems like speculation at best. The last sentence purposely infers typical fear mongering fake information. There is absolutely no data that even suggest that all the ice on that country is going to melt.

But at all times in the past, when the shoreline migrated, humans either not evolved yet or consisted of primitive bands of hunter-gatherers who could readily move. By the middle of this century, a projected nine billion people will inhabit the planet, with many millions of them living within a few feet of sea level.

Again, more fear mongering with absolutely no straight forward point at all. Just a general statement without any scientific data attached.

To a majority of climate scientists, the question is not whether the earth's land ice will melt in response to the greenhouse gases those people are generating, but whether it will happen to fast for society to adjust.
Recent research suggests that the volume of the ocean may have stable for thousands of years as human civilization has developed. But it began to rise in the 19th century, around the same time that advanced countries began to burn large amounts of coal and oil.

Now here it says not if but when it will happen. Again not what MOST scientist think. It also says that the oceans have been stable though out history. If my third grade science was correct, we have already been through an ice age and most of that ice melted off. If the ocean was stable then, it will remain stable now.

The sea has risen about 8 inches since then, on average. That sounds small, but on a gently sloping shoreline, such an increase is enough to cause substantal eroision unless people intervene. Goverments have spent billions in recent decades pumping sand onto disapearing beaches and trying to stave off the loss of coastal wetlands.

Really? Yes we have spent billions to prevent erosion. Beaches erode from rising and lowering tides, waves and wind. This has nothing to do with global warming. According to this paragraph, the ocean has already risen 24 inches overall. If that were true, major parts of Florida and many other places would already be in the ocean.

Satellite evidence suggests that the rise of the sea accelerated late in the 20th century, so that the level is now increasing a little over an inch a decade, on average-about a foot per century. Another is that most of the extra heat being trapped by human greenhouse emissions is going to not to warm the atmosphere but to warm the ocean, and as it warms, the water expands.

Are you fucking kidding me? We're supposed to be worried about water expanding. I did an experiment of my own. I took a cup of water that was 62 degrees F. I heated it to 200 degrees. It took up the same amount of space. I know things expand when they get hot, but this theory is utter bullshit.

Calculations about the effect of a three-foot increase suggest that it would cause shorline erosion to accelerate markedly. In places that once flooded only in a large hurricane, the higher sea would mean that a routine storm could do the trick. In the United States, an estimated 5,000 square miles of dryland and 15,000 square miles of wetlands would be at risk of permanent inundation, though the actual effect would depend on on how much money was spent protecting the shoreline.

Even if they were correct, (they're not) this would take 300 years. We could easily manage this type of erosion over that period of time.

The worst effects, however, would probably occur in areas where land is sinking even as the sea rises. Some of the worlds major cities, especially those built on soft sediments at the mouths of great rivers, are in that situation.

Again with the probables.

Storm surges battering the world's coastlines every few years would almost certainly force people to flee inland. but it is hard to see where the displaced will go, especially in Asia, where hudge cities- and even entire countries, notably Bangladesh-are at risk.

Storm surges have battered the coast line since the beginning of time. Duh! Again this has nothing to do with global warming. It's called weather. It happens. Another thing. I don't give a fuck what the asians do. Not my problem. Most of the coastal dwellers live in house boats or on stilt houses. Why? because they know the tides rise.

Figuring out whether Antarctica is losing ice over all is essential, because that ice sheet contains enough water to raise global sea level by nearly 200 feet. The parts that appear to be destabilizing contain water sufficient to raise it 10 feet.

Here they finally admit they don't know. Mmmmmm.

Climate scientists note that while the science of studying ice may be progressing slowly, the world's emissions of heat trapping gases are not. They worry that the way things are going, extensive melting of land ice may become inevitable before political leaders find a way to limit the gases, and before scientists even realize such a point of no return has been passed."
"The past clearly shows that sea-level rise is getting faster and faster the warmer it gets," Dr. Rahmstorf said. "Why should that process stop? If it gets warmer, ice will melt faster."

If, may, are worried. Thats a lot conjecture. Not a lot of fact, scientific or not.

NYT INTERNATIONAL Sunday, November 14, 2010

"NYT" That explains a lot right there.

[ERNO]

Fri.,Nov. 26, 2010, NYT

Tough Decisions Ahead for Norfolk, Va.

By Leslie Kaufman

Norfolk, Va.-- In this section of the Larchmont neighborhood, built in a sharp "u" around a bay of the Lafayette River, residents pay close attention to the luner calendar, much as other suburbanites might attend to the daily flow of commuter traffic.
If the moon is going to be full the night before Hazel Peck needs her car, for example, she parks it on a parallel block, away from the river. The next morning, she walks thru a neighbor's backyard to avoid the two-to-three-foot-deep puddle that rountinely accumulates on her street after high tides.
For Ms. Peck and her neighbors, it is the only way to live with the encroaching sea.
As sea levels rise, the tidal flooding is increasingly disrupting life here and all along the East Coast, a development many climate scientists link to global warming.
But Norfolk is worse off. Situated just west of the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, it is bordered on three sides by water, including several rivers, like the Lafayette, that are actually long tidal streams that feed into the bay and eventually the ocean.
Like many other cities, Norfolk was built on filled-in marsh. Now that fill is settling and compacting. In addition, the city is in an area where significant natural sinking of land is occuring. The result is that Norfolk has experienced the highest relative increase in sea-level on the East Coast-- 14.5 inches since 1930, according to readings by the Sewells Point navel station here.
The residents of coastal neighborhoods are interested in the real time consequences of a rise in sea level.
When Ms Peck, now 75 moved here 40 years ago, tidal flooding was an occasional hazard.
"Last month," she said recently, "there were eight or nine days the tide was so doggone high it was difficult to drive."
With expensive land reclamation projects due to rising sea levels, experts say , "At this pace of spending, there is no way taxpayers will recoup their investment.
"If sea level is a constant, your coastal infrastructure is your most valuable real estate, and it makes sense to invest in it, "Mr. Stiles {executive director of Wetlands Watch} "but with sea levels rising, it becomes a money pit."
Many Norfolkians hope their problems will serve as a warning,
"We are the front lines of climate change," said Jim Shultz, a science and technology writer who lives on Richmond Cresent near Ms. Peck. "No one who has a house here is a skeptic."
That statement is also true for the city of Norfolk, where officals are overlooking state politics and tackling the sea-rise problem head on.

[jmg8550]

Oh come on... again with the NYT propaganda! Get a life!

[tmckay2]

On another note, I'm always a fan of not pumping extraneous crap into the atmosphere/environment. Pullution is a way bigger problem than CO2...we exhale CO2 and plants turn it into food.

this is true. check out the research done recently on the sediment that comes from countries (mostly china, go figure) that covers the ice caps and what it does to them

[ERNO]

By Paul Krugman, NYT, SEPT., 28, 2009

"Every once in a while I feel despair over the fate of the planet. If you've been following climate science, you know what I mean: the sense that we're hurtling toward catastrophe but nobody wants to hear about it or do anything about it.
And here's the thing: I'm not engaging in hyperbole. These days, dire warnings aren't the delusional ravings of cranks. They're what come out of the climate models, devised by the leading reasearchers. The prognosis for the planet has gotten much, much worse in just the last few years.
What's driving this new pessimism? Partly it's the fact that some predicted changes, like a decline in Artic Sea ice, are happening much faster then expected. Partly it's growing evidence that feedback loops amplifying the effects of man-made greenhouse gas emissions are stronger than previously realized. For example, it has long been understood that global warming will cause the tundra to thaw, releasing carbon dioxide, which will cause even more warming, but new reasearch shows far more carbon dioxide locked in the permafrost than previously thought, which means a much bigger feedback effect.
The result of all this is that climate scientists have, en-masse, become Cassandras-- gifted with the ability to prophesy furture disasters, but cursed with the inability to get anyone to believe them.
And we're not just talking about disasters in the distant future, either. The really big rise in global temperature probably won't take place until the second half of this century, but there will be plenty of damage before then.
For example, one 2007 paper in the journal Science is titled "Model Projections of an Imminent Transition to a More Arid Climate in Southwestern North America"-- yes, "imminent"-- and reports " a broad consensus among climate models" that a permanent Dust Bowl-type conditions, "will become the new climatology of the American Southwest within a time frame of years to decades.
So if you live in, say, Los Angeles, and liked those pictures of red skies and choking dust in Sydney, Australia, last week, no need to travel. They'll be coming your way in the not-to-distant future.
Now, at this point I have to make the obligatory disclaimer that no individual weather event can be attributed to global warming. The point, however, is that climate change will make events like that Australian dust storm much more common.
But the larger reason we're ignoring climate change is that Al Gore was right: This truth is just to inconvenient. Responding to climate change with the vigor that the threat deserves would not contrary to legend, be devastating for the economy as a hole. But it would shuffle the economic deck, hurting some powerful vested interests even as it created new economic opportunities. And the industries of the past have armies of lobbyists in place right now; the industries of the future don't.
Nor is it just a matter of vested interests. It's also a matter of vested ideas. For three decades the dominant political ideology in America has extolled private enterprise and denigrated government, but climate change is a problem that can only be addressed through government action. And rather than concede the limits of their philosophy, many on the right have chosen to deny that the problem exists.
And as I pointed out in my last column, we can afford to do this. Even as climate modelers have been reaching consensus on the view that the threat is worse than we realized, economic modelers have been reaching consensus on the view that the costs of emission control are lower than many feared.
So the time for action is now. O.K., strickly speaking it's long past. But better late than never.

[roberth]

Krugman?!? Really? LMAO!!

[jerrymrc]

I am going to make a suggestion. A brief outline and a link to an article is fine. A complete cut and paste may come back to bite ya in the butt one day. Besides, the act of doing nothing but cut and paste shows a lack of original thought on the subject.

[RARGUNS]

Do people really put weight into anything NYT says? Really?

Is this the only source of warming evidence you have? I understand the so called leading global climate scientist had all been discredited and disgraced recently for manipulating data and conspirering to cover it up, so I understand your lack of qualifying evidence. But you have to come up with something better than a NYT article.