Scientists Call AP Report on Global Warming 'Hysteria' (gas, alternative energy, cleaner)

[vec101]

Originally Posted by Brian.Pearson

Even if there is global warming, the Milankovitch cycles could act as a counterweight. According to the lower graph, we are very near a hot peak insofar as glaciation cycles go.

If there is no global warming, then we are in for some cold weather down the road, and we need to pump more carbon and other such things into the atmosphere.

Had heard of the cooling of the earth cuz of sunspots/Schwabe solar cycle but had not heard of the Milankovitch cycles. Thanks for sharing.

It is just sooooo crazy - global warming vs global cooling. What is a person to think?

Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Read the sunspots

Solar scientists suggest sunspot-ice-age link... and can't get their paper published May 2008 Record_Lows_2001

[thecoalman]

This is the kind of articles that are the worse, obviously not researched even a single bit:

Clean coal? Not in Tennessee — Plenty Magazine

Paragraph 2 is absurd:

Even when you’ve seen the videos, it’s difficult to get a handle on the scale of such a catastrophe. The Tennessee coal-ash spill has already far outstripped the ExxonValdez disaster, belching out enough toxic goo to cover 3,000 acres a foot deep. As Hilzoy , coal-ash is pretty nasty stuff: more radioactive than nuclear waste, and spiked with carcinogens, heavy metals and neurotoxins like arsenic, lead and mercury. To make matters worse, the Appalachian coal mined near the site is believed to be between three and five times more toxic than Rocky Mountain or Northern Plains coal.

First of all it's 300 acres at least according to this article in the NYT, possibly a typo:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/30/us...ge.html?ref=us

ExxonValdez? The long term ramifications of this accident won't be know for many weeks, months or possibly years.

The radioactive as "Nuclear waste" comment is completely false... Coal ash has radioactive levels comparable to common rocks and soils.

Of last concern is the toxic materials which if the NYT article is correct is considerable. Will take the lead for example, 49,000 pounds is 24.5 tons. This is just above what typical tractor triler would carry but if it was lead the volume would considerably less than what would fill a tractor trailer. Certainly that's still quite a bit but most of that will be cleaned up.... I certainly wouldn't want to live there and I'm not trying to justify what happened but again.... Lets keep the facts straight. Articles like this do nothing but propagate lies.

[SCGranny]

Anyone keep track of seismological events? I do. I love 'em. They totally amaze me - the earth's 'floating plates' shifting gently about like styrofoam plates on a pond... and every once in awhile, BOOM! CRACK! Oh CRAP! There's been 47 incidents of "seismological events" concentrated right at Mt Yellowstone in Wyomng in the past five days...

"Watcher, Mick! She's gonna BLOW!!!"

So what happens if Yellowstone really does blow its top? The lava will flow south and east (probably getting diverted by the mountains and eventually into the Badlands (better see 'em now while you can!). But the most severe impacts will be in the air... Like Pompeii and Mt St Helen's, the ash will spout up into the air, obscuring the sun, catching the wind currents, and drifting for miles, reflecting the sun's rays away from the earth... Think what this will mean to the farmlands of the Midwest as well as all over the world. Not only ash deposited on the soil, rained through to wash into rivers, but floating in the atmosphere, causing even colder winters and cooler summers, affecting plant and animal life. How much and to what extent no one can say, and I won't even try - but that's just one anomaly that no one in the 'green' business has figured into their calculations.

[vec101]

Very interesting reading:

U.S. Senate Minority Report Update:
More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims
December 15, 2008
Scientists Continue to Debunk “Consensus” in 2008
.: U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works :: Minority Page :.

Prominent Scientist Fired By Gore Says Warming Alarm ‘Mistaken’
December 22, 2008
11 More Scientists Join Senate Report of More Than 650 Dissenters [SIZE=3] [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]‘The current alarm over carbon dioxide is mistaken’ [/SIZE]
.: U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works :: Minority Page :.

[fatchance2005]

Originally Posted by thecoalman

This is why I trust very little that comes out of the media, overhyped is too small a word to say the least. As I see it you cannot trust anything reported in the media. They report bad news and that is it and apprently in this case the "jouranalist" is making stuff up...


FOXNews.com - Scientists Call AP Report on Global Warming 'Hysteria' - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News

This has every hackneyed hunk of garbage these buffoons have put out. For example:

"When the Arctic Ocean ice melts, it never raises sea level because floating ice is floating ice, because it's displacing water," O'Brien said. "When the ice melts, sea level actually goes down."

In fact much of the ice is not "floating" but on land. Hence the concern. Greenland, Antarctica, Siberia, Northern Canada, and Northern Europe would be examples. If a statement like this is coming out of the mouth of a "scientist" then he has totally sold out to the highest bidder. Shame, shame!

[fatchance2005]

Originally Posted by vec101

Had heard of the cooling of the earth cuz of sunspots/Schwabe solar cycle but had not heard of the Milankovitch cycles. Thanks for sharing.

It is just sooooo crazy - global warming vs global cooling. What is a person to think?



Solar scientists suggest sunspot-ice-age link... and can't get their paper published May 2008 Record_Lows_2001

This is right up there with Voodoo and the menstrual cycle as likely causes.

[vec101]

Originally Posted by fatchance2005

This is right up there with Voodoo and the menstrual cycle as likely causes.

Can you be so sure???
There are several scientific writing about it.

I think it is interesting that there are scientists calling for cooling rather than warming, also that more and more scientists are coming out against the dire global warming predictions.

I think I agree with the poster who said something to the effect that "they can't predict tomorrow's weather how can they really predict the distant future".

[Brian.Pearson]

Originally Posted by vec101

Had heard of the cooling of the earth cuz of sunspots/Schwabe solar cycle but had not heard of the Milankovitch cycles. Thanks for sharing.

Yep, I'd heard about the affect, but didn't know there was a name for it.

Here's clip of an article used by wiki as a source, and here is the solar cycle article for anybody interested.

[thecoalman]

Originally Posted by fatchance2005

In fact much of the ice is not "floating" but on land. Hence the concern. Greenland, Antarctica, Siberia, Northern Canada, and Northern Europe would be examples. If a statement like this is coming out of the mouth of a "scientist" then he has totally sold out to the highest bidder. Shame, shame!

Well I'm not going to argue about whether that statement is true or not but I'd venture to guess much of the arctic cap is in fact over water. You only have to look at a map to see that.

[fatchance2005]

Originally Posted by vec101

Can you be so sure???
There are several scientific writing about it.

I think it is interesting that there are scientists calling for cooling rather than warming, also that more and more scientists are coming out against the dire global warming predictions.

I think I agree with the poster who said something to the effect that "they can't predict tomorrow's weather how can they really predict the distant future".

It makes a big difference who is saying something, and who they work for. The scientists I have seen "coming out against" global warming have been marginal characters trained and experienced in other fields, or people qualified at a very low level, or none at all. Global warming theory describes a body of knowledge that's been gathered beginning before the Civil War. Most aspects were well established before WWII. Nobody of any repute is "calling for cooling"-- never has been never will be.

I think a lot of the confusion that propagates across the internet on this subject has to do with climate models rather than Global Warming theory. That's a different matter. Arrhenius was the first to create an equation that predicted the rise in temperature that would be associated with the release of Greenhouse Gases by industrialization. That was in 1898, at the very beginning of industrialization. He had no way to know at what rate industrialization would increase and spread. Yet if you plug in the actual increase in Greenhouse gases as it has occurred you get exactly the corresponding temperature rise he predicted (which is a little over half the temperature that in the past has always been associated with Mass Extinctions).

Climate models attempt to make more complex predictions. We are after all, technology brats. We would like to know tomorrow's weather, and we would like to know it yesterday. What has puzzled climatologists the most is that although the climate models have been accurate, everything they have predicted has occured decades sooner than expected. An example would be when the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica bagan to collapse in late 2007. Climatologists had predicted that this would happen, but not for another 30 years. I think that's evidence of how much we still don't know, rather than evidence that climatologists don't know what they're talking about, or worse yet, that there is some great debate raging in the scientific community about whether global warming is real. Earthquake modeling is very similar to climate modeling. It can't predict exactly when and where an earthquake will occur. That does not support the view that earthquakes are fictitious.

Because events are happening all around us that have not happened in the time humans have walked the earth, new things are being discovered every day. Probably one of the most significant is the role of the oceans. At first it was puzzling why the amount of carbon dioxide found in the atmosphere was not rising as fast as we are releasing carbon dioxide. Part of the answer turns out to be that it is dissolving into the oceans. While this spares us in the near term, it has bad implications down the road. In water Carbon Dioxide forms Carbonic Acid. That attacks and eventually dissolves the things made of Calcium Carbonate, such as coral reefs, sea shells and some eggshells. That releases more carbon dioxide. Things like the coral reefs took tens of millions or hundreds of millions of years to form, but will be entirely gone in 50-200 years, depending on the rate we continue polluting.

Something new we have learned watching the ice cap in Greenland melt changes the quation significantly. In the past it was believed that ice such as Greenland's will move at a very slow rate--a few inches a year--- until it reaches the sea. There it will extend out until pieces break off of their own weight. That suggested we had thousands of years before we had anything to worry about. What is being observed is that a layer of water develops beneath the entire icecap sufficient to cause it to float somewhat. That causes it to slide off into the ocean at a rate of thousands of feet per year instead of a few inches. Another discovery is that as the ice melts it becomes honeycombed with tunnels and caverns filled with ice water. As the walls containing this water melt and thin they can abruptly release the water they contain. This yeilds enormous changes in ice volumes not considered in older models.

Deforestation plays an important role, and one where we have a lot of input. Biofuel policies in developing countries have led to increased deforestation. Often these have been undertaken with no "proof of concept" demonstrations, or even where the technology being instituted has been proven unviable. It is important to choose wisely, despite the urgent need to act.



Huge Antarctic ice shelf disintegrating - World - theage.com.au