Great article...

Quote:Global Warming has become a euphemism for a political agenda. It has become a religion run by fanatics reminiscent of the leaders of the darkest days of the Inquisition that nearly destroyed civil society only a few hundred years ago. We are not to question the great god of Global Warming. Those who do are separated from civil society and labeled as heretics.

So how can anyone question the decrees handed down from the Ivory Towers to the unwashed masses? Answer: every religion has its heretics.

The simple truth is there is no scientific consensus on Global Warming. In fact, as the media frenzy screams global warming, there are a growing number of scientists who are expressing their doubts.

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4674

ccs178 Wrote:Great article...

Quote:Global Warming has become a euphemism for a political agenda. It has become a religion run by fanatics reminiscent of the leaders of the darkest days of the Inquisition that nearly destroyed civil society only a few hundred years ago. We are not to question the great god of Global Warming. Those who do are separated from civil society and labeled as heretics.

So how can anyone question the decrees handed down from the Ivory Towers to the unwashed masses? Answer: every religion has its heretics.

The simple truth is there is no scientific consensus on Global Warming. In fact, as the media frenzy screams global warming, there are a growing number of scientists who are expressing their doubts.

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4674

I see global warming as something being fueled by the media, a few select politicians, and some unreliable science. But astonishingly enough, science these days is moving further and further from being objective to often unproven hypothesis that are being taught to the masses as fact.

GrayBeard Wrote:

ccs178 Wrote:Great article...

Quote:Global Warming has become a euphemism for a political agenda. It has become a religion run by fanatics reminiscent of the leaders of the darkest days of the Inquisition that nearly destroyed civil society only a few hundred years ago. We are not to question the great god of Global Warming. Those who do are separated from civil society and labeled as heretics.

So how can anyone question the decrees handed down from the Ivory Towers to the unwashed masses? Answer: every religion has its heretics.

The simple truth is there is no scientific consensus on Global Warming. In fact, as the media frenzy screams global warming, there are a growing number of scientists who are expressing their doubts.

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4674

I see global warming as something being fueled by the media, a few select politicians, and some unreliable science. But astonishingly enough, science these days is moving further and further from being objective to often unproven hypothesis that are being taught to the masses as fact.

It's why I don't care much about "science" anymore.

Hollywood hijacking and butchering global warming hasn't helped the uneducated public either.

I've got a question. Is the contention with global warming with the fact that it is happening at all, or just with the ideas put forth on what to do about it?

Everytime a global warming thread comes up it doesn't seem to be about if the Earth is actually warming, but instead about some policy concerning global warming (emissions, Kyoto, etc.).

Bourgeois_Rage Wrote:I've got a question. Is the contention with global warming with the fact that it is happening at all, or just with the ideas put forth on what to do about it?

Everytime a global warming thread comes up it doesn't seem to be about if the Earth is actually warming, but instead about some policy concerning global warming (emissions, Kyoto, etc.).

I question whether it's happening at all.

I don't question the rise in CO2 levels, that seems to have abundant evidence.

If temps are rising, then I question the reason. Much respectable evidence points to increased solar output. I also happen to know that some people are willing to "embroider" the facts b/c they are so concerned about global warming.

I question if it is actually happening.

If it is happening, I question whether it is a natural climate change like so many the Earth has had before, or an unnatural changefueled by man, as is the contention of most of the GW scaremongers.

I keep harkening back to the fact that 1000 years ago, Greenland was a temperate spot thought to ideal for colonies, named Vinland, and now that it may be returning to that, the question arises in my mind, which is the natural condition of greenland - that which existed before and presumablely in the future, or that which existed only during the relatively recent period of recorded history. Likewise the polar caps, etc.

So if I gather right, both of you question if it is happening at all. Now all the data that I have seen says that there is a rise in temperature globally since records have been kept. One example. Another. Still. One more. Also things like rainfall and other factors can be interpreted through methods like measuring width of tree rings. Is there data that refutes this?

OO, I have no contention with the fact that there are natural forces involved with the warming. I think the jury is out on how big of a factor human forces have, if any.

Bourgeois_Rage Wrote:since records have been kept.

Key words. On what basis can you define normal as the period since records have been kept? What was the average temperature at the mouth of the Nile river in 988 AD? What was the average temperature for the first century BC worldwide? For the Second? The Third? I don't know how far back "records have been kept", but I am going to guess that it is less than 200 years - a mere eyeblink in geologic/climatic terms. If the period "since records have been kept" was anomolously cold, then returning to normal temps would appear as global warming. If records had been kept on Greenland during the Viking colonization, then Global Cooling could have been detected. Maybe the Viking scientists, with the help of the Viking Media, could have blamed the Global Cooling on the dairy cattle eating all the grass, and declared that unless we found alternatives for cow's milk, we were going to freeze the world. I think your data base is too small. It is like stepping outside on any given day and declaring this is normal, and anything different from today is abnormal, and the changes must be manmade, because what else is different.

Edits: spelling

Yeah, but sometimes people have to make best guesses with the information that they have. I guess I'd just like to see some data that gives me a reason to doubt the data we have seen. Not just speculation that it could be wrong. Sure it could be wrong, I'm not denying that. But give me a reason that seems to say the globally temperatures are not rising (which is what you said you doubted).

Bourgeois_Rage Wrote:Yeah, but sometimes people have to make best guesses with the information that they have. I guess I'd just like to see some data that gives me a reason to doubt the data we have seen.

Check out this guy's page and his links

http://www.john-daly.com/press/press-03a.htm#lakes

As I mentioned, I posted at least 3 articles from the NASA GSFC site when I worked there, w/ plenty of reasons to be skeptical. Including one that documented its methodology as unable to process temps where the ground had frozen! Talk about biasing the data...

And again, when the G Lakes freeze over, that's alot of heat removed! Not to mention, what is the improved reflectivity of the surfaces? How much more light is being sent back into space?*

The links you posted are very convincing, but they don't provide all of the details in how their measurements were taken. They did include some mention of changing techniques, which was good. This isn't to bash all the global warming folks, they are often using the data as best they can. However, there are big uncertainties that are often hidden or ignored.

*Which brings me to my last point. If sulfur particles were deemed responsible for cooling seen from '46-'75, then we have a clue as to how stop global warming. Simply use high reflectors during summer months. You reflect back into space the visible light, which has more energy/photon than IR, before it turns into IR light and is absorbed by greenhouse gases. That's alot of energy being reflected back, and it's moer efficient than small particles that absorb and scatter.

Moreover, if used as rooftop coverings, you get the added bonus of reducing the need for AC. Thus power demands go down as does fossil fuel consumption.

If gov'ts were serious, they'd start this now, and stop wasting time w/ BS efforts like the Kyoto Protocol (which will make things WORSE!)

How did we cause this? Since the currently PC POV is that climate change is caused by us bad men, what did we do to cause this?

That is why I don't buy the theories based on just the last 100 years. It is like going to El Paso and since it was raining the day you were there, concluding that rain is the normal state of affairs there and that it is now warming up and we must be at fault.

Lots of changes in this old Earth over time.




Scientists Say Arctic Once Was Tropical
By SETH BORENSTEIN


WASHINGTON (AP) - Scientists have found what might have been the ideal ancient vacation hotspot with a 74-degree Fahrenheit average temperature, alligator ancestors and palm trees. It's smack in the middle of the Arctic.

First-of-its-kind core samples dug up from deep beneath the Arctic Ocean floor show that 55 million years ago an area near the North Pole was practically a subtropical paradise, three new studies show.

The scientists say their findings are a glimpse backward into a much warmer-than-thought polar region heated by run-amok greenhouse gases that came about naturally.

Skeptics of man-made causes of global warming have nothing to rejoice over, however. The researchers say their studies appearing in Thursday's issue of Nature also offer a peak at just how bad conditions can get.

``It probably was (a tropical paradise) but the mosquitoes were probably the size of your head,'' said Yale geology professor Mark Pagani, a study co-author.

And what a watery, swampy world it must have been.

``Imagine a world where there are dense sequoia trees and cypress trees like in Florida that ring the Arctic Ocean,'' said Pagani, a member of the multinational Arctic Coring Expedition that conducted the research.

Millions of years ago the Earth experienced an extended period of natural global warming. But around 55 million years ago there was a sudden supercharged spike of carbon dioxide that accelerated the greenhouse effect.

Scientists already knew this ``thermal event'' happened but are not sure what caused it. Perhaps massive releases of methane from the ocean, the continent-sized burning of trees, lots of volcanic eruptions.

Many experts figured that while the rest of the world got really hot, the polar regions were still comfortably cooler, maybe about 52 degrees Fahrenheit.

But the new research found the polar average was closer to 74 degrees. So instead of Boston-like weather year-round, the Arctic was more like Miami North. Way north.

``It's the first time we've looked at the Arctic, and man, it was a big surprise to us,'' said study co-author Kathryn Moran, an oceanographer at the University of Rhode Island. ``It's a new look to how the Earth can respond to these peaks in carbon dioxide.''

It's enough to make Santa Claus break into a sweat.

The 74-degree temperature, based on core samples which act as a climatic time capsule, was probably the year-round average, but because data is so limited it might also be just the summertime average, researchers said.

What's troubling is that this hints that future projections for warming, several degrees over the next century, may be on the low end, said study lead author Appy Sluijs of the Institute of Environmental Biology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

Also it shows that what happened 55 million years ago was proof that too much carbon dioxide - more than four times current levels - can cause global warming, said another co-author Henk Brinkhuis at Utrecht University.

Purdue University atmospheric sciences professor Gabriel Bowen, who was not part of the team, praised the work and said it showed that ``there are tipping points in our (climate) system that can throw us to these conditions.''

And the new research also gave scientists the idea that a simple fern may have helped pull Earth from a hothouse to an icehouse by sucking up massive amounts of carbon dioxide. Unfortunately, this natural solution to global warming was not exactly quick: It took about a million years.

With all that heat and massive freshwater lakes forming in the Arctic, a fern called Azolla started growing and growing. Azolla, still found in warm regions today, grew so deep, so wide that eventually it started sucking up carbon dioxide, Brinkhuis theorized. And that helped put the cool back in the Arctic.

Bowen said he has a hard time accepting that part of the research, but Brinkhuis said the studies show tons upon tons of thick mats of Azolla covered the Arctic and moved south.

``This could actually contribute to push the world to a cooling mode,'' Brinkhuis said, but only after it got hotter first and then it would take at least 800,000 years to cool back down. It's not something to look forward to, he said.

OptimisticOwl Wrote:How did we cause this? Since the currently PC POV is that climate change is caused by us bad men, what did we do to cause this?

That is why I don't buy the theories based on just the last 100 years. It is like going to El Paso and since it was raining the day you were there, concluding that rain is the normal state of affairs there and that it is now warming up and we must be at fault.

Lots of changes in this old Earth over time.

Scientists Say Arctic Once Was Tropical

I actually read this article. The global warming advocates actually covered themselves prettty good by pointing to a sharp spike in CO2. This is the closest thing to experimental evidence that high CO2 levels causes climate change.

I'd like to see Americans cut back on things, and really drop their energy use by 5% or so. I'd also like to see some research on alternative fuels, and CO2 sequestering.

Those would be worthwhile goals for these people instead of their daily scare stories.

Speaking of daily scare stories:

Click

Quote:Greenpeace's fill-in-the-blank public relations meltdown

Before President Bush touched down in Pennsylvania Wednesday to promote his nuclear energy policy, the environmental group Greenpeace was mobilizing.

"This volatile and dangerous source of energy" is no answer to the country's energy needs, shouted a Greenpeace fact sheet decrying the "threat" posed by the Limerick reactors Bush visited.

But a factoid or two later, the Greenpeace authors were stumped while searching for the ideal menacing metaphor.

We present it here exactly as it was written, capital letters and all: "In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]."

Bwhahah.

DrTorch Wrote:I actually read this article. The global warming advocates actually covered themselves prettty good by pointing to a sharp spike in CO2. This is the closest thing to experimental evidence that high CO2 levels causes climate change.

I thought climate change caused the high CO2 levels. Chicken and egg question.

OptimisticOwl Wrote:

DrTorch Wrote:I actually read this article. The global warming advocates actually covered themselves prettty good by pointing to a sharp spike in CO2. This is the closest thing to experimental evidence that high CO2 levels causes climate change.

I thought climate change caused the high CO2 levels. Chicken and egg question.

Quote:Millions of years ago the Earth experienced an extended period of natural global warming. But around 55 million years ago there was a sudden supercharged spike of carbon dioxide that accelerated the greenhouse effect.

Scientists already knew this ``thermal event'' happened but are not sure what caused it. Perhaps massive releases of methane from the ocean, the continent-sized burning of trees, lots of volcanic eruptions.

I understood this to mean that while things were gradually warming, an unrelated event "the CO2" spike occurred.

On further review, what is curious is how that is connected to a release of methane from the ocean. Methinks they are yet again mixing arguments to "prove" their point about CO2 emissions. (Methane is also a "greenhouse" gas).

Scientists already knew this ``thermal event'' happened but are not sure what caused it.




If they don't know what caused it then, how can they be sure they know what is causing it now?

Bourgeois_Rage Wrote:So if I gather right, both of you question if it is happening at all. Now all the data that I have seen says that there is a rise in temperature globally since records have been kept. One example. Another. Still. One more. Also things like rainfall and other factors can be interpreted through methods like measuring width of tree rings. Is there data that refutes this?

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/harris061206.htm

Maybe we should focus on whos hijacking the science and not the science its self.


http://www.canada.com/components/print.a...9ad18eb252

Skipuno Wrote:Maybe we should focus on whos hijacking the science and not the science its self.


http://www.canada.com/components/print.a...9ad18eb252

The bad news: this has been going on for decades. It started in the softer sciences, psychotherapy, psychology, sociology; moved to more tangible areas: child-rearing/pediatrics, nutrition (food pyramid anyone?) bad information on medicine (both traditional and non-traditional); and moved through harder sciences: evolutionary theory, biology (oppression of women in the presentation of reproduction); and now to atmospheric sciences involving physics and chemistry.

The good news: these pompous philosophers are incredibly provincial and bigoted, b/c the whole world doesn't think like they do. Asians in particular don't give a flying fig about post-mondernism; they want their hi-tech stuff!