Posted on 03/07/2009 3:12:54 PM PST by neverdem
SUPPOSE the climate landscape in recent weeks looked something like this:
Half the country was experiencing its mildest winter in years, with no sign of snow in many Northern states. Most of the Great Lakes were ice-free. Not a single Canadian province had had a white Christmas. There was a new study discussing a mysterious surge in global temperatures - a warming trend more intense than computer models had predicted. Other scientists admitted that, because of a bug in satellite sensors, they had been vastly overestimating the extent of Arctic sea ice.
If all that were happening on the climate-change front, do you think you'd be hearing about it on the news? Seeing it on Page 1 of your daily paper? Would politicians be exclaiming that global warming was even more of a crisis than they'd thought? Would environmentalists be skewering global-warming "deniers" for clinging to their skepticism despite the growing case against it?
No doubt.
But it isn't such hints of a planetary warming trend that have been piling up in profusion lately. Just the opposite.
The United States has shivered through an unusually severe winter, with snow falling in such unlikely destinations as New Orleans, Las Vegas, Alabama, and Georgia. On Dec. 25, every Canadian province woke up to a white Christmas, something that hadn't happened in 37 years. Earlier this year, Europe was gripped by such a killing cold wave that trains were shut down in the French Riviera and chimpanzees in the Rome Zoo had to be plied with hot tea. Last week, satellite data showed three of the Great Lakes - Erie, Superior, and Huron - almost completely frozen over. In Washington, D.C., what was supposed to be a massive rally against global warming was upstaged by the heaviest snowfall of the season, which paralyzed...
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Uh...Denver....New records this week at 76 degrees.
Beat a 137 year old record!
Do you know what was causing “global warming” 137 years ago?
Buffalo farts!
You are correct about the historical lag of CO2 rise behind temperature rise. Thus CO2 increase has historically been a result of temperature increase, not a cause.
Unfortunately, the recent rise in anthropogenic CO2 caused by burning of fossil fuels is quite unprecedented, so past CO2 changes give us little information. This hasn’t happened before, so we cannot know what the effects might be.
Nya...it's all carp!
There is virtually no CO2 in the atmosphere.
No problemo. You have been terminated.
It was pretty nice out today, also, where I was.
Yes CO2 can trap radiation, but water vapor and clouds are much more problematic. We don’t know if man made CO2 has any effect on atmospheric levels at all. We therefore don’t know what to do about CO2 or how to do it. Therefore why worry about it?
Algore in a pith helmet hunting the wild globull war ming. There’s a thought. Where’s W-Al-Go?
>”You have been terminated.”<
-another satisfied customer! ;^)
“But considering how much attention would have been lavished on a comparable run of hot weather or on a warming trend that was plainly accelerating, shouldn’t the recent cold phenomena and the absence of any global warming during the past 10 years be getting a little more notice?”
Not only that... shouldn’t there be rejoycing on the part of those who are so panicked about global warming that maybe the catastrophe that they fear so much is not happening? No, instead they are depressed that the trend has turned, and are on their knees praying for a heat wave.
This reaction more than anything else proves that the real motivation behind the warmists has nothing to do with saving the planet but with controlling you and me!
I didn't mind, but I don't know who would've wished more for for a huge blast of Co2, the trees or the dogs that stay out all night.
There's no doubt that when CO2 increases, temperature increases. The better question is whether the CO2 increases will cause "catastrophic" warming (whatever that is). But the actual increase from doubling CO2 from 280 to 560 ppm is 0.25C All the rest and the alarmism is a product of provably inaccurate models or self-serving assumptions.
It's the second strongest greenhouse gas. Ozone is the third strongest. All the rest are also-rans. The water vapor that does the bulk of the warming would not be possible without CO2. Take away CO2 and the air gets cold and dry and oceans freeze from pole to pole.
So how much is there, as a percentage?
First of all, humans account for barely 3% of ALL CO2 being released into the atmosphere.
Second, CO2 is a PLANT FOOD, not a POLLUTANT!
Third, Algore and his "diciples" are pushing their "religion" of global warming by quoting "the science is settled" with the same athourity that Jesus stated "I am the way, the truth, and the light."
One of these 2 statements is a lie, and I KNOW it is NOT the second one....
You have it backwards.
Temperature increases bring on increases in CO2.
CO2 levels trail temperature changes by 500-800 years....
Never fear, as soon as NORMAL spring/summer weather sets in, the whackos will be back wailing and demanding.
Possibly true. I'm not sure of your numbers. But utterly irrelevant.
For all practical purposes the other 97% circulates in the ecosphere, being removed from the atmosphere by plant growth and released back into the air when the plants (and the animals who feed on the plants and each other) decay or burn.
The net increase in CO2 we have been seeing for about the last 100 years is just about 100% anthropogenic, a result of burning fossil fuels that had sequestered massive amounts of carbon for millions of years.
Whether and how destructive that is can and should be debated. But that we are significantly increasing CO2 is just a fact. As is the fact that this has never occurred before and nobody on either side of the debate should be too positive on what its effects might be.
Note my tagline.
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