Posted on 02/04/2007 7:06:15 PM PST by Bubba_Leroy
Almost as soon as the Kyoto Protocol on global warming came into effect on February 15, Kashmir suffered the highest snowfall in three decades with over 150 killed, and Mumbai recorded the lowest temperature in 40 years. Had temperatures been the highest for decades, newspapers would have declared this was proof of global warming. But whenever temperatures drop, the press keeps quiet.
Things were different in 1940-70, when there was global cooling. Every cold winter then was hailed as proof of a coming new Ice Age. But the moment cooling was replaced by warming, a new disaster in the opposite direction was proclaimed.
A recent Washington Post article gave this scientist's quote from 1972. "We simply cannot afford to gamble. We cannot risk inaction. The scientists who disagree are acting irresponsibly. The indications that our climate can soon change for the worse are too strong to be reasonably ignored." The warning was not about global warming (which was not happening): it was about global cooling!
In the media, disaster is news, and its absence is not. This principle has been exploited so skillfully by ecological scare-mongers that it is now regarded as politically incorrect, even unscientific, to denounce global warming hysteria as unproven speculation.
Meteorologists are a standing joke for getting predictions wrong even a few days ahead. The same jokers are being taken seriously when they use computer models to predict the weather 100 years hence.
The models have not been tested for reliability over 100 years, or even 20 years. Different models yield variations in warming of 400%, which means they are statistically meaningless.
Wassily Leontief, Nobel prize winner for modeling, said this about the limits of models. "We move from more or less plausible but really arbitrary assumptions, to elegantly demonstrated but irrelevant conclusions." Exactly. Assume continued warming as in the last three decades, and you get a warming disaster. Assume more episodes of global cooling, and you get a cooling disaster.
In his latest best seller State of Fear, Michael Crichton does a devastating expose of the way ecological groups have tweaked data and facts to create mass hysteria. He points out that we know astonishingly little about the environment. All sides make exaggerated claims.
We know that atmospheric carbon is increasing. We are also in the midst of a natural warming trend that started in 1850 at the end of what is called the Little Ice Age. It is scientifically impossible to prove whether the subsequent warming is natural or man-made.
Greens say, rightly, that the best scientific assessment today is that global warming is occurring. Yet never in history have scientists accurately predicted what will happen 100 years later. A century ago no scientists predicted the internet, microwave ovens, TV, nuclear explosions or antibiotics. It is impossible, even stupid, to predict the distant future.
That scientific truth is rarely mentioned. Why? Because the global warming movement has now become a multi-billion dollar enterprise with thousands of jobs and millions in funding for NGOs and think-tanks, top jobs and prizes for scientists, and huge media coverage for predictions of disaster.
The vested interests in the global warming theory are now as strong, rich and politically influential as the biggest multinationals. It is no co-incidence, says Crichton, that so many scientists sceptical of global warming are retired professors: they have no need to chase research grants and chairs.
I have long been an agnostic on global warming: the evidence is ambiguous. But I almost became a convert when Greenpeace publicised photos showing the disastrously rapid retreat of the Upsala Glacier in Argentina. How disastrous, I thought, if this was the coming fate of all glaciers.
Then last Christmas, I went on vacation to Lake Argentina. The Upsala glacier and six other glaciers descend from the South Andean icefield into the lake. I was astounded to discover that while the Upsala glacier had retreated rapidly, the other glaciers showed little movement, and one had advanced across the lake into the Magellan peninsula. If in the same area some glaciers advance and others retreat, the cause is clearly not global warming but local micro-conditions.
Yet the Greenpeace photos gave the impression that glaciers in general were in rapid retreat. It was a con job, a dishonest effort to mislead. From the same icefield, another major glacier spilling into Chile has grown 60% in volume.
Greenpeace and other ecological groups have well-intentioned people with high ideals. But as crusaders they want to win by any means, honest or not. I do not like being taken for a ride, by idealists or anyone else.
We need impartial research, funded neither by MNCs, governmental groups or NGOs with private agendas. And the media needs to stop highlighting disaster scares and ignoring exposes of the scares.
I missed giving the Free Republic post link:
www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/866013/posts
Back during the Clinton administration I wondered why the libs weren't freaking out over gas-guzzling SUVs. Where I live, you can't go to a parking lot at a school or a soccer game (heavily lib-oriented) without seeing virtually nothing but SUVs. I guess we only have problems during GOP administrations.
-35 in Chicago, I just love this Global Warming!!!
A recent favorite of mine was this one:
Snow in Malibu - Tin Ear Pelosi Calls For Global Warming Committee
"The day after there is record cold on the west coast (Snow in Malibu!) and people are dying across the country from a horrific storm, Nancy Pelosi introduces her global warming committee to stop global warming."
And this:
Gore Effect:
"The well documented phenomenon that leads to very low, unseasonal temperatures, driving rain, hail, snow or all of the above whenever Al Gore visits an area to discuss global warming. Hence the Gore Effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_North_American_heat_wave
Hottest and coldest at the same year. Called it the Dust Bowl. Damned facts always mess up the liberal plans.
We had the 1900 storm bigger than Katrina and I went through Carla personally. At it's peak it was 175mph. It didn't hit land that fast but it was a bad one. Katrina was bad because it hit New Orleans which is under sea level anyway. Rita was actually more powerful, it just didn't hit Galveston like they said it would.
There have been droughts and storms since the beginning, and there will always be. I almost hurled when the Dems were claiming the Fla tornado was from global warming. This is becoming sort of a mental disorder. The glaciers have been melting for 18,000 years at least. There have been minor ice ages in between, but warming is still the trend and we can't do anything about it.
Now, I wouldn't be against a few million megatons going off in Iran to kick up a global cooling dust cloud.
That just goes to show that human activity is the cause of CLIMATE STAGNATION!
pimg
Like you can feel a .3C increase in temperasture?
"Then last Christmas, I went on vacation to Lake Argentina. The Upsala glacier and six other glaciers descend from the South Andean icefield into the lake. I was astounded to discover that while the Upsala glacier had retreated rapidly, the other glaciers showed little movement, and one had advanced across the lake into the Magellan peninsula. If in the same area some glaciers advance and others retreat, the cause is clearly not global warming but local micro-conditions.
Yet the Greenpeace photos gave the impression that glaciers in general were in rapid retreat. It was a con job, a dishonest effort to mislead. From the same icefield, another major glacier spilling into Chile has grown 60% in volume. "
Is tthere any way to confirm this? Those were some pretty devastating pictures - even for a cynic like me.
I found some info here : http://www.mitosyfraudes.org/Ingles3/UpsalaEng.html
Regarding the Upsala Glacier retreat.
But, what is happening with the Upsala glacier?
In order to know the answer, we must read some scientific works - the serious ones - as the paper published in a Japanese website, dedicated to the study of glaciers:
http://glacier.lowtem.hokudai.ac.jp/project/patagonia/patagonia.htm
Thinning and retreating of Glaciar Upsala,
and an estimate of annual ablation changes in southern Patagonia
(R. Naruse, P. Skvarca and Y. Takeuchi)
Glaciar Upsala, a fresh-water calving glacier in southern Patagonia, has been retreating since 1978, and after a drastic recession of about 700 m/a in 1994 the retreat seems to have stopped in 1995. A large ice-thinning rate of 11 m/a was obtained between 1990 and 1993, by surveying surface elevations near the terminus of Glaciar Upsala. In 1993-1994, the thinning was estimated at about 20 m/a near the lateral margin. Some possible causes of the thinning behavior are considered.
In the ablation area of Glaciar Perito Moreno, 50 km south of Glaciar Upsala, ablation rates were measured during 110 d in summer 1993-94, and air temperature was continuously recorded throughout 1994. Using a degree-day method with temperature data at the nearest meteorological station, Calafate, annual ablation during the last 30 years was estimated to fluctuate from about 12 +- 2 m/a to 16 +- 2 m/a in ice thickness, with a mean of 14 +- 2 m/a. Thus, the temperature anomaly alone cannot elucidate the thinning of 11 m/a at Glaciar Upsala.
As a possible mechanism of the ice-thinning, it is suggested that the considerable retreat due to calving may have resulted in reduction of longitudinal compressive stress exerted from bedrock rises and islands near the glacier front, causing a considerable decrease in the emergence flow. Thus, the ice may have thinned at a rate close to the annual ablation rate.
(Annals of Glaciology, Vol. 24, 1997)
In other paper published in the same webiste, (Dynamic features of glaciers in Patagonia, by R. Naruse), its is repeated that temperature (global or regional warming) it is not the causal factor for the retreat of the Upsala glacier between 1978 y 1994, but there are more notorious causes as
Mechanisms of large shrinkage of Glaciar Upsala were discussed. Based on measured ablation rates with temperature data at Calafate, annual ablation thickness near the front of Glaciar Upsala was estimated to fluctuate from 14 m/a to 18 m/a (1962-94). The range (4 m/a) of year-to-year variations in annual ablation is much smaller than the mean thinning rate of 11 m/a. Thus, temperature change alone could not elucidate the ice thinning phenomenon. Measurements of water depth were made in 1994 and 1997 at the proglacial lake, and a large bump of about 250 m high was found on the bed near the glacier terminus. From a continuity analysis, it was revealed that the normal stresses from the bump and islands near the terminus play an important role to the dynamics of Glaciar Upsala. A possible mechanism may be such a feedback as: frontal retreat - reduction in longitudinal compressive stress - decrease in emergence flow - ice thinning - frontal retreat.
(2nd International Symposium on Arctic and Antarctic Issues; Punta Arenas, Chile; November 1998)
How can be read: scientists made no mention of temperature.
Global Warming or Global Cooling?
It makes no difference. It all boils down to a means for socialists to advance an agenda of world wide redistribution of wealth.
Global Climate Change is the new religion of socialist reform. The Kyoto Treaty is their holy scripture, Al Gore is their Messiah and nothing including common sense and reason will get in their way.
The sun is THE problem here. It is likely to be CAUSING the bulk of the CO2 buildup.
No, no, no. Taxation by itself is insufficient.
There must also be redistribution of the tax funds to leftist causes. It is only then that the inherent inequality of the capitalist system is corrected and assets are rightly removed from the hands of evil capitalists and put in the hands of liberals who know best how to use them.
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
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