Climate Change is Being Swift-Boated

[Merlyn]

Hi Oaklight,
This is another side of climate change. The effects of forestation, population, sprawling suburbs and large farms divided and built into large communities.
The El Nino shift has completely removed the draught from the American landscape from California to Virginia, and this will have a reaction in migration of birds, herds of deer, and more. This all is a living interwoven environment and the climate is one part of it affected by all things not just CO2.

The Global Warming alarmism is an easy sell, quick revenue maker and a great shock and awe movie! But the truth of the matter has been brought from every corner of the globe to the one or two isolated and specially funded groups which frankly had little to do with real climate science. While they could use the new and government controlled BBC, CNN and FOX instant news, the ability to make a huge story up before the truth could catch up with them has fallen to reality. I can only imagine the grief of the people used to stage this total lie.

Numbers! percentages! graphs! movies! Extreme media shock and political grand standing all tried to take advantage of a very natural cycle of the climate to push this fear mongering even though this cycle was already over, going directly into the pattern we see now. "The worst snow, flood, draught and such "in 20 years" or "in 30 years" is of course natural progression in climate and has little or nothing to do with CO2. So the ones who were funded by church donations and such who propped up this staged show are now going to be exploited as the ones to blame, as if it is a surprise. How absolutely political!

What is the problem with the affects of climate by pollution of all kinds cannot be solved by an international summit.
Why so? The polluters are "international" now. The only thing any one government can do is unfairly persecute the same people who are already suffering from this old cap and trade abuse. In what ways? The refineries will be put into poor countries, where they will cause the most harm and create even more international shipping, puking diesel into the ocean, putting the entire first tropic level of life on this earth into more danger, of oil spills, pollution and harm. The international airline industry will continue to go completely unchecked, with no pollution control and the all new agenda of a "gold rush" for uranium will rip through Africa's desert, stealing their already fragile water supply, and cause permanent harm to the wildlife there.

In the mean time, the revenue stream will be guarded by government tax to ensure the real solutions cannot be implemented, the ones able to do so will be murdered or disabled by unfair regulations and all of this will be the way to ensure high grade uranium and weapons grade nuclear is close at hand..

So swift boat the climate change alarmists! with media slander and put the new clean nuclear up as the golden child of political choice!

It sickens me,

Merlyn /|\

[Hennie]

Hi Merlyn, if you are referring to Obama deciding to build nuclear plants again, i understood his primary concern is less dependency on oil and oil-companies.
I think there could be won a lot if solar energy and the like were used. However that doesn't say we dont have a problem with icecaps melting rapidly, flooding of many isles and coastal areas all over the world, due to global warming and climate change.

[Merlyn]

Good points Hennie
Ok, now I ask you, with the melting of glaciers, and the impending rise of the ocean... Why has it not yet already happened?

After all the glaciers have been melting for thousands of years..
Isn't the real problem that, glaciers are a primary source of fresh water for some countries, and feed the lakes and such?

And what is the affect of fresh water melting into salt water?
How does the planet adapt?

This is one of the cornerstone fears of global warming. Now, how has it worked in the past?
I can definitely agree that thermal warming of the ocean is an issue.
But can we answer these questions?

I think it's easy to imagine if we put lots of ice in a glass of water, and let it melt, the level stays the same.
But if the ice is on land ... or is it?
How much land is at the north pole?
None. The North Pole is in the Arctic Ocean. But even if it weren't it still would contain no land. The North Pole is a dimensionless point.
The North Pole actually sits on a floating ice shelf known as the Arctic Ice shelf. The Arctic Sea beneath the North Pole extends as deep as in excess of 4000m.

So if it melts, there is no difference...
How about the south pole?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pole
Why yes! there is land under it, however then, the temperatures there are much colder.

So when we see the pictures of the north ice melt, all dramatic and poor polar bears what are we seeing?
No change at all. Pretty clever deception eh?

Now what are the physics of all of this?
They say "tons" of CO2 are being put into the air.
How do they measure a gas by weight that cannot be a liquid?
It can only be frozen into "dry ice",

What then are they measuring?
They are measuring unburnt soot, hydrocarbons and sulphur dioxide and calling it CO2
Another clever deception.

So if one does not know physics, they will be easily fooled.
To look at the complexity of glacial periods,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age

And then to consider the atmosphere is just as complex.
It is not a matter of simple thought at all.

Will "water world" come?
Or is it a very different set of cycles?
I do not think it is as simple as "the ice melts and we all go under water.
Of this is the moon, and the salt to water % and how the water acts with gravity.
All of these factors play a role, and perhaps predicting them is a matter of knowing more.

I agree it is a worry, but the more immediate worry is fresh water supply in the north.
I am going to do a science experiment, just to see.
I will set up a pan (this leaves out physics of planetary gravity to some extent,) and some ice.
The pan will be full of salt water, like the ocean, and the ice, freshwater, from my freezer.
I will set a measuring stick in the water (with NYC written on it)
And let's see what happens. If the water level rises, I'll start building an arc


Merlyn

[Kernos]

Kernos, thank you for responding with more than a hyper-link and clip art.

Well-chosen URLs are valid, esp for us who are time limited. Why should I redo whay has already been done well. Now that wikipedia is peer-reviewed, it has much more authority than in the past. Re the "clipart", what I have posted are official logos so that others can use them and know what they are about then seen.

My point vis. Clovis was intended to point out the need for continuing study and that even the most dearly held theories are not absolute.

Well, yes, that is basic to the scientific method. Science is never done. I would suspect the Clovis data will be re-evaluated again, since in the last few years dating methods and been discovered which improve accuracy. IIRC, this methodology was discussed in a Science article in the last few months. One think about science, what we know or think we know is not the whole story.

While I am in fact, a layman, I am not unfamiliar with the nuts and bolts of research administration, as I have been Community Relations Officer at a Harvard Medical School research facility since 1995 and at Mass. College of Pharmacy (nice Beta cell reference, BTW) for some years before then, and have, for all those years, been schooled by my researcher friends on what they go through in the grant writing and publishing processes.

That sounds like an interesting career with lots of possibilities. I think one area in which scientists have largely failed, is in translating results, theories, experiments etc so that laypeople, including politicians can have a reasonable understanding about where we are. We need more Carl Sagans and Steve Hawkings. I would think this part of the challenge for community relations. I suspect you are very in tune with the politics of science. But, I think it important to separate the politics from the science per se.

I agree with Merlyn, pretty much, wholesale as to the political ramifications of "Cap and Trade" and I'm grateful to him for his eloquent synopsis.

I pay more attention to the science than the politics, so don't really know what the effects of "cap 'n Trade" can be. It seem to me a political solution that fits in with capitalist, free enterprise system. At best it indicates the politicians are beginning to see that CO2 increase is a problem that they must seem to be doing something about. It is also designed to not disrupt our consumptive lifestyles too much. If that happened the politicians would not get reëlected.

While it is true that I do get some information from documentaries, I have the immense luxury of having at my disposal numerous Harvard researchers and professors willing to explain anything which my curiosity desires.

Indeed. What is the title of this documentary. I would be most curious about who the underwriters are. I am curious. If you have access to environmental scientists, whence comes the seeming anti-anthrophogenic global warming stance?

And Kernos, if you have access to current primary data, don't hold out on us. Now that we have a dialogue, I hope that we all can come away with something that we can use.

Perhaps. It is terribly time consuming, especially for a busy, solo physician.




And finally: my apologies if I came off as such a pr!ck; I am, sadly, not immune to the vice of anger.[/quote]

[Merlyn]

Lovely hockey stick Kernos.
The answer to the 100 year problem is fairly obvious, trees.
What will happen as a result of humans and CO2 is not as obvious;

Studies suggest that an increase in ocean temperatures associated with global warming could lead to increase in emission of dimethyl sulfide by photosynthesis. This would in turn increase the concentration of sulphate aerosols in the marine boundary layer causing an increase in the number of cloud drops. The net result of the cloud will be to cool the Earth to offset the warming by the greenhouse effect.

Sulphate aerosol is a type of solid compound commonly found in the atmosphere. Sulphate particles play an important role in reflecting, absorbing, and scattering incoming solar energy. The source of these compounds is both natural and man-made. Most of the man-made particles come from combustion of fossil fuels.

It is therefore possible that increased levels of trace gases in the atmosphere would lead to cooling of the Earth rather than to a net heating.

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/65084

HADSST2 Global Sea Surface Temp.jpg (21.79 KiB) Viewed 473 times

This as only one of many things with have caused the climate change science to be discredited and swift-boated.
It is a fragile balance, we as humans have "tipped" by both ends of the stick.
We release more CO2 and remove the trees needed to absorb it.

The earth however has the vast ocean, which is indeed reacting with what is recently called global weirding. The resulting failure of predictions is being allowed to discredit the findings, and gives yet another free pass to the status quo.

1998-2009 Temperatures.jpg (22.77 KiB) Viewed 473 times

Here is a cool site to watch the CO2 level.


http://co2now.org/


Here is another carbon gas to think about; carbon monoxide

Carbon monoxide is used in modified atmosphere packaging systems in the US, mainly with fresh meat products such as beef, pork, and fish to keep them looking fresh. The carbon monoxide combines with myoglobin to form carboxymyoglobin, a bright cherry red pigment. Carboxymyoglobin is more stable than the oxygenated form of myoglobin, oxymyoglobin, which can become oxidized to the brown pigment, metmyoglobin. This stable red color can persist much longer than in normally packaged meat.[30] Typical levels of carbon monoxide used in the facilities that use this process are between 0.4% to 0.5%.

The technology was first given "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS) status by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2002 for use as a secondary packaging system, and does not require labeling. In 2004 the FDA approved CO as primary packaging method, declaring that CO does not mask spoilage odor.[31] Despite this ruling, the process remains controversial for fears that it masks spoilage.[32] In 2007 a bill[33] was introduced to the United States House of Representatives to label modified atmosphere carbon monoxide packaging as a color additive, but the bill died in subcommittee. The process is banned in many other countries, including Canada, Japan, Singapore and the European Union.[34][35][36]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_monoxide
Nice eh?
Processed foods contain poison gas to "look nice"

And one other issue to the OP topic;
As a result of real science, to date; Global cooling
http://www.populartechnology.net/2010/0 ... -2009.html

Frozen vehicle.jpg (35.22 KiB) Viewed 473 times

Some 300 links to articles related to global cooling,
and it is not just out my kitchen window
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=42067

Sleep well all,
Merlyn /|\

The answer is in the trees

[Aylyn]

And I sometimes think it makes no difference whether you believe in global warming or not - fact is, we polluteEarth with all our machines and convinience stuff, there are more and more people to feed and house, taking away ever more space for nature. We should do our very best to reduce our impact, if only to leave our kids a world that is worthy to live in. So why is every environmental action seen as an infringement on personal freedom?

i am always astonished that it is the people with kids that seem to have the least interest in environmental issues (This board is exceptional), as I think that as a mother I would be twice as vocal and annoying, just to make sure my kids have a world with breathable air and drinkable water.

[oaklight]

Kernos, thank you for responding with more than a hyper-link and clip art.

Well-chosen URLs are valid, esp for us who are time limited. Why should I redo whay has already been done well. Now that wikipedia is peer-reviewed, it has much more authority than in the past. Re the "clipart", what I have posted are official logos so that others can use them and know what they are about then seen.

My point vis. Clovis was intended to point out the need for continuing study and that even the most dearly held theories are not absolute.

Well, yes, that is basic to the scientific method. Science is never done. I would suspect the Clovis data will be re-evaluated again, since in the last few years dating methods and been discovered which improve accuracy. IIRC, this methodology was discussed in a Science article in the last few months. One think about science, what we know or think we know is not the whole story.

While I am in fact, a layman, I am not unfamiliar with the nuts and bolts of research administration, as I have been Community Relations Officer at a Harvard Medical School research facility since 1995 and at Mass. College of Pharmacy (nice Beta cell reference, BTW) for some years before then, and have, for all those years, been schooled by my researcher friends on what they go through in the grant writing and publishing processes.

That sounds like an interesting career with lots of possibilities. I think one area in which scientists have largely failed, is in translating results, theories, experiments etc so that laypeople, including politicians can have a reasonable understanding about where we are. We need more Carl Sagans and Steve Hawkings. I would think this part of the challenge for community relations. I suspect you are very in tune with the politics of science. But, I think it important to separate the politics from the science per se.

I agree with Merlyn, pretty much, wholesale as to the political ramifications of "Cap and Trade" and I'm grateful to him for his eloquent synopsis.

I pay more attention to the science than the politics, so don't really know what the effects of "cap 'n Trade" can be. It seem to me a political solution that fits in with capitalist, free enterprise system. At best it indicates the politicians are beginning to see that CO2 increase is a problem that they must seem to be doing something about. It is also designed to not disrupt our consumptive lifestyles too much. If that happened the politicians would not get reëlected.

While it is true that I do get some information from documentaries, I have the immense luxury of having at my disposal numerous Harvard researchers and professors willing to explain anything which my curiosity desires.

Indeed. What is the title of this documentary. I would be most curious about who the underwriters are. I am curious. If you have access to environmental scientists, whence comes the seeming anti-anthrophogenic global warming stance?

And Kernos, if you have access to current primary data, don't hold out on us. Now that we have a dialogue, I hope that we all can come away with something that we can use.

Perhaps. It is terribly time consuming, especially for a busy, solo physician.




And finally: my apologies if I came off as such a pr!ck; I am, sadly, not immune to the vice of anger.

Hi Kernos,
It looks like we have a wide area of agreement, one that I hope we can expand upon.
I can't quite recall the title of the documentary, but I will hunt it down. The scientists I have access to are, like yourself, physicians and biologists. I hadn't realized that there was any disagreement about global warming among scientists until, in hushed tones, one and then others voiced their concerns that direct cause and effect had yet to be demonstrated between the rising CO2 levels and climatological predictions. It was explained to me that the climate, with all of its enormous size and complexity, could not be taken into the lab to be experimented upon in such a way as to show distinct pathways, such as one finds in biology. Those pathways may very likely be there, but politicians are opportunists, and from what I've seen from my little corner of Massachusetts, science based legislation rarely accomplishes what is needed, but almost always at a cost far more dear than is wise. There has been talk in Massachusetts of legislation to expedite the taking of peoples' property by eminent domain, only to sell it to wind farm developers, with little local review, and no legal recourse. As for "Cap and Trade" legislation as it is currently proposed, it would be better explained by Merlyn, than me, but if we could get actual scientists to write emissions’ control legislation, I think that would go a long way to allay people’s fears about political shenanigans.

Beannacht leat!

[Merlyn]

if we could get actual scientists to write emissions’ control legislation, I think that would go a long way to allay people’s fears about political shenanigans

This is the problem.
With outsourcing and international transportation to support this, we have the real critical issue.
We can strangle our Chevy and have, but this will not address international transportation, or the newly outsourced industrial revolution.
So.. Let's say America goes ahead and meets all future guidelines for pollution.
Then we will see that it solves nothing. Already in the pages of future negotiation is the plundering of the African desert for our next brain child of green energy.
So America meets the goal, but the carbon is still produced in Africa, the environment is further messed up in yet another fragile balance.

This is why climate change, cap and trade fails.

It is a whack-a-mole game.

Since indeed we see a cooling trend, which has been going on for ten years, the failed premise of global warming gets the blame.
In the mean time the global weirding continues. But what is "global weirding"?

Best I can tell, it is the natural response by the interwoven balance of the earth to respond to too much CO2, and the other small amounts of green house gases. This was not predicted, and so the sages of science didn't see this coming in their data, crystal ball. "Off with their heads"! says the media. "They made us look like fools"!
But we all know the media is a bunch of fools... So what's new?

I am waiting to see the result of my little science experiment, and if I need to build an arc.

Where are the headlines? Where are the press releases? Where is all the attention?
The ice melt across during the Antarctic summer (October-January) of 2008-2009 was the lowest ever recorded in the satellite history.
Such was the finding reported last week by Marco Tedesco and Andrew Monaghan in the journal Geophysical Research Letters

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index ... llite-era/


http://science.howstuffworks.com/global-warming5.htm

At the other end of the world, the North Pole, the ice is not nearly as thick as at the South Pole. The ice floats on the Arctic Ocean. If it melted, sea levels would not be affected.

Merlyn

[oaklight]

Hi Kernos,

I was unable to find the documentary on any of the cable web site databases (it was some years ago, after all), but I believe this is what it was referencing:

http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/seminars/000505FO.html

I intentionally avoided private blog sites, as well as commercial and political sites in an effort to present an unbiased source. The one I did find was a dot gov page. I hope this is adequate to the task.

Beannacht leat!

[Merlyn]

Or you can read the long-hair version, some 96 pages.
But this sums up the swift boat topic well.
http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/s ... rt-all.pdf

The problems are well illustrated in an exchange
between biological scientist Rita Colwell (then
Director of the National Science Foundation),
Peggy Girsham of NBC (now with NPR) and
Sherry Roland reported by Friedman et al.
(1999). Colwell noted that when a scientist talks
with a reporter, they must be very careful about
what they say, especially if they have a theory
or findings that run counter to conventional
scientific wisdom. She observed that “it is very
tough to go out there, talk to a reporter, lay your
reputation on the line and then be maligned by
so called authorities in a very unpleasant way”.
She noted that this problem is particularly true
for women scientists, adding “I have literally
taken slander and public ridicule from a few
individuals with clout and that has been very
unpleasant….” NBC’s Girsham (now with NPR)
noted that, in a way, scientists in such a situation
cannot win “because if you are not willing
to talk to a reporter, then we [in the press] will
look for someone who is willing and may be
less cautious about expressing a point of view”.
Building on this point, Rowland noted that in
the early days of the work he and Mario Molina
did on stratospheric ozone depletion, “Molina
and I read Aerosol Age avidly because we were
the ‘black hats’ in every issue. The magazine
even went so far as to run an article calling us
agents of the Soviet Union’s KGB, who were
trying to destroy American industry…what was
more disturbing was when scientists on the industry
side were quoted by the media, claiming
our calculations of how many CFCs were in the
stratosphere were off by a factor of 1,000…even
after we won the Nobel Prize for this research,
our politically conservative local newspaper…
[said that while the] theory had been demonstrated
in the laboratory… scientists with more
expertise in atmospheric science had shown that
the evidence in the real atmosphere was quite
mixed. This ignored the consensus views of the
world’s atmospheric scientists that the results
had been spectacularly confirmed in the real
atmosphere”. Clearly, even when a scientist is as
careful and balanced as possible, communicating
with the public and decisions makers about
complex and politically contentious scientific
issues is not for the faint hearted!

[Kernos]

Hi Merlyn, if you are referring to Obama deciding to build nuclear plants again, i understood his primary concern is less dependency on oil and oil-companies.
I think there could be won a lot if solar energy and the like were used. However that doesn't say we dont have a problem with icecaps melting rapidly, flooding of many isles and coastal areas all over the world, due to global warming and climate change.

I am more concerned with the 152 or so nuclear plants the Chinese are planning on building, than one token Obama plant. Think of all the water used in cooling these things. Does not have a problem with water already?

[Merlyn]

152 nuclear plants, That is ambitious.

Getting off oil is key to lowering CO2
What I would like to know, is China, Iran and such going to use newer tech? Or are they going after Old tech, like Iran so as to have weapons grade uranium just a few centrifuges away?

[oaklight]

Hi Merlyn, if you are referring to Obama deciding to build nuclear plants again, i understood his primary concern is less dependency on oil and oil-companies.
I think there could be won a lot if solar energy and the like were used. However that doesn't say we dont have a problem with icecaps melting rapidly, flooding of many isles and coastal areas all over the world, due to global warming and climate change.

I am more concerned with the 152 or so nuclear plants the Chinese are planning on building, than one token Obama plant. Think of all the water used in cooling these things. Does not have a problem with water already?

I think that you're right, I think that they'll do it fast and dirty, but what about the Three Rivers Gorge hydro project, wasn't that supposed to solve their power and water problems?

[Coreylee]

time some colonel told them to listen to reason!

Don't you mean Kernel?

kernel (nut).jpeg

No he meant Colonel. As in Colonel Sanders. Oh, to the wisdom I have often heard uttered from the depths of a bucket of fried chicken.

[oaklight]

time some colonel told them to listen to reason!

Don't you mean Kernel?

kernel (nut).jpeg

No he meant Colonel. As in Colonel Sanders. Oh, to the wisdom I have often heard uttered from the depths of a bucket of fried chicken.

[Snægl]

And I sometimes think it makes no difference whether you believe in global warming or not - fact is, we polluteEarth with all our machines and convenience stuff, there are more and more people to feed and house, taking away ever more space for nature. We should do our very best to reduce our impact, if only to leave our kids a world that is worthy to live in....

Yes. This hits the nail right on the head for me. Climate can and will change. One only has to look at the geologic record to see that. Whether or not the climate is changing because of us—or whether we're in the middle of a particularly bad sunspot period, or whatever theory one subscribes to—should have little or no bearing on one's desire to create as little ecological impact as possible in all areas of our environment (says the hypocrite typing on a laptop and eating grapefruit in New England ).