Here's a fun article on the glacial melting in the alps:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070122/ap_on_...elting_glaciers

 

In a related news item, here's an article from 2002 that media [but not scientists] dismissed as being alarmist:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/...p3?img_id=10856

 

And one on the exact same subject from 2003 that had a similar reaction:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20...roglaciers.html

 

I would also like to say that we had a ski weekend booked for the MLK holiday in Stowe, VT. For the first time in the 30 years that our hosts had owned their resort, there was NO SNOW in Stowe in the middle of January!

 

While I'm not a big fan of the Clinton administration or Al Gore, I have to say that I found his film An Inconvenient Truth to be very provocative. Sure, some of his facts are a little misleading. One graph shows China, for example, beating the US in fuel economy, leading you to believe that they have a better handle on the environmental crises. Unfortunately, he leaves out the fact that China uses a lot of diesel engines in their POV's [which obviously get better fuel mileage compared to gasoline], they do not use catalytic converters [which reduce greenhouse emmissions at a cost of fuel mileage], and they do not meet the same safety standards as required by US vehicles [further reducing weight and fuel efficiency]. However, there is no denying that he does a very good job of dismissing a lot of the misinformation being circulated by popular media as opposed to the scientific community.

 

Is there still anyone out there who thinks that Global Warming does not exist or that this is simply part of the cyclic nature of the earth?

 

BTW - a nice website [goes with the movie] about taking action here: http://www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/

and here: http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/default.asp

I would also like to say that we had a ski weekend booked for the MLK holiday in Stowe, VT. For the first time in the 30 years that our hosts had owned their resort, there was NO SNOW in Stowe in the middle of January!

 

 

I thought that was strange since I know people who have been having a wonderful time skiing up there for the past two weeks. Stowe's already had 99" of snowfall this year.

I thought that was strange since I know people who have been having a wonderful time skiing up there for the past two weeks. Stowe's already had 99" of snowfall this year.

I'm not sure where those numbers are being taken from. 99"? No way. Even at the summit, I think that's a huge stretch. They claimed to have had 40+" prior to our arrival. It had rained that Thursday and Friday melting most of the mountain. I'll post my pictures of a green Stowe when I get home. We woke up to a couple of inches. Unfortunately, a couple inches of powder on top of ice blows right off. The skiing was worse than spring conditions because it was just cold enough that the melted snow would refreeze immediately. I am not kidding when I tell you that we would have done better wearing skates than skis!

 

Just so you know it's no bs, here's an article from today entitled At Last, It's Cold!

 

My understanding is that there were no X-Country trails open until after the snow storm on 1/16 to 1/17.

The Bush administration is starting to wake up to reality. So is the business world.

 

Plight of the polar bear forces Bush to recognise climate threat

 

Big business joins greens to pressure Bush on climate

 

 

And some science:

Last year was the warmest in the continental United States in the past 112 years -- capping a nine-year warming streak "unprecedented in the historical record" that was driven in part by the burning of fossil fuels, the government reported yesterday.

....

 

People should be concerned about what we are doing to the climate," said Jay Lawrimore, chief of the climate monitoring branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "Burning of fossil fuels is causing an increase in greenhouse gases, and there's a broad scientific consensus that is producing climate change.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...7010901949.html

 

 

And yeah, there are a lot of people who think scientists are making this up so they can get research grants but people like Rush Limbaugh know where the truth lies.

most of this winter, its been around 60 degrees in massachusetts...and anyone who says that its el nino ill bitch slap

The historical trends show that the current warming trend is far off the map from what would be considered a 'normal' warming trend.

When I was up in NH earlier this month (Jan), one place exceeded their all-time record high for that particular date by 13 degrees.

 

13 degrees!!!

 

Needless to say, there was no snow, and I was quite disappointed.

Uhh, yeah it was 70 degrees last week. Should be in the 30s.

I doubt you can blame the majority of the unusual temperature this winter on global warming. Sure, it's a problem, but global warming isn't some thing that just hit us over night and now we have significantly higher temperatures than the last couple years.

Whats wrong with warmer weather?

Whats wrong with warmer weather?

 

Makes good grounds for political rhetoric.

I doubt you can blame the majority of the unusual temperature this winter on global warming. Sure, it's a problem, but global warming isn't some thing that just hit us over night and now we have significantly higher temperatures than the last couple years.

Agreed. Which is I included several years worth of articles showing a trend as opposed to a one year anomaly.

 

Whats wrong with warmer weather?

Just basic wrath of God type stuff. Here are some of the highlights:

1. A thaw of the Greenland and Arctic glaciers = a rise in sea level of 43 feet.

a. Average elevation of Miami, Fl? 30 feet.

b. Average elevation of NYC? 30 feet.

c. Average elevation of Houston, Tx? 40 feet.

d. Average elevation of San Francisco, Ca? 40 feet.

2. What kills the beetles that kill trees? Extreme cold.

3. Why do tropical diseases thrive in the tropics? Heat and humidity.

4. Polar bears don?t like heat

5. Sharks love warmer water

6. Coral reefs ? basic food chain type stuff ? take thousands of years to form and can only exist within certain depths.

 

Oh, and there?s something else. Once the glaciers are melted, the thermal balance of the oceans becomes disrupted. This disruption will stop ocean currents. Once ocean current are stopped weather patterns become severely altered. On such consequence is the formation of areas of extreme flooding and areas of total draught.

 

But hey, it will be neat to own beachfront property in Upstate NY!

i know its nto much and im not into getting into arguments anymore but I dont understand how people dont think this is real. you have a substance (petrolium) which takes hundreds of years to form say 200 - 300 years and yet we exploit it in a manner of hours and burn it back into the enviroment how can that not have some sort of effect on planet earth? its simple ... you can't reverse a process so easily and expect nothing to happen to the median which it comes from (planet earth)

The word "ignore" can be extended to form the word "ignorance."

I bet you were one of those people who thought we were going to be playing golf on the moon in the 1980s.

Do you have anything substantive to add to this conversation?

 

If not, keep your obtuse, ignorant, presumptuous opinion to yourself. And damnit - where's my Jetson Family Flying Sedan?! :shifty

 

In all seriousness, I am not the Chicken Little sort. However, I think anyone that is not aware of what is going on needs to be educated lickity split. Fat dumb and stupid is no way to go through life...

 

PS.

Average elevation of Baltimore, MD? 33 feet. Don't get your feet wet!

Oh, and there's something else. Once the glaciers are melted, the thermal balance of the oceans becomes disrupted. This disruption will stop ocean currents. Once ocean current are stopped weather patterns become severely altered. On such consequence is the formation of areas of extreme flooding and areas of total draught.

The currents will not stop, but they will undoubtedly change. There will still be temperature differentials between different geographical locations. The sun will still shine stronger on the Northern Hemisphere in our summer months, while shining weaker in the Southern Hemisphere. Similarly, the poles will still have lower temperatures than the rest of the planet.

 

Basic thermal dynamics tells us that energy (in the form of heat) travels from areas of higher energy to areas of lower energy. This is essentially the principle responsible for deep ocean currents (along with water density). Since there will still be temperature gradients, there will still be currents.

 

Like I said, though, these currents will be altered and are being altered by climatic changes. The worrisome part about all this is that we have no idea where the change will take the ecosystem or weather patterns.

Well, it's official: Bush has finally come to the Mountain regarding global warming.

Well, it's official: Bush has finally come to the Mountain regarding global warming.

Astonishingly enough, he "becomes aware" of all this when he doesn't need to worry about kowtowing to his constituency anymore.

Well, it's official: Bush has finally come to the Mountain regarding global warming.

Astonishingly enough, he "becomes aware" of all this when he doesn't need to worry about kowtowing to his constituency anymore.

yeah, didn't see that one coming...

I bet you were one of those people who thought we were going to be playing golf on the moon in the 1980s.

Fat dumb and stupid is no way to go through life...

I'm not uneducated.

 

 

Dean Wormer: "Zero point two. Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son."

The sad thing is I probably understand how the scientific community operates better than most people here.

Okay, then add something salient to the conversation. Enlighten me. Why do you think global warming is NOT happening?

The sad thing is I probably understand how the scientific community operates better than most people here.

 

Is there anything you don't think you understand better than most people?

I would take firsthand experience over a casual glossing over of articles any day.

Then we are in agreement. Since 100% of the academic papers I have researched have all agreed that global warming is happening at an unexpected and alarming rate and the only articles asserting any doubt come from fluff magazines like Maxim and FHM, science is probably more on target. Glad we were able to clear that up! :thumbup

 

My thoughts have been expressed in previous threads on this matter.

I can't seem to find them. The threads, I mean, not your thoughts...

I want all the polar ice caps to melt so we can live in Water World.

I would love to see Congress have some hearings with scientists from both side of the arguments. The issue on the scientific community is not if Global Warming is happening, the issue is whether global warming would have catastrophic consquences and the source (natural vs man-made).

 

I found the following piece of information, interesting:

20,000 scientists, of whom about 2,700 of them are physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers or environmental scientists, have signed the following statement:

"There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth?s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth?s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."

 

There are some benefits from GW, why the media and doomsayers focusing on the negative effects?

1) More people would be expected to die of the heat from global warming, but fewer people should die of the cold. (ten times the number of deaths result from severe cold than from severe heat). GW would save some lifes.

 

2) What would be the efffect from Energy? which gives off carbon dioxide, and it is needed to protect from extreme heat as well as extreme cold.

 

3) More warmth will also result in an increased growing season and more area for agriculture. Increasing temperature results in increasing water vapor in the air and increasing precipitation. Global warming means a wetter planet causing more plant growth, which should be good for agriculture.

 

With that said, I'm on the side of caution on this issue. And would like to see some messure and laws passed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and most important to reduce our dependency on foreign oil. But we should be careful with extreme messures that could cost trillions of dollars. What would be the effect on the economy and greater good of the nation?