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 causes Algore to put on weight.
bookmarked
My frozen fanny seconds that remark!
Minnesnowta. Brrr...
Global warming? Bring it on!
The Kush civilization in Africa was launching space shuttles back then - in between teaching Egyptians how to build pyramids (or so black studies professors tell us). So clearly, they caused the warming and it destroyed them. ;)
I have been wondering when I could start wearing shorts throughout January and Febuary in Minnesota... ;)
Whats your football team? Buffalo?
Hold on one second. A massive collection of the world's foremost scientific minds collect tons of data, spend a huge amount of time analyzing said data and agree that man is to blame for global warming and that the possibility of real human and economic impact is looming ... and all you can do and say is make the same tired Democratic environmentalist conspiracy bunk?
I'm a conservative and a Christian. I take the treatment of my neighbors and fellow man seriously. God didn't give us this home for us to treat it like a cesspool and to endanger the lives (and livelihood) of all.
But, if you want to pretend like this isn't happening and that you aren't contributing to a serious global problem, keep on passing around the blame and ignoring the obvious. There'll be one final judge of those actions, and I take it that he might not look very kindly on them.
SomeReasonableDude - Member since Jan 1, 2007
...and an environmental wacko!
Your tagline says bak it up. In science it is up to the people making the claim, ie. the massive collection of scientists, to back it up.
Ask yourself this one question; if global warming predicts seal levels will rise 3 meters in 50 years, how come sea levels haven't risen more than a few milimeters in the last 25 years?
Looks like CO2 content of the atmosphere is driven by temperature.
I'll third that motion as well in St Paul.
WTF are your so-called "world's foremost scientific minds"?
What is the "massive collection" you are talking about? Did it include past warming cooling trends in your "massive collection"?
Did you ever think that the SUN could be the blame?
Sure, we recently had an ice age which must mean that global temps increased. Wow, you got that, it increased, and there were no "internal combustion engines" at the time.
How could that be?
Using Christianity as an excuse to propagate junk science is sickening.
Sounds a lot like the hockey stick hoax.
Well, duh, for the last 16,000 years, the North American ice sheet has been retreating due to global warming. I expect it to continue.
A consensus of scientists believed that Eugenics was the way to go 100 years ago. That madness contributed to mass movements like forced sterilization of insane/mentally retarded and even Hitler's "Final Solution". Global Warming is not a harmless fad. Mass hysteria like this can lead to terrible things.
All of that is out of vogue now, but it was the shizzle then.
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