Global Warming At Work
For anyone out there who still seriously doubts that global warming is a real, present, and dangerous phenomenon. I don’t care if you don’t like Al Gore, we as a planet need to deal with this now!
The area of floating ice in the Arctic has shrunk more this summer than in any other summer since satellite tracking began in 1979, and it has reached that record point a month before the annual ice pullback typically peaks, experts said yesterday.
The cause is probably a mix of natural fluctuations, like unusually sunny conditions in June and July, and long-term warming from heat-trapping greenhouse gases and sooty particles accumulating in the air, according to several scientists.
William L. Chapman, who monitors the region at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and posted a Web report on the ice retreat yesterday, said that only an abrupt change in conditions could prevent far more melting before the 24-hour sun of the boreal summer set in September. “The melting rate during June and July this year was simply incredible,” Mr. Chapman said. “And then you’ve got this exposed black ocean soaking up sunlight and you wonder what, if anything, could cause it to reverse course.”
Mark Serreze, a sea-ice expert at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., said his center’s estimates differed somewhat from those of the Illinois team, and by the ice center’s reckoning the retreat had not surpassed the satellite-era record set in 2005. But it was close even by the center’s calculations, he said, adding that it is almost certain that by September, there will be more open water in the Arctic than has been seen for a long time. Ice experts at NASA and the University of Washington echoed his assessment.
Dr. Serreze said that a high-pressure system parked over the Arctic appeared to have caused a “triple whammy” — keeping away clouds, causing winds to carry warm air north and pushing sea ice away from Siberia, exposing huge areas of open water.
The progressive summertime opening of the Arctic has intensified a longstanding international tug of war over shipping routes and possible oil and gas deposits beneath the Arctic Ocean seabed.
Last week, Russians planted a flag on the seabed at the North Pole. On Wednesday, Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime minister, began a tour of Canada’s Arctic holdings, pledging “to vigorously protect our Arctic sovereignty as international interest in the region increases.”
source Tags: dumb news, global warming, eyes wide shut, melting ice caps, climate change
Related Stories
POSTED IN: Dumb Science
5 opinions for Global Warming At Work
Tarun K Juyal
Aug 10, 2007 at 3:25 am
I am a regular reader of your article. And I am very impress with your blog upon Global Warming. Now I am also write a blog upon effects and causes of Global Warming. This blog is collection of news & reviews like the study found that global warming since 1985 has been caused neither by an increase in solar radiation nor by a decrease in the flux of galactic cosmic rays. Some researchers had also suggested that the latter might influence global warming because the rays trigger cloud formation.
Ron
Aug 10, 2007 at 10:40 am
Have you heard that NASA’s climate-change models and temperature charts have been revised due to various errors and ‘fudging’ of the data? It now looks as if 1998 was not the hottest year of the past century, nor was 2006 the runner-up. The hottest years were during the 1930s.
What do you make of that?
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/new_rankings_for_warmest_years/
Ariel
Aug 10, 2007 at 10:59 am
What I make of this is that you are a skeptic of global warming, and you are entirely entitled to your opinion.
My question is: even if you don’t believe global warming is real, are you not still concerned about the tonnes and tonnes of toxic pollution we on this planet are pumping into the atmosphere every day?
Even if you believe the science on climate change is fuzzy, you should still be concerned about the effects our industry, technology, and use of non-renewable resources are having on the planet.
Ron
Aug 10, 2007 at 10:01 pm
I’m a skeptic of ‘manmade’ global warming. I don’t deny that the planet has periods of warming and cooling; I’m just not convinced that humans are causing the present warming (if we are really experiencing warming, that is; the science is far from settled).
Climatology is a science in its infancy. Heck, there are people still studying gravity and that was ’settled’ quite a few years back. There’s no reason to stop the science right here and claim a ‘consensus’.
The mass hysteria is due to the propaganda we’re being bombarded with. In his movie An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore claims, for example, that sea levels are going to rise 8-10 feet. But in the IPCC report, it suggested a possible 20 centimeters. Quite a difference. Would you agree that’s propaganda? And that’s just one example from one movie. The propaganda is everywhere.
Then look beyond the propaganda and see Al Gore raking in millions selling carbon credits; and see the spooky United Nations guy, Maurice Strong, and his aspirations for a one-world-government and world de-population; see the guy on the Sierra Club’s board of directors who thinks humans are a virus and wants to make 4 billion or so of us disappear; see all the people making money selling ‘green’ products of all kinds (they aren’t complaining); see all the politicians clamoring for more taxes, more programs, more regulations, a bigger piece of the pie in the name of environmental piety.
And it has even reached the stage of a new religion.
One big difference, however, is that in ‘typical’ religions one must do certain things, or refrain from certain things, in order to save one’s soul or enter Paradise, or whatever, and avoid Hell. In the Global Warming Church unless EVERBODY changes, WE ARE ALL GOING TO HELL!!! That kind of hysteria can make people stop thinking and do stupid things.
We haven’t had a global warming-inspired murder yet, that I know of, but it’s just a matter of time before somebody in the temporary insanity of GW hysteria kills their roommate because he wouldn’t change the light bulbs, or hippies in hybrids start doing drive-bys on SUV owners.
I posted that link because another leg has been kicked out from under the global warming hysteria. The re-drawn graphs don’t show a warming trend. That’s pretty important.
And if you care about the environment, it should be good news.
I care about the environment, so I look at it this way: If the manmade global warming thing turns out to be a bunch of hooey and propaganda (which it looks like more and more all the time), then all the time and money spent on it could have been put to much better use.
And even if it turns out to be true that humans are altering the climate, we may not be able to do anything about it. All of our human emissions account for only about 3.5% of the total carbon dioxide that enters the atmosphere. If that little bit really has that big of an effect, then our efforts to reduce it will probably be wasted. We’d be better off getting ready for the changes (if we could predict them), instead of trying to fight it.
And we’ll all be better off if we don’t hand any more power over to the politicians.
Ariel
Aug 11, 2007 at 5:29 am
Thank you Ron for your very cogent response. Any opinions from the other side of the table? Some back and forth fact checking and reasonable debate could be interesting here…
Have an opinion? Leave a comment: