Posted on 12/07/2008 10:38:17 AM PST by andrew roman
From the "nothing else needs to be said" file ...
Pundits, talk-show hosts, op-ed writers, cable news rambling heads and low-level blogging types (yours truly) can often be helpful in dissecting the comings and goings in this world, making them easier to comprehend or put into context - sometimes to the benefit of critical thought, other times to the determent. However, occassions do arise where it simply isn't necessary to analyze and break down the often complicated stories and events of our time to be able to make some sense of them.
There are times when a "let it speak for itself" approach is sufficient.
This is one of those instances, I suspect.
On the front page of Drudge Report, as of early Sunday morning (Eastern Time), there were links to two global warming stories - a fairly common occurance there.
This particular time, however, there was something funny about them - they way they were posted on the page. It was almost deliberately comical.
The first was a Reuters article with the headline, "Climate Protestors Demand Swift UN Action." (That, in itself should be enough to have you wetting your inseam with laughter. The only thing the United Nations accomplishes in a timely manner is passing resolutions against Israel).
The second headline, directly below it read, "2008 will be Coolest Year of the Decade."
I giggled. I thought of "The Onion" momentarily - the first story about the rallying wackjobs who believe the world is about to sizzle itself to death, and the second story - just below it - talking about how cold its getting.
After digging a bit deeper, however, I quickly realized that both articles were actually saying the same thing (as so many of them do) - that we are doomed (or almost doomed).
The first article's opening sentences are indicative of the hysteria that has grabbed the environmental left by the short hairs:
Thousands of climate protesters, some dressed as polar bears, devils or penguins, demanded on Saturday swifter action from the United Nations to combat global warming. Several thousand more protesters took part in a march through London to demand "urgent and radical action" from the British government on climate change.
Costumes are always a winner. Penguin-suit wearing freak balls always put me in a warm and fuzzy mood.
"So far I think it's going really slowly," Susann Scherbarth from Friends of the Earth in Germany said of the talks in the western city of Poznan. She and other protesters in Poznan waved a banner reading: "Stop clowning around, get serious about climate action."
Typical, off-the-rack goofballism. What could be more serious than a devil outfit?
Besides, there is something marvelously insane about watching global warming protestors bundled up in winter clothing, screaming things.
But wait ... it actually gets better with the second article. Apparently, the cooling that's happening doesn't mean there isn't still dangerous warming going on. The path to Earthly destruction (I'm happy to report) remains in tact. Below the main headline is the money quote - a sub-headline which reads in part: "... cooler temperature is not evidence that global warming is slowing, say climate scientists."
That I have to pose this next question shows the level of absurdity this debate has descended to ... but if cooling temperatures are not evidence of the slowing of global warming, what the hell is?
(This is where I turn at the camera with one of those great asides, one of those Jack Benny "looks" where nothing needs to be said - a "let it speak for itself" moment. For those not familiar with Benny, think Jim on The Office).
_
I think a long trend over a number of years is the only thing that will convince the whack jobs that global warming is, well, whacked.
Also causes zits and warts .....
These people need to be institutionalized they are a danger to themselves as well as others.
They worked their way into a bind by committing themselves to a ‘demonstrable’ effect of man's activity (warming), and have already begun to back out.
With the term “Climate Change,” they can attribute warming or cooling or even stagnation, if global temperatures do not change (because, they'll say, they should change ‘some’) to man's activity and demand totalitarian control over the people.
Wasn’t Bucky Fuller who claimed we (should be) are domed?
Shows what you know about Science, with a capital S. Global Warm Theory is extremely robust with respect to data. All observations confirm it with probability 1.0.
Facts are sorta like ballots in Washington State. If you torture them enough they'll give you any answer you want.
I have met some AGW cultist that would still believe the scam if there were glaciers in Miami. It is a religion.
As with any doomsday or end of times religion, if the predictions don’t come true the leaders just tweak the “facts.” History is filled with examples.
ABSTRACT:
"Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere [historically] is the product of oceanic respiration due to the well-known but under-appreciated solubility pump. Carbon dioxide rises out of warm ocean waters where it is added to the atmosphere. There it is mixed with residual and accidental CO2, and circulated, to be absorbed into the sink of the cold ocean waters. Next the thermohaline circulation carries the CO2-rich sea water deep into the ocean. A millennium later it appears at the surface in warm waters, saturated by lower pressure and higher temperature, to be exhausted back into the atmosphere. Throughout the past 420 millennia, comprising four interglacial periods, the Vostok record of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is imprinted with, and fully characterized by, the physics of the solubility of CO2 in water, along with the lag in the deep ocean circulation.
Notwithstanding that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, atmospheric carbon dioxide has neither caused nor amplified global temperature increases. Increased carbon dioxide has been an effect of global warming, not a cause. Technically, carbon dioxide is a lagging proxy for ocean temperatures. When global temperature, and along with it, ocean temperature rises, the physics of solubility causes atmospheric CO2 to increase.
If increases in carbon dioxide, or any other greenhouse gas, could have in turn raised global temperatures, the positive feedback would have been catastrophic. While the conditions for such a catastrophe were present in the Vostok record from natural causes, the runaway event did not occur. Carbon dioxide does not accumulate in the atmosphere."
http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/10/co2_acquittal.html
_______________________________________________________________
The graph above represents temperature and CO2 levels over the past 400,000 years. It is the same exact data Al Gore and the rest of the man-made global warmers refer to. The blue line is temps, the red, CO2 levels. The deep valleys represent 4 separate glaciation/ice-age periods. Look carefully at this historical relationship between temps and CO2 levels (the present is on the right hand side of the graph) and keep in mind that Gore claims this data is the 'proof' that CO2 has warmed the earth in the past. But does the data indeed show this? Nope. In fact, rising CO2 levels all throughout this 400,000-year period actually *followed* temperature increases -lagging behind by an average of 800 years! So it couldn't have been CO2 that got Earth out of these past glaciations. Yet Gore continually and dishonestly claims otherwise. Furthermore, the subsequent CO2 level increases due to dissolved CO2 being released from warming oceans, never did lead to additional warming, the so-called "run-away greenhouse effect" that Al Gore and his friends keep warning us about. In short, there is little if any evidence that CO2 had ever led to increased warming, at least not when the levels were within 10-15 times of what they are today. -ETL
_______________________________________________________________
"The above chart shows the range of global temperature through the last 500 million years. There is no statistical correlation between the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through the last 500 million years and the temperature record in this interval. In fact, one of the highest levels of carbon dioxide concentration occurred during a major ice age that occurred about 450 million years ago [Myr]. Carbon dioxide concentrations at that time were about 15 times higher than at present." [also see 180 million years ago, same thing happened]:
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=010405M
_______________________________________________________________
So, greenhouse [effect] is all about carbon dioxide, right?
Wrong. The most important players on the greenhouse stage are water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide has been increased to about 0.038% of the atmosphere (possibly from about 0.028% pre-Industrial Revolution) while water in its various forms ranges from 0% to 4% of the atmosphere and its properties vary by what form it is in and even at what altitude it is found in the atmosphere.
In simple terms the bulk of Earth's greenhouse effect is due to water vapor by virtue of its abundance. Water accounts for about 90% of the Earth's greenhouse effect -- perhaps 70% is due to water vapor and about 20% due to clouds (mostly water droplets), some estimates put water as high as 95% of Earth's total tropospheric greenhouse effect (e.g., Freidenreich and Ramaswamy, 'Solar Radiation Absorption by Carbon Dioxide, Overlap with Water, and a Parameterization for General Circulation Models,' Journal of Geophysical Research 98 (1993):7255-7264).
The remaining portion comes from carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, ozone and miscellaneous other 'minor greenhouse gases.' As an example of the relative importance of water it should be noted that changes in the relative humidity on the order of 1.3-4% are equivalent to the effect of doubling CO2.
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/
_______________________________________________________________
Water Vapor Rules the Greenhouse System
Water vapor constitutes Earth's most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect (4). Interestingly, many 'facts and figures' regarding global warming completely ignore the powerful effects of water vapor in the greenhouse system, carelessly (perhaps, deliberately) overstating human impacts as much as 20-fold.
Water vapor is 99.999% of natural origin. Other atmospheric greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and miscellaneous other gases (CFC's, etc.), are also mostly of natural origin (except for the latter, which is mostly anthropogenic).
Human activities contribute slightly to greenhouse gas concentrations through farming, manufacturing, power generation, and transportation. However, these emissions are so dwarfed in comparison to emissions from natural sources we can do nothing about, that even the most costly efforts to limit human emissions would have a very small-- perhaps undetectable-- effect on global climate.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
