Posted on 05/28/2007 11:16:00 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
This is precisely why we are losing the fight.
They have conditioned the media and the public to believe that their opponents dispute that there is climate change. In reality most people I know do not dispute the fact the climate is changing. They dispute the effects of man on the climate and how effective the proposed regulations would be.
This is what happens when you lose control of the debate.
“I wonder why they named it Greenland in the first place. HMMMmmmmmmmmmmmm...”
Viking Marketing.
“Funny...I have been going to Greenland and Antarctica for 13 plus years and have NOT NOTICED any such thing.”
The narrative the climate alarmists are pushing is that the glacier melts are increasing. They then extrapolate that to a geometric increase and a sudden shift. National Geographic was pushing this line of thought.
This dispite the fact that *current* rate of reduction amounts to 1/8 inch per year increase in sea level. So if it continued at the same rate it would be ... 1 foot in 1 century. hardly anything to be concerned about.
“When i read the comments about climate change here and the use of phrase as climate change is not man-made. I always wonder why all the great scientists that support your opinion just post here while the other “real” scientists support a complete different opinion.”
FR is not a science forum per se. OTOH, there are many Climate Scientists who are not on board the climate alarmism bandwagon. responsible climate scientists are noting that (a) climate change is real, both natural and to some extent mankind’s input into it, and (b) the impacts are likely less than what is posited by the climate alarmist media.
See also:
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/virtual_climate_alerts/2002/vca18.htm
http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/michaels.shtml
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/
http://www.amazon.com/Meltdown-Predictable-Distortion-Scientists-Politicians/dp/1930865597
Please note btw that the UN’s IPCC has been a somewhat self-selecting process, whereby the climate ‘skeptics’ have been excluded and marginalized. Science has become politicized by the climate change alarmists:
http://www.gcrio.org/USGCRP/sustain/michaels.html
“I would like to spend a few minutes showing you how difficult consensus is to form, and how consensus changes. In 1990, the United Nations produced its first scientific assessment of climate change. I was asked by my friend, Tom Karl, to review it. I was asked anonymously to review it, because at that point the issue had already been so politicized that some people who were thought to give critical reviews were not invited to the process.”
Also note that key assumptions are getting contradicted by facts, but the popular media doesnt report this:
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2006/06/01/smeared-by-krugman/
“Ten years later, Hansen published a paper in which he hypothesized that “apparently the rate of uptake by carbon dioxide sinks, either the ocean, or more likely the forests and soils, has increased.” This was not assumed in any of his scenarios. In fact, the general hypothesis has been that, as the planet warms, the ocean takes up carbon dioxide at a slower rate.”
The end result is that there is a FALSE illusion of ‘consensus’ and ‘certainty’ on the science of this topic, where neither is valid. The only certainty on this is that the hyped-up worst-case scenarios, like in any such hype machine, will not come true.
http://travismonitor.blogspot.com/2007/04/globaloney-fears-shouldnt-dictate.html
“
The liberal intelligensia consensus on global warming is to pretend that there is a consensus and to shut off any debate, and hoodwink the public into thinking that any skepticism is illegitimate.”
The Greenland Vikings
Selected quotes from- The Last Viking: West by Northwest, by John N. Harris, M.A.(CMNS).
http://www.holloworbs.com/Greenland_vikings.htm
As the twelfth century ended, the climate reversed. Ice crept southward, all over Europe snow fell lower on the mountain slopes, upland trees died. Pack-ice cluttered the coasts of Greenland, then tightened an Arctic noose to strangle movement.
Moreover, in describing recent research carried out at an Inuit site on the Burnside River south of the Kent Peninsula, Bryan Gordon of the Museum of Civilization ( Nadlok and the Origin of the Copper Inuit - Climate, Dating and Seasonality ) provides data that suggest the Passage may have become difficult if not impractical by 1450 A.D:
Nadlok’s carbon-dated floors and levels show a 1450-1750 A.D. occupation in the Little Ice Age, a time of deteriorating climate when ocean temperature fell 1-3 deg. C and the Arctic summer front retreated 4-5 deg. of latitude. Sea ice stayed all year in sheltered Bathurst Inlet and east Coronation Gulf, inevitably disrupting sea-mammals and their hunters, but with little effect on caribou.
Nevertheless, it likely follows that prior to this time - the “ Viking Age “ between 800 and 1100 CE especially - that a warmer climate prevailed along at least the eastern approaches to the Northwest Passage if not its entirety. Indeed, as Charles W. Moore notes ( Did 14th Century Scandinavian Explorers Visit Midwestern North America? ):
For the first century or so of their Greenland colonization, the Vikings and their descendants enjoyed a reasonably prosperous and pleasant life there. Greenland’s climate c. 1000 A.D. was in an extraordinarily warm phase, and the name Eric chose for his new land may not have been quite the real-estate promoter’s con-job as has been assumed. Even 350 years later, after a general global cooling had altered Greenland’s climate for the worse, Ivar Bardson wrote that “ On the mountains and lower down grow the best of fruits, as big as apples and good to eat. There also grows the best wheat that exists.” Life in Greenland was hardly the rough outpost existence we might expect....
However by 1200, climatic change allowed the arctic ice pack to creep farther southward, making navigation in Greenland waters increasingly hazardous — even in summer. Ships came now only sporadically, and some years none called at all. In 1261, the Greenlanders felt obliged to accept union with Norway and subjection to the Norwegian crown, in return for which two ships would be sent per year. This effectively shut the Hansa markets off from Greenland trade, and sometimes even the promised Norwegian vessels didn’t make it through the ice. The colonies’ decline accelerated.
To what degree the warmer climate of the Medieval Warm Period may have simplified westward progress through the Northwest Passage during the earlier phases of Greenland’s Viking history remains unknown, but the fact that it was warmer may shed further light on some of the northernmost Viking excursions along the western coastline of Greenland itself. As it so happens, archaeological research in the area around Coberg and Skraeling Islands on the Canadian side of Baffin Bay indicates a possible Viking presence just off the south-east coast of Ellesmere Island. In other words, at a point where the Vikings would be well positioned to make a run into the Northwest Passage and also augment their food supplies before doing so.
“Climate change” is codespeak for carbon tax.
. . .save what it means to be an ignorant human being.
That is the worst picture of Pelosi out there. Maybe the job is getting to her! I hope so!
Or this: 
Pelosi just needs a tuneup, a new paint job and a soul transplant, and she’ll be good as new.
How soon they forget.
You mean like how the people who live in the tropics were always quick to help us out when we got whomped with a blizzard?
She really looks tired and haggard in that photo. Botox can do only so much.
If liberals really don't want to read about the Global Cooling hysteria of decades ago, they should at least read "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" or rent the freakin "Chicken Little" DVD from Blockbuster.
It doesn't take much research to find websites that cover the history of Greenland. One site is the American Heritage dictionary:
"WORD HISTORY How did a glacier-covered island get the name Greenland? In Norse legends written in the 12th century and later, it is told that Eric the Red explored the southeast and southwest coasts of Greenland in A.D. 983-986 and gave the country its name because people would be more likely to go there if it had an attractive name. Greenland was warmer in the tenth century than it is now. There were many islands teeming with birds off its western coast; the sea was excellent for fishing; and the coast of Greenland itself had many fjords where anchorage was good. At the head of the fjords there were enormous meadows full of grass, willows, junipers, birch, and wild berries. Thus Greenland actually deserved its name. Another attraction of Greenland was that Iceland and northwestern Europe, including England, had a grievous year of famine in 976, and people were hungry for food as well as land.
Another site covers the fact that Greenland settlements of Europeans were abandonded about 1400, during the Little Ice Age. It is still colder in Greenland now than when Eric the Red was there. From the Smithsonian Institute,
http://www.mnh.si.edu/vikings/voyage/subset/greenland/environment.html
"Studies of environmental conditions, climate, and their interactions have produced important new information relevant to Norse extinction in Greenland. Most revealing is the detailed evidence of climatic changes that occurred in the northwestern Atlantic beginning in the early 1300s. Changes in atmospheric temperature are recorded in such diverse materials as glacier ice derived from snow falling on the Greenland Ice Cap, fossil vegetation and pollen deposited annually in lake sediments, chemical signatures in isotopic composition of sea sediments, animal and human bones, and even the species of insect pests that accompanied Vikings and their animals as they settled new lands. These indicators clearly suggest that the climate was cooling in the 14th century, and that the Greenlandic environment had been depleted of its "natural capital"--its previously untapped grasslands and animal resources-over 500 years of farming practices in this delicate arctic climate."
Pelosi must have learned that Greenland is colder now than when it was named. Why would she suppress that small fact? If she went to Mars, she would find the polar (dry ice) caps there to be shrinking. Are America's capitalists and SUV's causing problems there, too?
"Global warming" is a study in political opinion manipulation, not science.
pelosi can’t even bake a cake never mind knowing anything about climate change.
The point is: within the scientific community is no real discussion about that topic anymore whether the global warming is man made or not. To deny this is just ignoring facts. perhaps these guys are all idiots i do not know but at least they know more about that than i do.
Now we have a political debate and both sites should be more rational here because it is a serious issue.
” The point is: within the scientific community is no real discussion about that topic anymore whether the global warming is man made or not. “
No. The REAL point is that your point is a strawman, used by the climate alarmists to misstate the REAL disagreement. They want to boil it down to a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question, when it is not. While you are right that most scientists, even ‘global warming deniers’, acknowledge some man-made impact on the climate, that is not what’s at issue.
The real question is the *magnitude* and *impact* of man-made inputs into the climate system.
The *magnitude* - meaning, how much will CO2 rise, how much CO2 will be aborbed by biological sinks such as oceans and biomass, and how much will temperature react to that - could be anywhere from ‘miniscule’ to ‘massive’ depending on the science, models, etc. To pretend that science is certain on this is to fundamentally mis-state how science works. It’s *never* certain and we will *always* learn more and tweak our understanding.
All scientists will acknowledge that in our past, *natural* climate change took the earth’s temperature to means that were 5C or more below current levels (ice ages) and at other times was several degrees C above current levels.
Curiously, in those cases, CO2 levels trailed the temperature levels. All scientists will acknowledge the obvious - that the suns fluctuations create climate changes (11 year sun spot cycle etc, Mauder minimum, etc). They will also acknowledge that water vapor is the main greenhouse gas and it is completely natural.
The *impact* of increased CO2 could be benign to something pretty bad. Benign is possible in that warming actually helps in many ways - less cold deaths, longer growing seasons and high CO2 means higher crops yields and more drought resistance.
As for sea levels, IPCC says 25-40 inches in the worst case scenario, but at current rates it would be 12 inches in the next century. Al Gore otoh is preaching the fire-and-brimstone that greenland will melt and sea levels will rise 20 feet.
So you see, the question is not “yes/no” but “how much” and “is it bad or just okay”.
I was checking one of the sites and recent papers, which was noting that the models underlying IPCC’s view of 2-4C warming from doubling of CO2 overstates the warming in the previous century.
The models have *all* the warming due to CO2, but ignored are natural variation impacts. They can only get that by assuming powerful positive feedback, which with respect to clouds is not well-studied nor understood. Hence the models are assumptions without clear backing.
“To deny this is just ignoring facts. perhaps these guys are all idiots i do not know but at least they know more about that than i do.”
I can assure you, I am just a PhD in a topic other than climate science. I know less than the climate scientists. But I’ve read parts of IPCC reports, and waded through some climate science papers. Based on Gore’s statements, I can be pretty certain I am more knowledgeable than Gore is on the topic.
What is frightening is how off-base he is *compared with even the science underlying the IPCC position*, and yet he is lauded as a savior. He is exaggerating.
http://travismonitor.blogspot.com/2007/04/globaloney-fears-shouldnt-dictate.html
John Kerry said: “And yet we have allowed worlderwide temperatures to heat up an average of 1.4 degrees in the last six years alone.” Wrong, Senator. The average rise in temperatures has been 0.6 degrees Centigrade over the last century, and there has been no rise in many critical measurements (such as satellite temperature measurements) in the past six years. Some scientists contend that much of the temperature variation in recent decades is at leastly partyl due to natural causes, and certainly the history of the earth shows that natural climate change has happened all the time.
The politicians and some climate scientists have been playing the game of hyping fear for some time, and many have admitted as much:
“To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.”
—Steven Schneider, Quoted in Discover, pp. 45-48, Oct. 1989; and American Physical Society, APS News August/September 1996.
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