Underdog wrote:
Global Warming???
et tu Prolijo??
Consider the 1930s - when the midwest turned into a giant dust bowl.
Every unusual weather condition is now considered to be caused by "global warming". How about that one?
Sorry, but it wasn't true in the 1930s and it isn't true now.
If we had the "Global Warming" ninnies then, the economic restrictions imposed in response to the dust bowl would have kept us in depression and ensured that those wishing to enslave Europe just a few years later would have had no meaningful opposition.
Where do you guys come up with such ridiculous comments? First lets put aside the whole natural cycle argument for the moment. In the 1930's we were only about 30-40 years into the "petrochemical age". There was no national highway system or rural electrification. Most american household didn't have a car let alone the sometimes 2-3 they have now. And most other countries were still using horses and other draft animals as their primary means of transportation. Any manmade greenhouse gases that had accumulated to that point would clearly not have been serious enough to cause any climate change. Which I guess was your point, but equally valid is that any effort to curtail emissions would have had little if any economic OR environmental effect since there was so little being generated in the first place. Any effort to curtail what little emissions there were would never have been proposed to begin with, so suggesting it would have been and that it would have somehow led to our singing Der Fatherland as our national anthem is totally ridiculous.
The more valid argument that weather patterns happen in cycles, which they do, AND that what we are experiencing now is just completely part of those natural cycles is at the very least highly debatable.
There is very little debate by any reputable scientist that some sort of global warming is occurring as a result of the accumulation of man-made greenhouse gases and that those accumulations will eventually have consequential environmental impacts. Even Pres. Bush, the master of denial, concedes this. What a few more people question is how soon those effects will become evident or serious? Bush seems willing to bet that it can be put off and that there will still be enough time to take sufficient action to avoid the catastrophic consequences (or at least that our economy won't have to pay a price while he is president). Whether they are related or not, one can't help but see the similarity in that he also gambled that fixing the levees was something that could be put off and that any catastrophic effect would occur under someone elses watch and be blamed on them.
So any way lets look at the evidence as it relates to the current effects of global warming and the natural cycle of hurricanes. Ther e have been several recent studies by NOAA scientists and others indicating that recent hurricane patterns are in excess of what cyclical change would normally predict (when has there ever been 3 major hurricanes hitting one spot in the same year?). I'd like to point you to an article from USAToday from just last month covering a new study at MIT:
Global warming is fueling nastier storms, expert says
By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY
Hurricanes have grown fiercer in recent decades, spurred by global warming, and even tougher storms are likely on the way, a researcher predicts.
In his new study, ocean climatologist Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, suggests that the power of big ocean storms has increased and will continue to do so, even if their numbers stay the same.
The analysis, released online Monday by the journal Nature, confounds some past studies that had indicated that increasing average temperatures worldwide over this century — a United Nations climate panel has projected that temperatures will rise from 2 to 10 degrees worldwide by 2100 — would have little effect on hurricanes.
"The best way to put it is that storms are lasting longer at high intensity than they were 30 years ago," says Emanuel.
In an analysis of sea surface temperatures and storms since 1930, he found that a combined measure of duration and wind speeds among North Atlantic hurricanes and North Pacific cyclones has nearly doubled since the 1970s. "I was quite surprised by the magnitude of the increase," he says by e-mail.
Scientists had not correlated the frequency, intensity and duration of the storms until now, he says, but past reports have raised questions:
• Hurricane and cyclone reported durations have increased by roughly 60% since 1949.
• Average peak storm wind speeds have increased about 50% since the 1970s.
• Sea surface temperatures have swung upwards since 1975 at rates that exceed normal swings from regular El Niño or Atlantic cycles.
Cyclones and hurricanes do follow decades-long cycles of strengthening and weakening, Emanuel says. But the study effects are above and beyond the current cycle, which has seen stronger hurricanes in recent years.Or this article that was published after last year's storms:
WASHINGTON, D.C.//October 21, 2004///With four hurricanes and tropical storms hitting the United States in a recent five-week period, 2004 already is being called "The Year of the Hurricane." But this year's unusually intense period of destructive weather activity could be a harbinger of what is to come as the effects of global warming become even more pronounced in future years, according to leading experts who participated today in a Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School briefing.
The recent onslaught of four major tropical weather disturbances - Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne - that did so much damage in the United States and nearby Haiti have spurred new questions about the relationship between hurricanes and global warming. While experts can't say that climate change will result in more hurricanes in the future, there is growing evidence and concern that the tropical storms that do happen will be more intense than in the past. Fueling concerns about the link between global warming and hurricanes is a new study on hurricane intensity published on September 28, 2004 in "The Journal of Climate." The study used extensive computer modeling to analyze 1,300 future hurricanes and projected major increase in the intensity and rainfall of hurricanes in coming decades.
"Global warming may well be causing bigger and more powerful hurricanes," said James J. McCarthy, a biological oceanographer at Harvard University and lead author of the climate change impacts portion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Third Assessment Report (2001). "Warmer seas fuel the large storms forming over the Atlantic and Pacific, and greater evaporation generates heavy downpours. With warmer, saltier tropical seas, the IPCC has projected larger storms, heavier rainfalls and higher peak winds."
Paul R. Epstein, M.D., associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, said: "Scientists cannot say at present whether more or fewer hurricanes will occur in the future. However, even if the number of storms remained constant, more powerful hurricanes with stronger winds, higher storm surges, and heavier downpours would have an even greater potential for damage, including increased risks to human life and public health, more floods and mudslides, increased coastal erosion and damage to coastal buildings and infrastructure. This is the pattern that we already may be seeing related to the overall increase in extremes."" source: http://www.med.harvard.edu/chge/hurricanespress.htmlOr this one by a NOAA scientist:
Increasing Storms and Floods
Dr. Thomas Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center (NOAA), says that global warming has produced an increase in precipitation during the 20th century, mostly in the form of heavy rainstorms, little in moderate, beneficial rainstorms. Thomas Karl also reports that recent decades have produced a 20% increase in blizzards and heavy rainstorms in the U.S. "Hundred-year events are become more frequent now," notes Karl. source: National Climate Data Center (NOAA) Technical Report 9701.May 20, 1997
If its all part of come sort of cycle, why have there been more than one supposedly "hundred-year' flood in some parts of the Mississippi basin in the past decade when such events are only supposed to occur once every hundred years?
Of course there is no smoking gun linking any particular storm to global warming. There will likely never be any bulletproof scientific link between global warming and any particular severe weather event. Global climate is extraordinarily, almost incomprehensibly, complex. Billions of variables are involved. All climate scientists can say for now (and this seems to me unlikely to change) is that global warming raises the probability that severe weather events will occur. Consider an analogy: Crime rates rise during heat waves. But no individual criminal is likely to say, "I robbed that little old lady cause it's so damn hot." The reasons people commit crimes are many and varied. But this doesn't cast doubt on the link between heat and crime. Nor does it mean that reducing heat waves are necessarily the most expedient or cost effective way to reduce crime or reducing global warming the best way to protect New Orleans, but the effects of global warming goes well beyond merely a few stronger hurricanes.
Underdog wrote:
What consequences will the future hold for a United States denied the opportunity to explore ANWAR...
Estimates for the amount of realizable oil reserves in ANWR amount to only the equivalent of 90 days worth of current US consumption. For that the oil companies will give up one of the few remaining unspoiled tracts of that habitat. How can we ask countries like Brazil to stop cutting dwon their rainforests when refuse to take similar actions in our own country?
Underdog wrote:
...kept from drilling offshore...
perhaps more oil at stake than in ANWR, but again with huge environmental risk in an area that serves an inportant economic function in other areas such as commercial fishing and tourism. And for what? So we can forestall by a few years the inevitable depletion of oil supplies and the necessity to find an alternative source of energy for our economy?
Underdog wrote:
...and having their economy choked by adhering to artificial KYOTO restrictions developed and conceived by our trading competitors? Our enemies (and they are out there) are praying that the environmentalists have all of their foolish demands met. Why choose their side? There is no valid scientific reason to do so.
Of course, the restrictions affect us most heavily. Despite having less than 6% of the world population we utilize 40% of its resources and emit an even higher percentage than that in greenhouse gases. If we expected some country like Costa Rica to shoulder all of the cost, we would never make a dent in the worldwide problem. As long as we are going to talk about scientific evidence, the NET costs to the US economy are far from certain either. We know there will be some costs, just as we knew the fixing the levees would cost quite a lot. As it turns out, biting the bullet and shelling out the cost to build the levees stronger would have been far far cheaper than what it is going to cost us to clean up as a result of their failure. The same could be said to be true concerning air pollution and its effects on public health, employee productivity etc.. There are also as of yet unknown potential benefits that would be derived from new technologies that the US is uniquely equipped to develop and ultimately market to the rest of the world. In other words, since we're going to have to do it eventually anyway. we will probably come out ahead economicly by leading the world on this and getting there first than in being a follower.
Underdog wrote:
Scientists working for the government can never be considered to be objective. Dr. Robert Stadler (although fictional) was one excellent example of why.
Huh?
I don't know who this fictional Dr. you are referring to is, or what he has to do with this discussion. I will say this. During the buildup to the Iraq War, the Bush administration came down heavily on the CIA to come up with the evidence to support their conclusions. If that is what you mean by the lack of credibility of govt. scientists, than I would have to agree with you. However, when government scientist are coming out with information that is in conflict with what their boss wants them to say, and lets be clear Bush does not want any evidence that would hurt the positions of his oil and coal puppet masters, then I think we all have to sit up and take notice. When it comes to credibility, who are you going to believe? The vast majority of scientists world wide for which the widespread consensus is that global warming is a clear and present danger or the comparative handful of researchers trotted out by the oil industry that are trying to convince us that we should continue to burn as much fossil fuels as they can extract and sell to us? For that matter, do you remember the auto industry that just a few short years ago fought the raising of fuel efficiency standards (and who still do) on the grounds that they would not be able to produce an affordable high-mileage car. Today, they see the margins on their SUV's dropping like rocks and the prices or its hybrid vehicles dropping and the profit margins going up. The fact is necessity is the mother of invention and if we were to sign the Kyoto Protocol, US industries would find ways to cope and even profit from it. However the analogy I really like to draw is between present day global warming naysayer "scientists" and the tobacco company "scientists" of yesteryear who for years after the surgeon-general's warning and in the face of a mountain of evidence to the contrary tried to convince us that cigarettes were safe. By the time, the disbelievers were ready to fight their addiction it was too late. And make no mistake our addiction to oil is every bit as dangerous. Postponing the inevitable only makes things worse.
Underdog wrote:
For the thermodynamically inclined, here's something to ponder: Wouldn't any heat required to partially melt the polar ice caps return the Earth to an equilibrium state?
Huh?
Again totally nonesensical. Are you saying melting ice will cool the planet so that no more ice will melt?
Quite the opposite. The earth is in a very delicate balance that fluctuates withion a relatively minor. Think of it like a spinning top which takes only the slightest tap to go spinning wildly out of control. There is a reason that they call it the runaway greenhouse effect. At first the effects are quite slight. The volumes of greenhouse gases we release in the atmosphere are indeed quite small when compared to the total volume of air. But many of the complex hydrocarbons are also much more effective greenhouse gases than simple water molcules or even methane. Once the average temperature rises particularly in sensitive regions such as the ozone holes over the poles and polar caps begin to melt. Rising sea levels effect everything from oceanic flow to heat sinks and reflectivity of energy off the earth's surface. Temperature rise beyond the simple effect of what we release into the atmosphere ourselves. The more the temperatures rise, the more polar ice melts, the more water vapor (another greenhouse gas we don't normally think of) gets released. Eventually a critical equilibrium point is passed and it ceases to matter whether we are releasing any greenhouse gases of our own into the atmosphere any longer.
Underdog wrote:
We live on a gloriously well designed self-regulating ball. I truly believe that phucking it up is beyond puny human abilities.
So I guess you also believe that setting off the world's nuclear arsenal would not lead to nuclear winter either. Broadly speaking this is true. Ultimately the earth will still be here in one form or another and life will evolve to suit whatever conditions exist on it. Just as naturally occurring changing climactic conditions led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and the evolution of a then scrawny hairy little apelike creature to eventual dominance, the earth may regulate its environment with our own extinction and the rise of super coakroaches.
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But I have no way of knowing whether my guess is any better than yours, so I wouldn't have said that. Where do you get off making baseless speculations like that?
