AMS CERTIFIED WEATHERMAN STRIKES BACK

Censorship again from the left??? /sarcasm

Liberals are never tolerant of anyone outside their favorite groups and backers.

If we were as blind to ourselves are they are to themselves, we would proclaim how "tolerant" we were of hunters and gun owners. Or of people who wanted "scientists" who believe in global warming, fired.

Or we'd push endlessly for nonprofit organizations -- those whose only claim to fame being that they support us.

Thousands of examples.

Liberals are not tolerant - for the most part, they're petty, closed minded mini-totalitarians.

You've got that right. I'll never forget the former mayor of Austin, Kirk Watson and his "smart growth" initiative years ago. That really worked. < /sarcasm>

Cogitator will be along shortly to drown you in scientific "studies" that support GW; put on your boots.

You missed the point, TWC focused on post-hurricane coverage in 2006 because they are geared to report on disasters and 2006 didn't have any, so back to the tapes of 2005 big ones they went to try and hold a fading audience.

A Brief History of Global Warming

Global warming is not a technology but an idea, some 150 years old. It began when Victorian scientists asked a simple question: why was the Earth's global temperature so warm--a pleasant average of 59 degrees Fahrenheit. Basic physics suggested that (because most of the sun's heat escaped into space) the average surface temperature of Earth should be much, much colder, bitterly cold in fact, averaging minus 18 degrees Fahrenheit.

Reasoning that the difference had to be due to the warming effect of atmospheric gases that "blanket" the planet, British physicist John Tyndall experimented with the two most common atmospheric gases, oxygen and nitrogen, and found virtually no heat-blocking effect. But Tyndall discovered that the trace gas carbon dioxide (CO2) was different: CO2 did trap heat energy; in fact, it was as opaque to heat as a block of wood (Tyndall, 1863, 1873). Like glass in a greenhouse, the CO2 trapped escaping heat and helped keep the Earth warm. Tyndall demonstrated his experiments in public lectures at Britain's Royal Institution--one of the only popular science outlets of the day.

Interestingly, Victorian scientists were not worried about the greenhouse effect. To the contrary, the greenhouse effect appeared to assuage contemporary fears of an impending Ice Age. In 1896, however, the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius (Arrhenius, 1896) speculated that because human factories, homes, and vehicles produced "extra" CO2 when they burned coal and oil, such emissions might cause the Earth's temperature to rise significantly over time. This idea of human-induced or anthropogenic warming was later taken up by a British engineer, Guy Stewart Callendar (Callendar, 1938), but with little success. While there was occasional press speculation about global warming--see, for example, the July 1, 1950, edition of the Saturday Evening Post (Abarbanel & McCluskey, 1950)--for the most part neither scientists nor the public were much concerned. Most scientists thought any excess anthropogenic CO2 would be rapidly dissolved in the Earth's vast oceans and be sequestered there for thousands of years. Others held that any extra CO2 would "fertilize" the biosphere, leading to more plant growth, which would in turn use more CO2, thus restoring the planetary heat balance.

But in time these lines of reasoning would prove to be incorrect.

In the 1950s and 1960s, a series of very careful scientific investigations in the oceans and the atmosphere forced the scientific community to take another look at the anthropogenic greenhouse effect. In 1957, Scripps oceanographer Roger Revelle discovered that much of the CO2 that dissolved in seawater, later evaporated out again (2)--as opposed to staying trapped for thousands of years (Revelle & Suess, 1957). This implied that over time, human-produced CO2 would build up in the atmosphere, and in principle increase the heat energy driving the climate system.

Back then there was no accurate way to measure atmospheric CO2, let alone how it changed over time. But in 1957, Revelle's student Charles David Keeling decided to take a crack at the problem. Keeling went to the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii, a location surrounded by a barren lava field, far removed from the cities that produced CO2 and also distant from the vegetation that absorbs it. There, Keeling began sampling the Earth's air. He would devote the rest of his working life to this task.

In a monumental work of science that would last four decades (Keeling & Whorl, 2001), Keeling's sensitive measurements proved that indeed anthropogenic CO2 was building up in the atmosphere; rising from 315 parts per million in the late 1950s to around 370 parts per million in the late 1990s. For scientists like Keeling, the most worrying thing was that the "curve" was increasing exponentially, meaning that the rate of increase was itself increasing. It was a simple matter of calculation: if burning fossil fuels continued unchecked, by 2050 the amount of atmospheric CO2 would reach twice pre-industrial levels.

In 1966, Revelle gave a lecture at Harvard at which he showed the "Keeling curve." One of his students was Al Gore, later to become Vice President of the United States. Gore was deeply impressed (Gore, 1992) and later wrote that this experience shattered his belief that the Earth was simply too big for humans to disrupt. But did it follow that anthropogenic climate change was now inevitable? And would the public care?

Whereas the media had seen immediately that nuclear energy was, for better or worse, a world-transforming, highly newsworthy subject, global warming had no such obvious traction. Global warming did benefit, however, from a growing public interest in the environment. By the late 1980s, with the help of influential advocates like Al Gore, environmental activism had moved onto a global stage, taking up international issues such as acid rain, ozone depletion, and waste disposal. In 1987, most of the world's nations signed an international treaty, the Montreal Protocol, curtailing chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that were suspected to disrupt the Earth's protective ozone layer. The unexpected discovery of a hole in the ozone layer above Antarctic a year later seemed to confirm that humans were playing with fire. It seemed reasonable that environmental groups might have similar success with concerns about global warming.

While global warming had no Chernobyl to trigger concern, its proponents could not resist taking advantage of a spike in United States' temperatures. The summer of 1988 was one of the hottest summers on record in the United States. As wildfires burned in Yellowstone Park, and drought ravaged the prairies, climatologist James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Space Center appeared before Congress and stated categorically that in his view global warming had already begun. (3)

But Hanson had badly overstated his case. As most experts later conceded, this label of global "warming" projected an oversimplified idea of how the Earth's climate worked. While it was convenient to imagine these so-called greenhouse gases causing American cities to swelter, in reality the Earth's global temperature was determined by numerous factors, some human, some natural. In reality, a century-long graph of the Earth's average temperature bore little resemblance to the Keeling curve. Globally averaged temperature records showed that the world had warmed from the 1880s until 1940, but thereafter the rise had stopped, and even fallen slightly, before starting to warm again in the 1980s. (4)

Lacking a simple cause and effect concept of global climate change, climate scientists have struggled to communicate a much more nuanced picture of the issue--a kind of Climate 101--while maintaining a sense of urgency. Here, anthropogenic CO2 is simultaneously presented as the main culprit in an evolving environmental disaster and also as simply one factor among many (including solar insolation, volcanoes, orbital cycles, sulfate aerosols, etc.) pushing and pulling the climate. This picture of global warming has proved too complex for most journalists (Bell, 1994; Wilson, 1995, 2000) and is far too convoluted to be encapsulated in a sound bite or an icon.

Without direct knowledge of climatology, journalists and their readers are forced to use indirect means to evaluate the seriousness of global warming, such as the testimonials of climate scientists. Proponents of global warming have continually emphasized the scientific consensus among climatologists in the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC). (5) This strategy is based on the premise that if the majority of qualified experts all agree that global warming poses a danger, then the public may be persuaded there is a problem. Indeed, the first IPCC consensus assessment in 1990 helped build political support for the 1992 climate conference in Rio de Janeiro, where the nations of the world met to discuss global warming. Despite pressure from United States' business, President George H. W. Bush signed a treaty aimed at curbing the continued release of greenhouse gases.

While most climate scientists are indeed concerned about global warming, a tiny handful of mavericks--so-called greenhouse skeptics--have enjoyed some success in undermining the media picture of scientific consensus (Singer & Seitz, 1998). These mavericks highlight the uncertainties scientists have about climate science and emphasize the Earth's natural climate variability. They argue that the Earth had global temperatures both higher and lower than today long before there were humans pumping out CO2. (6)

Since the hot summer of 1988, media coverage of and public interest in global warming has fallen (Trumbo, 1995). So has political support. At the 1997 Kyoto Conference on Climate Change in Japan, the world's nations met to discuss how much each country should commit to reducing greenhouse emissions. Even before the conference had begun, there were signs of US opposition. A coalition of US industrial corporations called The Global Climate Coalition lobbied congress, resulting in a 95-0 Senate vote threatening to reject any treaty that did not set limits for developing countries as well. For their part, the less developed nations (LDCs) did not want to sign onto to a treaty that might impede their economic development. They urged the developed world, especially the US, to lead the way with emissions reductions.

The rest is history. At the eleventh hour, Vice President Al Gore flew in and negotiated a compromise schedule of emissions reductions, starting with developed nations. Kyoto delegates agreed that the new "protocol" could only be implemented if nations representing 55% of the 1990 industrial emissions of six greenhouse gases ratified the agreement. Eight years later, the Kyoto Protocol has been ratified by 126 nations including the European Union, Japan, New Zealand, and Canada. On November 5, 2004, when Russia ratified the treaty, the magic 5.5% figure was reached, ensuring the Kyoto protocol will go into effect. But so far, the world's biggest emitter of CO2, the United States, has shown no sign of joining the rest of the developed world. Indeed, the Bush administration has repeatedly expressed skepticism about the reality of global climate change.

Analyzing the Coverage

This media history of global warming and nuclear energy raises numerous questions for students of public policy. What factors are involved in media decisions to cover or ignore environmental and health issues? What role does the style of storytelling have on the message sent? How might changes in media coverage (such as using more scientifically literate reporters and putting less emphasis on "balanced coverage") change matters? Does the media shape public opinion or follow it? To what extent do media preferences reflect an underlying psychology of risk perception? Should the responsible media have a role in promoting an educated populace that will engage intelligently with public policy issues?

As a way of exploring such issues, I want to start with a simple question: After several decades of media coverage, how informed is the public about nuclear energy and global warming?

The depressing answer is that the public understands comparatively little about either issue. Research has shown that the public is extraordinarily confused about nuclear issues (Jenkins-Smith & Silva, 1998). With radiation, there is little or no popular understanding of the various types of radioactivity, or of the fact that it occurs naturally in the environment--in the soil (e.g., Radon) and from space (e.g., cosmic rays)--or of the health consequences of different radiation doses. In my program on nuclear energy (Palfreman, 1997a), I interviewed citizens in the TMI area that had been monitoring radiation levels at the TMI plant for two decades but who paradoxically never thought about measuring their basements for Radon. (7)

A similar lack of knowledge has been found with global warming. Bord, O'Connor, & Fisher (1998) discovered the United States public has a flawed understanding of global warming--seeing it as linked to general "pollution" and causally connected in some way to atmospheric ozone depletion. According to Wilson (K.M. Wilson, 1995, 2000), reporters are not much better informed about climate change.

Scientists and media scholars who express frustrations with inadequate science reporting (M.T. Boykoff & J.M. Boykoff, 2004; Moore & Singletary, 1985; Nelkin, 1995; Schneider, 1995; Singer & Endreny, 1993; Tankard & Ryan, 1974) argue that it can lead to at least three basic distortions. First, journalists distort reality by making scientific errors. Second, they distort by keying on human-interest stories rather than scientific content. And third, journalists distort by rigid adherence to the construct of balanced coverage.

To read more: http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0199-5501123_ITM

Yep, pretty cold but not as bad as this;

If the news wasn't bad enough, I now read this:

"Perhaps the most dangerous threat to future food security is the rise in temperature. Among crop ecologists there is now a consensus that for each temperature rise of 1 degree Celsius above the historical average during the growing season, we can expect a 10 percent decline in grain yields. When describing weather-reduced harvests, crop analysts often refer to the crop prospect when weather returns to normal. They fail to realize that with the earth’s climate now in flux, there is no longer a norm to return to."

http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Grain/2006.htm

When was that photograph taken?

I don't recall that one!

Two years ago at Christmas when we had one foot of snow! I never did get it lightened up, it's too dark.

That was a 'Yorkie sized' snowman, we don't like the cold, lol. You know what he did next on that snowman???...

"The Dance Of The Yellow Boots"?

Lol, ya, I never heard it quite like that before!!

"Don't It Make My White Shoes Gold"

Yes it would, Piper has no respect for anything, lol.

You need to upload that photo

Be great in your Piper webpage

A wonderful Christmas card to send to algore and Weather Channel Nutgirl

I need to lighten it up first and it will be clear and sharp. My camera settings must need adjusted as I'm having to do that too often.

I'm sure you noticed a difference in that 'bench' one that I lightened.

True

I-M has a good fast "Brighten" filter

I believe I start at about 110 and slowly add brightness as needed

Under 100 is darker

You know more about that there. I use my graphics program and just move some 'right - left' sliders back and forth till it looks right.

So as you slide back and forth you can see the Brightness level - like adjusting a TV pictures controls Huh?