Posted on 12/14/2006 7:02:56 AM PST by .cnI redruM
It had to hurt some egos over at The United Nations. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has announced that mankind has less impact on the planetary climate than was previously thought. This iteration of ongoing study and analysis reduced the projected temperature increase from Greenhouse Gases by 25%. According to the IPCC, the planet will warm by 4.5 degrees C over the next century.
More importantly, the predictions knockon effects envisioned by earlier IPCC reports have also been damped. A key example cited by The London Telegraph would be sea-level rise. Earlier reports cited a potential 34 in. rise in global sea level. The 2005 report cuts this down to 17 in.
This leads to fears among environmentalists that skeptics will jump on this data and use it to discredit The Greenhouse Hypothesis. The data, in and of itself, is in no way sufficient to debunk the theory. Skeptics would do better to examine the internals that drove the IPCC to reduce their estimates.
The IPCC claims they have reduced their 2005 estimate of upward forcing because of the heat absorption properties of sulfurous aerosols. This directly contradicts the scientific judgment rendered in 2001. In the 2001 IPCC, scientists claimed that the reduction of SO2 mass loadings in the atmosphere would limit the impact of this downward forcing. The extent to which sulfuric aerosols force the climate per unit mass has been clearly parameterized for computer models to operate on has been a scientific known since the 1990s, at the latest.
The 2005 IPCC also attributes their reduction in upward forcing to ocean water storing Carbon Dioxide by reducing it to Carbonic Acid. This may be scientifically accurate, but it becomes troubling when the 2005 IPCC report is compared to its 2001 counterpoint. Ocean Storage of Carbon Dioxide has been raised as a theoretical objection to The Greenhouse Hypothesis since the mid-1950s. Also, numerous mechanisms exist to test the veracity of this phenomenon.
A simple and direct method involves measuring the pH of ocean water as it splashes against a worldwide network of ocean buoys. As the pH drops, the ocean is becoming more acidic, and CO2 is a possibility. Absent a significant change in ocean pH, the hypothesis that CO forms when modern industrial pollution hits the ocean surface can be discounted if not dismissed.
My interpretation may be jaundiced by the fact that I am skeptical of both the motivations and the professional due diligence of many who support The Greenhouse Hypothesis. Proving this hypothesis has become The Holy Grail to anti-capitalists and The Philosopher Stone of Control Freaks questing after the ultimate moral platform from whence to play the role of dominus et deus over every aspect of modern endeavor.
The data used to support this has come under withering analytical fire. Even as consensus gets reached that we are a warmer planet than we were last century, the mechanisms and magnitude of the upward forcing become mired in the fog of scientific pettifogging. Even to the point that climate scientists are accused of not even knowing which end of the cow emits the GHGs.
The scientists engaged in supporting The Greenhouse Hypothesis needed a way to climb down, without admitting they over-hyped their estimates of anthropogenic upward climactic forcing in IPCC 2001. They therefore reheated old, left-over scientific data to use as a graveman by which they could adjust their estimates in absence of admitting their culpability.
I compare Al Gore to Rosie ODonnel.
Oh quit shilling for the VRWC. He hasn't gained THAT much wait since he lost in 2000.
The Democrats plan to pass legislation retrofitting all cows with large balloons to capture greenhouse gases.
Imagine all this natural gas going to waste. Can't the Man Who Invented the Internet find some way to harness this valuable resource instead of wasting his energies with all these public-speaking engagements? Can you imagine what all that hot air is doing to the ozone layer?
I think Gore should spend the rest of his time on earth sticking plastic pipe up cow butts to collect and recycle the methane. I imagine the process would be kind of like syphoning gas, except that instead of letting it run into a gas can, Gore the Methane Farmer would have to exhale the gas into some sort of balloon for at least temporary storage. Probably some of those big military-surplus weather balloons, they're cheap.
Anything to save Mother Earth.
10/12/2006 http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2062484.ece
Cow 'emissions' more damaging to planet than CO2 from cars
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor Published: 10 December 2006
Meet the world's top destroyer of the environment. It is not the car, or the plane,or even George Bush: it is the cow.
A United Nations report has identified the world's rapidly growing herds of cattle as the greatest threat to the climate, forests and wildlife.
And they are blamed for a host of other environmental crimes, from acid rain to the introduction of alien species, from producing deserts to creating dead zones in the oceans, from poisoning rivers and drinking water to destroying coral reefs.
The 400-page report by the Food and Agricultural Organisation, entitled Livestock's Long Shadow, also surveys the damage done by sheep, chickens, pigs and goats. But in almost every case, the world's 1.5 billion cattle are most to blame. Livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together.
Burning fuel to produce fertiliser to grow feed, to produce meat and to transport it - and clearing vegetation for grazing - produces 9 per cent of all emissions of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas. And their wind and manure emit more than one third of emissions of another, methane, which warms the world 20 times faster than carbon dioxide.
Livestock also produces more than 100 other polluting gases, including more than two-thirds of the world's emissions of ammonia, one of the main causes of acid rain.
Ranching, the report adds, is "the major driver of deforestation" worldwide, and overgrazing is turning a fifth of all pastures and ranges into desert.Cows also soak up vast amounts of water: it takes a staggering 990 litres of water to produce one litre of milk.
Wastes from feedlots and fertilisers used to grow their feed overnourish water, causing weeds to choke all other life. And the pesticides, antibiotics and hormones used to treat them get into drinking water and endanger human health.
The pollution washes down to the sea, killing coral reefs and creating "dead zones" devoid of life. One is up to 21,000sqkm, in the Gulf of Mexico, where much of the waste from US beef production is carried down the Mississippi.
The report concludes that, unless drastic changes are made, the massive damage done by livestock will more than double by 2050, as demand for ___meat___ increases.
PETA / Vegan / Environmentalist whacko / Barf Alert bttt
12/11/06
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_121106/content/environmentalist_wacko_update.member.html
Rush: "I've seldom encountered an entire group of people so obsessed with doom and gloom and apocalyptic thought. It runs the gamut from politics to nature to wherever.
These people are obsessed with everything being destroyed, while there's no evidence of it in the history of the world. It always rejuvenates and recycles. How you can look at this creation and this planet and see destruction of natural forces and not be awed by its beauty is beyond me. Now, try this. This is from the Associated Press. This is how it works. By the way, I want to stress, folks, I'm not obsessed with the environment. I am obsessed with capitalism and its preservation, and this is an attack on capitalism and the systems here that have made this the richest and greatest country in the history of human civilization, with more opportunity and prosperity each and every day than the day before. It is under assault and the environment and all these other causes and isms are simply the means by which the people are trying to get to that destruction of the exceptionalism of this country."
RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I want to go back to this story from the UK Independent: "Cow Emissions More Damaging to the Planet than CO2 from Cars." Now, we laugh about this, but I want to get serious about it because there is something really serious that needs to be said over and over and over again. I've talked 'til I'm blue in the face about this for most of my star-studded and sterling broadcast career. We go back and forth. It's automobiles and CO2; it's whatever the hell, industrialization. American prosperity is causing all this climate destruction and so forth. We went through a period of time earlier in the last decade where it was cow flatulence -- and remember people were saying, "We've gotta stop eating McDonald's burgers and so forth because we'll need fewer cows and steers, and that way we'll need not to clear-cut as much land for them to eat and so forth"?
So these things are quite cyclical, and we're now back to this. "Meet the world's top destroyer of the environment. It is not the car, or the plane, or even George Bush: it is the cow. A United Nations report has identified the world's rapidly growing herds of cattle as the greatest threat to the climate, forests and wildlife." Now, that is just extreme to the max. It is nonsensical, it's insulting. "The 400-page report by the Food and Agricultural Organisation, entitled Livestock's Long Shadow, also surveys the damage done by sheep, chickens, pigs and goats. But in almost every case, the world's 1.5 billion cattle are most to blame. Livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together."
Now, for those of you who worship the planet and not God, would the planet do this to itself? It's understandable that a planet would have evil human beings that would destroy it, but would the planet really allow such creatures as cows to evolve or be created however you planet worshipers look at it, so that they could eventually destroy it? How do you people rationalize what you believe? I'll be honest. I don't want to offend anybody. It's Christmastime. I believe in God-d, and I believe the God of creation. I don't think anything else can explain the complexity and the mysteries that is the universe or that are the universe and this little speck in it called Earth, and I refuse to believe that the God of creation, capable of such beauty and magnificence, would create as a natural functioning entity in His creation, something that just living his life as He created it to do would destroy the planet.
"But, Rush! But, Rush! God created man, and man has created nukes, and nukes could destroy the world."
No, they couldn't. Nukes might destroy some people, and if we sent enough of them off, it might destroy all of us. I doubt that would happen either. But it wouldn't destroy all of life, cockroaches would survive and I am not kidding. Organisms that we've just learned live two miles deep in the ocean would survive. The Earth would survive. This whole concept of destruction of the planet is silly, superfluous, stupid, and insane because it isn't possible. Now, talk to me about an asteroid running into us or something of the sort and then we can talk.
But the idea, even those of you who worship the planet, the idea that a cow, because the UN now says so, that livestock are responsible for this climate crisis, and that's going to lead to problems the likes of which mankind has never before seen and could wipe us out and cause severe rising sea levels, wipe out cities.
Oh, my Lord, it's over! Because of cows, because of cattle, one and a half billion of them. My God, what kind of idiots do we have in this country that fall prey to this stuff.
They must be gotten to early with teachers and school and cartoons and so forth, and that idiot Gore on Oprah. You know, kids with nothing better to do after school watching this stuff, "Mommy, mommy, mommy, we're destroying the planet, Al Gore said so, it was so terrible." (Crying.) Scaring people left and right, send your pennies to the United Nations kids and save the planet. "The report concludes that unless drastic changes are made, the massive damage done by livestock..." That sentence itself, that fragment of that sentence right there is just neophyte, it's insulting, and ludicrous. "The massive damage done by livestock will more than double by 2050 as demand for meat increases." A-ha.
Vegetarians have become militant in recent years, and this will fuel their militancy.
Now, I'm going to tell you what this is really all about, folks, and I want you to listen close and I want you to listen fast. This is not about cars. It is not about cows. It is certainly not about emissions. It is not about global warming, and least of all it is not about greenhouse gases.
What this is all about is American prosperity, American freedom, and American exceptionalism. We are despised because of what we bring to the world and because of what we offer to the world, and the short version of an upcoming, brilliant monologue is, we need to be cut down to size. What this is about is a new global community with the United Nations in control. You see, apparently to the world's socialists, dictators, and tyrants it is fiscally impossible to bring the rest of the planet up to United States living standards.
The only way to equalize things, therefore, is to lower Americans' living standards. It has been happening in education. Outcome based education. We, rather than take the fastest learners and the brightest kids and encourage 'em, we hold 'em back so as not to humiliate those who don't do as well. It's happening throughout our culture. Achievement is being punished, underachievement is being excused and even celebrated as some sort of victimhood. The imperfections in humanity are embraced as normalcy, so as to make those who don't have as many imperfections feel guilty. This is happening throughout our culture. It's the propaganda behind tax increases on the rich. It is all designed to make the non-rich think the rich are being gotten even with, but that's a myth as well.
As I have pointed out, let's say you make 50 grand a year and somebody making 150 gets a tax increase. They pay more tax; does your life change? Your life any better? Any of the money they're paying in tax to the government going to come back to you? No. Are you able to buy any more food or buy a better car? No. No, you're supposed to feel happy somebody else got punished. Good old schadenfreude, taking pleasure in the misery of others, and this has become a tenet of liberalism. It is decided that when people are prospering and achieving, more so than others, rather than take -- and this is tentative liberalism, too. Rather than take those at the bottom and attempt to educate them, improve their lives, and lift them up, what liberalism does is go to the top and say, "You're too big for your britches! bud," and try to bring people down to size.
Liberalism lowers achievement, lowers standards, all in the name of making everyone equal. They take away incentives to hard work, they level the playing field so no one has to try to get up a hill. They're trying to make us all moderates. Look at the Iraq Surrender Group report. The whole purpose of that is to unite everybody in mushiness, to unite everybody in surrender, to unite everybody in the notion: "America can't win a war! America cannot achieve! America can't do it anymore," and we are to unify around this. American exceptionalism to the left and to the worldwide socialist tyrant dictator thug community is to be feared and ended. Of course, nobody expects the John Kerrys and the Ted Kennedys or the Hillary Clintons, the Bill Clintons, the John Edwards, the Jon Corzines, the Nancy Pelosis, the Harry Reids to give up their wealth.
Nobody expects them to lop off some of their achievement. Their planes, their yachts, their seven SUVs, their five houses, or their cattle ranches like Ted Turner and Sam Donaldson. No, it's about getting rid of the American middle class, folks. At no previous time in history has a middle class been so large. You might find a large middle class in India right now, and it is thriving. Most cultures have a tiny elite with special privileges and a huge working class. Look at Mexico. Look at south and Central America. Look at most of the Arab countries. America has skewed the equation with an every-growing educated prosperous middle class. They own cars instead of bicycles and rickshaws. They have leisure time. They can wander around airports threatening to sue because there's no menorah up or too many Christmas trees or they can walk around getting offended over whatever they've got time to do because they've got too much time on their hands because we've got so much prosperity.
[]They have central heat and air-conditioning in their homes instead of huddling around a fireplace like they did in Apocalypto. I saw it last week. It's also why they hate what Bush tried to do in Iraq. Lord knows having a mini-United States of America in the Middle East, why, that would be a disaster for them. It is why they encourage a tidal wave of uneducated illegals in the US. It brings the whole lot down. It dilutes us. It is all about lowering standards, punishing achievement. It is all about reducing prosperity and freedom and exceptionalism in this country because the rest of the world will never be able to reach our standards. They could if we just had a greater distribution of capitalism but that doesn't go along with dictators, thugs, and tyranny. This is what the environmental movement is. This is what the animal rights movement is, this is what every leftist cause is about.
Behind every cause such as global warming, the environment, you name it, you will find socialists and liberals. Socialism is the ultimate goal. Environmentism, unionism, feminism, peacism, vegetarianism are simply the means to get there. Now, in truth, let's take this cow report at face value. Let's say that the cow emissions are more damaging than cars. Well, if that's true, let's move off the automobile as the cause of global warming since research doesn't seem to support that anymore. And let's move into another area of scaring people. Cows! Cows are going to kill us. Cows are causing environmental destruction. See how many people buy that. See how many people believe that. So even now that the UN has put out this big report that it's cow flatulence, more damaging to the planet than CO2 from cars. This will be ignored. The car will continue to be attacked because it's not about pollution, it's not about cars, it's not about cows, it's not about emissions, global warming or greenhouse gases, it's about cutting America down to size. ~ Rush 12/11/2006
Ohhhh...I Know!!! I Know!!!
It turns out that the media (never trust the media) misreported this, and the misreporting has been promulgated by skeptical sources. HERE's the REAL story:
"The IPCC report just summarizes the scientific literature. There has not been any paper published that would justify reducing the estimate. The reporter has confused climate sensitivity (how much warming you eventually get from doubling CO2), with predicted warming in 2100. In the third assessment report the top end of the range for sensitivity was 4.5, while the top end for warming by 2100 was 5.8. These numbers haven't changed in the new report, all that has happened is that the reporter has mistaken the 4.5 number for sensitivity as a new estimate for warming and reported it as a reduction from 5.8."
From a post on the Deltoid blog.
?!?!? Talk about scientific illiteracy... It's not a hypothesis; it's a theory.
Plus, it's a very well established theory.
What's in dispute is whether the possible climate change is occurring, and if so, if it's anthropogenic.
>>>>Talk about scientific illiteracy
OK, I'll discuss scientific illiteracy. The Earth only warms as a greenhouse does, in comparison to prior years, if anthropogenic atmospheric content changes its atmosphere to the point that these chemicals are the specific graveman by which the warming occurs.
You youself state
"What's in dispute is whether the possible climate change is occurring, and if so, if it's anthropogenic."
if you can't prove the change is anthropogenic, you can't prove the Earth is becoming a Greenhouse.
If there's no Greenhouse Effect on Earth, then why are we not as cold as Luna?
>>>>The Earth only warms as a greenhouse does, in comparison to prior years,....
You seem to be willfully ignoring the phrase in comparison to previous years.
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.