Global warming debunked, again.

[jackoroe]

“We’re going to see this process where the existing biome undergoes some sort of collapse. That collapse may be relatively gradual, or it could be instantaneous. It could be a fire that lasts a couple of days and wipes out whole areas,” says Jackson. “The uncertainties are really the scariest part.”

Uncertainties would also encompass being wrong, altogether.

 

[jackoroe]

mean while...

texas is flooding.... montana hit temperatures in excess of one hundred and hurricanes are laying waste to all of the gulf coast region

but so long as the republicans dont look bad.... right?

It's raining in Texas, it happens sometimes. It set a record in Montana yesterday, I'll give you that one. I've not heard too much about hurricanes this season laying waste to anywhere. In fact I've not too much about the increased number of hurricanes this global warming business was supposed to be causing. They haven't materialized. Scientists have predicted such things. Could they be wrong?

 

[Andreus]

could YOU be wrong, Jack?

and if you so.. would you rather be wrong about saving the planet or saving the political agenda?

 

[Spensed]

Yep the earth is getting warmer while at the same time glaciers in Washington state are growing by about 3 feet per DAY. You can't argue the facts!

http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/93350.html

You naughty boy. You're misrepresenting the facts in your own linked article.

See the quote from the article below and the words I've underlined in bold.

"Crater Glacier is like no other glacier in the world. It’s the only glacier with lava extruding through it and forming a dome. And while most glaciers are receding, Crater Glacier is advancing three feet per day and forming a collar around the growing dome."

 

[Andreus]

yah dont say

a republican misrepresenting flobal warming facts to further the agenda of big oil companies?

you jest!!!

 

[Kulindahr]

During the period known as the Holocene Maximum, the earth was as warm as the alarmists predict that it will be around 2100. That was roughly 7,000 years ago when there were neither factories nor suvs:

http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0598globalwarm.htm

That column is a shining example of how to say nothing that isn't true and use it to lie.
The seriousness of reality is there for those willing to rub two facts together, but is deftly danced around by the author. The item studiously avoided is the one that counts; as I keep putting it, it's the slope, stupid.
No matter how many times you've experienced a negative change in elevation before, it's lethal foolishness to maintain "We've lost elevation before!" when your bus is on a 60% grade and the steepest road you've ever dealt with was 6%. There's a difference between a controlled descent and a crash, and that's what global-warming deniers are trying to have everyone ignore with them.

 

[jackoroe]

You naughty boy. You're misrepresenting the facts in your own linked article.

See the quote from the article below and the words I've underlined in bold.

"Crater Glacier is like no other glacier in the world. It’s the only glacier with lava extruding through it and forming a dome. And while most glaciers are receding, Crater Glacier is advancing three feet per day and forming a collar around the growing dome."

I will concede that the article is mistaken, but not in the way that you've cited. There are a great shitload of glaciers besides the St. Helens that are expanding. Here is the list. I guess ice must be forming at much higher temperatures.

http://www.iceagenow.com/List_of_Expanding_Glaciers.htm

 

[Kulindahr]

It's raining in Texas, it happens sometimes. It set a record in Montana yesterday, I'll give you that one. I've not heard too much about hurricanes this season laying waste to anywhere. In fact I've not too much about the increased number of hurricanes this global warming business was supposed to be causing. They haven't materialized. Scientists have predicted such things. Could they be wrong?

You pick at nits and ignore the whole picture, like a forester examining one tree he likes and concluding the forest is healthy while invasive beetles turn thousands of other trees nearby to cellulose dust.

Yes, it's raining in Texas -- and saying that offhand, blandly, is like facing a shower of ten-ton meteors and saying, "Rocks fall from the sky; it happens sometimes".

Just for our enlightenment, have you studied any thermodynamics, especially as regards meta-stable systems, or taken any reasonable amount of meteorology and climatology -- say, a term at least at the university level?

 

[Andreus]

I will concede that the article is mistaken, but not in the way that you've cited. There are a great shitload of glaciers besides the St. Helens that are expanding. Here is the list. I guess ice must be forming at much higher temperatures.

http://www.iceagenow.com/List_of_Expanding_Glaciers.htm

at much higher altitudes perhaps???

and that would indicate that more water is in the atmosphere, wouldnt it?

and that would be coming from where exactly?

ice caps melting perhaps, which is an undenaible reality... and higher temperatures do not affect mountainous regions below freezing temperatures.... hence the name... ice caps...so more moisture from higher temperatures creates more ice in mounainous regions and more hurricanes in temperate ones as water dries from the equatorial zone

jack... i dont think you've really bothered reading one scientific fact presented here by anyone but Martha Reardon

and that would be because you agree with her and you only hear people that you agree with, i would guess

 

[Kulindahr]

You naughty boy. You're misrepresenting the facts in your own linked article.

See the quote from the article below and the words I've underlined in bold.

"Crater Glacier is like no other glacier in the world. It’s the only glacier with lava extruding through it and forming a dome. And while most glaciers are receding, Crater Glacier is advancing three feet per day and forming a collar around the growing dome."

That's not the only anomaly; the glacier falls into a very small group fed not so much by precipitation but by ice falling onto it from higher up; it falls into an extremely tiny group of glaciers which spend a substantial amount of time in the shade....
And meanwhile, the rest of the glaciers in the Pacific Northwest are shrinking, rapidly enough that the National Parks Service fears there may not be any glaciers left in Glacier National Park for the next generation to see.
Arguing that this one glacier disproves global warming is like looking at a delivery van going against the rest of the traffic on a street and insisting it isn't a one-way street after all.
Sheesh!

 

[Spensed]

^Nothing wrong with a cleaner earth. If you want to drive an electric car, go right ahead. If you want solar power, go right ahead. Nobody is stopping you. The problem I have with this whole charade, is that it is about the government intruding into my life more than they do now. And using what they call "science" in order to do so. Science isn't about consensus as Algore likes to call it. It is either is a fact, provable again and again irrefutably or it's nothing more than a hypothesis. If you want to believe that "science" can accurately predict the temperature five, ten or 100 years from now, when they can't accurately do so to the end of the week, be my guest. In any event, it's not the governments place to so intrude in my life choices. I will remain the master of my own destiny, thanks very much!

Not surprisingly not much of this makes any sense to me.

How do you think taking steps to slow down global warming is going to involve "the government intruding into your life more than they do now". Individuals and the free market don't stop industrial pollution so there are already controls in place and they're routinely revised. Your anti-government logic with respect to the individual is the same as that the fights against motorcycle helmets or seatbelts or limitations on getting teens to smoke. None of that stuff has to be any more instrusive than you care to make it and most of it almost immediately falls into the why didn't we do that a long time ago category.

Science isn't always black and white. This thread has already exhausted the argument that it's better to play safe and do something especially if it's stuff most folk would want to do anyway.

You're so concerned about being "the master of your own destiny" (whatever that means) that you seem completely unable to contemplate the possiblity that you might be wrong on this issue. If you're wrong and something more could have been done, it would be a tragedy.

If the human contribution to global warming turns out to be a non-issue, that wouldn't be tragedy. It would be great. And, if the air and oceans are cleaner than they would be otherwise, so much the better.

This issue for me is as much one of plain common sense as of science. But do let me know if you think I haven't repeated myself enough.

 

[Kulindahr]

I will concede that the article is mistaken, but not in the way that you've cited. There are a great shitload of glaciers besides the St. Helens that are expanding. Here is the list. I guess ice must be forming at much higher temperatures.

http://www.iceagenow.com/List_of_Expanding_Glaciers.htm

And did you bother to check out anything besides the list? Such as, for example, the meteorological conditions they have in common?
Just for fun, ponder a point from my glacial geology class (400-level) at OSU: global warming firmly predicts that while the majority of the world's glaciers will shrink, for a substantial period of time a minority will not only fail to shrink, but will grow, and often at record rates.
Jack, your information about glaciers is predicted by global warming models and actually confirms the position you're so vociferously denying.

 

[Kulindahr]

at much higher altitudes perhaps???

and that would indicate that more water is in the atmosphere, wouldnt it?

and that would be coming from where exactly?

ice caps melting perhaps, which is an undenaible reality... and higher temperatures do not affect mountainous regions below freezing temperatures.... hence the name... ice caps...so more moisture from higher temperatures creates more ice in mounainous regions and more hurricanes in temperate ones as water dries from the equatorial zone

Jack, did you get that?
Recall the record snowfalls last winter across much of the U.S.? If you bother to read real scientific work about global warming, all that white stuff was predicted. Basic thermodynamics: add energy to a system, you get a more energetic system; add energy rapidly enough, and you start to get chaotic behavior. That is exactly what we're seeing, with the juxtaposition of record cold and record heat, record dry and record wet, most glaciers retreating but some advancing.
Andreus has set out pieces for you to consider' I'll put some together: higher temperatures do, in fact, generally mean more moisture in the atmosphere; they also mean stronger updrafts, which will bear more moisture up mountain slopes, where it will form more clouds, deliver more snow, and, not surprisingly, increase the growth of glaciers in many places, even while most glaciers are disappearing.
This is why, counterintuitively, a sudden increase in global temperatures can trigger an ice age -- more warmth => more snow, which changes the earth's albedo, which means less snow melts in northern latitudes. Before you pounce on that, it applies preferentially when there isn't a strong counter-mechanism in place, such as a sharp increase in certain atmospheric constituents. That's why scientists once feared global warming could send us into an ice age; it was before other mechanisms were understood as well.
And that points to what most of the articles you and others have pointed us to are doing: they're grabbing some bright shiny facts and running with them, while failing to fit those facts into the system of things.

 

[Kulindahr]

Good post up there, spensed, though I tend to agree with jack about government intrusion.
Reading his statement again, though, I saw something that didn't quite hit me before:
If you want to believe that "science" can accurately predict the temperature five, ten or 100 years from now, when they can't accurately do so to the end of the week, be my guest.
That reveals to me that Jack has negligible mathematical education, and minimal science -- at best. The choices he sets out are very much like the difference between predicting what cards each player will hold next hand, and what cards will have been held by all players together ten hands from now -- the first is excrutiatingly difficult and unlikely; the second, once the manner of supplying cards is understood, is child's play.

 

[Andreus]

Let's see... You claim that scientists predicted "increased number of hurricanes this global warming business was supposed to be causing," and I'd say that this claim was not, in fact, made. Do you have a cite? I believe the claim is that hurricanes will likely be more intense and more powerful, but not that there would be "more" of them. May I suggest that instead of spending so much effort on attempting to discredit the science that you instead learn it first? While ignorance is its own excuse, it's just not a very good one, not among adults.

hurricane Katrina fed on an unusually warm gulf current that gave it abnormal strength as it moved all the way up to the coast....

warm water feeds hurricanes and they usually weaken as they reach coastal areas.... but heres the problem

Louisiana loses vast amounts of coastal property to the gulf of mexico each year as a result of human tampering and warming trends... that hurricane stayed masive until it was within striking distance of the coast, and the milleage from the coast to the city of new orleans is drastically shorter now than ever before

the idea that katrina and its destruction is not part of this process is just more political falderall generated by a political party that will not accept responsibility for what it caused.

 

[Spensed]

Good post up there, spensed, though I tend to agree with jack about government intrusion..

Thanks. Though it goes without saying that no one's advocating for government instrusion for its own sake. Government intrusion is a separate issue and needs to be limited as much as practicable.

Ironic also, by the way, that many of the guys who yell government intrusion are also the same one who have no problem with warrentless wiretaps, loss of habeas corpus and the rest of it.

 

[Kulindahr]

Let's see... You claim that scientists predicted "increased number of hurricanes this global warming business was supposed to be causing," and I'd say that this claim was not, in fact, made. Do you have a cite? I believe the claim is that hurricanes will likely be more intense and more powerful, but not that there would be "more" of them. May I suggest that instead of spending so much effort on attempting to discredit the science that you instead learn it first? While ignorance is its own excuse, it's just not a very good one, not among adults.

I've heard a few predictions of more hurricanes, but only as a result of the hurricane season becoming longer, not as a distinct or independent prediction itself.
But what Jack is failing to get is that predictions for complex systems are not like those for traffic speeds when a new speed-limit sign is put in place. Systems as complex and vast as global weather tend toward anomalous behavior when tweaked, so while more powerful and extensive hurricanes are predicted, and a longer season, so are the occurrence of unexpectedly calm seasons.
Predictions on this level aren't like train schedules, they're more like adjustments to a menu. The hurricane predictions from the global warming models are saying that there are now spicier dishes on a larger menu, but that along with the spicy ones are a few dreadfully bland items -- and we won't know what meals the atmosphere has ordered up until the waiter brings them.


Side note, especially for Jack, Henry, et al:
I often feel sick to my stomach writing this, because I still am at root like you guys; I don't want to believe it. But in the process of acquiring my science degree at OSU, I faced too much, well, science about the topic, in everything from geology to meteorology to oceanology to biology and chemistry. It wasn't because all the professors were into cramming global warming down throats, but rather because no matter what discipline you're doing research in, data keeps pointing toward radical change, unlike anything before. Few of the researchers I knew there had agendas; they just wanted to organize the data and see where it pointed. What it so very frequently pointed to was an unnatural change in atmospheric composition, affecting all sorts of things; and when that change was described, it matched human activity. So I end up defending something I'd rather laugh at, because that's where the data point.

 

[HenryReardon]

Hurricanes come and go in fairly predictable cycles.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/storm/...er/2007/06/03/s1c_HURRICANE_HISTORY_0603.html

The cited article goes back 170 years. However hurricane experts here in Florida pointed out, after the 2004 season, that pretty much the same thing had happened in the 1930s, and since. Nothing to do with warming, just weather cycles.

 

[jackoroe]

at much higher altitudes perhaps???

and that would indicate that more water is in the atmosphere, wouldnt it?

and that would be coming from where exactly?

ice caps melting perhaps, which is an undenaible reality... and higher temperatures do not affect mountainous regions below freezing temperatures.... hence the name... ice caps...so more moisture from higher temperatures creates more ice in mounainous regions and more hurricanes in temperate ones as water dries from the equatorial zone

jack... i dont think you've really bothered reading one scientific fact presented here by anyone but Martha Reardon

and that would be because you agree with her and you only hear people that you agree with, i would guess

Or it could be because the aveage global temperature hasn't increased and has gone down slightly since 1998. Of course that in itself is very odd considering all that nasty carbon dioxide that we still pump into the atmosphere.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/04/09/do0907.xml

 

[SuperQueer]

What happened to all the fuss in the news about the onset of a polar shift? Could global warming be a predecessor to a polar shift? The polar shift theorists believe that sudden over-accumulation of ice on the caps could trigger a shift in the poles. They also believe that these shifts occur every 7 millennia. My thoughts delve around the possibilty of a polar shift due to Global Warming's affecting a large decrease in the amount of ice build-up at the poles.

Could it be that Global Warming and polar shifts go hand in hand (regardless if naturally or artifically induced)?