Posted on 02/02/2007 6:55:46 AM PST by governsleastgovernsbest
GMA's segment this morning on the big global warming confab in Paris was filled with predictably alarmist rhetoric. But one factoid slipped through the MSM filter that could put a chill on the "it's-all-man's-fault" view of the matter.
First, the alarmism. Reporting from Paris, ABC weatherman Sam Champion informed us:
Champion then claimed that "among the shocking conclusions of this report, sea levels could rise nearly two feet, swamping areas world-wide by the end of this century." Champion didn't let viewers know that the report actually gave a range: 7-23 inches. Why did he emphasize only the higher end?
Moreover, as he spoke ABC displayed an animation showing islands sliding into the sea with the graphic "2030" on the screen. So what is it? Seven inches by 2100, or islands disappearing in 23 years?That's when Champion let slip what you might call . . . an inconvenient truth: "the report predicts that the temperature increase this century could be the greatest in thousands of years."
Wait a second! Some time thousands of years ago, temperatures were increasing faster than they are now? Yes. A little Googling bears that out. Have a look at this government paper on the ice age, which includes this statement:
"About 11,500 years ago . . . forests quickly regained the ground that they had lost to cold and aridity. Ice sheets again began melting, though because of their size they took about two thousand more years to disappear completely. The Earth entered several thousand years of conditions warmer and moister than today; the Saharan and Arabian deserts almost completely disappeared under a vegetation cover, and in the northern latitudes forests grew slightly closer to the poles than they do at present. This phase, known as the 'Holocene optimum' occurred between about 9,000 and 5,000 years ago."
Perhaps even more signicantly, the paper paints a picture of mammoth climate changes going back hundreds of thousands of years, repeated cycles of heating and cooling that as recently as 18,000 years ago - a blink in geological terms - had my hometown of Ithaca, NY covered under a huge sheet of ice. Something melted it since then -- and it wasn't man's doing.
We can joke about the Pharoahs' SUVs, but it is obvious that man had no impact on those epochal changes. Is the man's-to-blame movement of today good science, or hubris about the ability of man to influence events?
Pet Peeve: Is their any cheaper shot than the MSMs tendency to show footage, as GMA did here, of the calving of glaciers? While used to suggest dramatic global warming, calving is a phenomenon that has occurred since time immemorial. It's what happens when glaciers reach the sea. In fact, as per this Harvard report, calving occurs when glaciers . . . grow, not shrink!
Mark lives in Ithaca, NY, where the temperature is not forecast to get above freezing any time in the next ten days. Contact him at mark@gunhill.net
Global Warming my A**
I guess I thought they were being sarcastic.
Cheap Shot: 
Cheaper Shot: 
The Sun must be a DemocRAT, because he gets no blame for warming the Earth.
Ancient Egyptian Head Bump!
Somebody help me here: In that first picture, is "Sam Champion" a guy or a gal-who-wishes-she-was-a-guy?
Uh-oh. This implies more Arabs. Maybe global warming is a bigger threat than we've thought.
In case there was any doubt that Global Warming is about furthering the cause of socialism, the Nobel committees removed it when they nominated Gore for a Nobel.
I say this because the Nobel committees are made up entirely of big government socialist types, and the only people that are nominated are those that advance this cause.
They have gotten totally hysterical. And it's all just a ploy to install Socialism. (In much greater quantities than we now have).
Calving also occurs when glaciers melt or move significantly.
You are right about that, Blue. This is a coordinated media propoganda campaign. It's winter, people are cold, snowed in, etc. so we might forget about this Global Warming canard.
What we are witnessing here is massive socialist propoganda campaign with the sole purpose of decieving the public in believing that socialism is the only answer to this manufactured "problem".
I think he is a guy-who-wishes-that-girl-was-a-guy kinda guy...
The scary part in that chart is not the peak, it's the ice age that comes after. And lasts longer.
Mrs VS
The left is now so far in the tank for global warming that they can't afford to have any opposing view get through. Similar to the WOT it must be lost or they will forever lose face and viability as a national party.
So the earth's average temperature is up more than 6 degrees on average since last weekend?
This just shows how incredibly stupid and obtuse these globala fanatics are. Why do they make these doomsday predictions in mid-winter? They should at least wait until July!
Right. Also: they don't need facts, they have consensus.
As if consensus makes for science.
THis is what bothers me when people say a consensus of scientist agree that human induced global warming is taking place. I don't think a real scientist, using the scientific method, would ever agree that a consensus proves anything.
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