Information on global warming from NASA

[Muzzle Tough]

I am a civil libertarian. I voted against Bush in 2000 and again in 2004. I plan to vote agasint Jeb in 2008, and hopefully we'll bring an end to this dictatorship/dynasty once and for all. I support legalzation of gay marriage, and medical and recreational marijuana. I oppose the war on drugs, the Patriot Act, and the Iraq War.

I am grateful to reasonable environmentalists for getting the lead out of gasoline, for the ruductions in sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide in the air, for encourageing people to plant trees, and for making sure that landfills are properly sealed to they don't leak into water supplies.

That being said, I found this to be interesting:

http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/essd06oct97_1.htm

Global temperature measurements of the Earth's lower atmosphere obtained from satellites reveal no definitive warming trend over the past two decades. The slight trend that is in the data actually appears to be downward. The largest fluctuations in the satellite temperature data are not from any man-made activity, but from natural phenomena such as large volcanic eruptions from Mt. Pinatubo, and from El Nino.

http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/essd/essd_strat_temp.htm

The figure above shows the monthly temperature deviations from a seasonally adjusted average for the lower stratosphere - Earth's atmosphere from 14 to 22 km (9 to 14 miles). Red is an increase in the temperature from the average, and blue is a decrease in temperature. The large increase in 1982 was caused by the volcanic eruption of El Chichon, and the increase in 1991 was caused by the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines. September 1996 was the coldest month on record for stratospheric temperature.

This chart shows the monthly temperature changes for the lower troposphere - Earth's atmosphere from the surface to 8 km, or 5 miles up. The temperature in this region is more strongly influenced by oceanic activity, particularly the "El Nino" and "La Nina" phenomena, which originate as changes in oceanic and atmospheric circulations in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Like the upper plot, the overall trend in the data is downward, about 0.06 degrees C per decade.

[villager]

1. "2004 the fourth hottest year on record"

"The year 2004 is set to finish as the fourth-warmest since record-keeping began in 1861, fitting a pattern that has placed nine of the past 10 years among the warmest on record, the WMO said in its annual global climate report."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1075556&mesg_id=1075556

[Muzzle Tough]

5. But they didn't measure global tempteratures 150 years ago.

70% of the earth is covered in water. The only way to accurately measure global temperatures is with satellites. They didn't have satellites 150 years ago.

I'll trust the NASA satellite data over anything else.

[villager]

7. yes, but they measured it in the same 20-year period NASA

...is talking about. NASA didn't have satellites back then either.

[Muzzle Tough]

9. NASA did have satellites during the 20 years.

Here's a repost of what I already posted from the NASA website:

Global temperature measurements of the Earth's lower atmosphere obtained from satellites reveal no definitive warming trend over the past two decades.

[villager]

11. right -- and other information directly contradicts that

Did you click on the link I provided, to read what the World Meterological Organization has to say?

[Muzzle Tough]

12. I read it. Both pages.

But it didn't say how their measurements were taken.

Also, I've never heard of that particular organization. But I've been familiar with NASA for decades.

[villager]

13. your not hearing of that organization --currently involved in global

negotiations on climate treaties -- doesn't invalidate their findings. One assumes a professional organization of meterologists has pretty accurate readings about weather over the last 20 years...

[Dogmudgeon]

14. The trust is misplaced

Scientists have been able to make precise temperature measurements for well over a century -- certainly enough to trust direct measurements to within 0.05 degrees Celsius, and interpolated data to greater orders of magnitude.

In addition, the NASA authors discuss both the merits and limitations of satellite-based temperature sensing.

The NASA data are interesting, important, and possibly critical, but can no more give a definitive "answer" than any other complex dataset before extensive study.

I suspect that your bias is with industry. That's fine, but keep in mind that the stakes are high -- even a small change in global climate could have an economic cost in the trillions of dollars, and a human cost to be borne by victims of famine. The current strategy of industry -- monkeywrenching scientific work and stalling public planning, for the purposes of ducking possible blame and safeguarding profit -- is unnecessary, unscientific, and unethical. We already know that one of downsides of the profit motive is the suppression of any information that might threaten that profit. No matter what processes undergird global warming, be they human or natural, inhibiting our ability to cope with it could be malfeasance on a scale of mass murder.

--p!

[NNadir]

29. Well to trust NASA data you would have to be able to interpret it.

Somehow I suspect strongly that this is not the issue here. Myopia is.

Anyone who trusts any set of data to the exclusion of all others is not in engaging in thinking so much as in an attempt to prove a particular (usually religious) point of dogma at the expense of actually having to do some thinking. This is precisely the mechanism used by so-called "creation scientists," who also love to wallow in the psuedoscientific misinterpretation of data.

I am always amused when Libertarians try their hand at science. This reminds me of the time that the internationally known idiot Ayn Rand wrote a long, and very pretentious science fiction novel - almost as dumb as something off the pen of say, Michael Crichton - in which a rather dopey and completely cardboard character named John Galt invented a "miracle" engine that violated the second law of thermodynamics. According to the scientifically illiterate Rand, it ran on "static electricity in the air."

That some people took that nonsense seriously back then and that even more people do so now, that people actually took it up this sort of blather as a kind of religion, probably tells as much as anything about why the United States is entering into such a tragic state of collapse.

[Muzzle Tough]

32. I read that book.

I label it as political propoganda, not science fiction.

I'm sure 100 years ago people thought the idea of nucleaer power was crazy.

Rand was wrong abut her science, but in the future there will be new sources of energy that might seem crazy today.

[NNadir]

33. I have no doubt you read the book.

I don't know if this is true but I've heard that it's a libertarian bible.

I read it too, mostly because I'm a chronic insomniac and reading dull fantasy and fiction used to put me to sleep.

As for the vague energy fantasy you offer for our future, I very much doubt that there will be a future. The power of ignorance and fantasy, coupled with the rise of their cousin, conservatism - which is after all the belief that nothing should be tried for the first time - is leading us to an abyss like the one a smaller portion of humanity experienced about 500 years ago on Easter Island where the libertarians cut down every last tree before they started eating each other.

[Muzzle Tough]

36. Response

We have enough nuclear fissionable material to give us all the energy that we will need for thousands of years. I learned this from one of your posts, I think.

Other energy technologies will be discovered in the future.

400 years ago, people used candles and whale oil for light. They never thought that things like electricity and light bulbs would ever come into existence. In 400 years from now, they will have energy technologies that the people of today never would have thought of.

Libertarians would never cut down all of the trees. Libertarians are strong proponents of privately owned tree farms. The owner of the tree farm is greedy, so he replants trees after harvesting them, just like a corn farmer replants corn after harvesting his crop. Except with a tree farm, you only cut down about 2% of the trees each year, instead of cutting them all down at once.

We often hear about the terrible mismanagement of federally owned forests in the soutwest. But the forests in the southeast are much better managed, because they are privately owned. It's a darn shame that most self described "environmentalists" don't see this distinction.

[NNadir]

37. No, other energy technologies will NOT be discovered in the future.

Sorry, but as I said in describing the Libertarian Ayn Rand as a "scientific illiterate" and "fantasy writer," very accurate descriptions by the way, Libertarian hand waving is a completely unsatisfying religion. It has at best, like most religions, a very tenuous connection to reality. I am personally tired of hearing from religious mystics that manna will fall from heaven just because they are too lazy to think.

It is now well understood that there is really only one primary source of energy in the universe, nuclear energy. Fossil fuels are stored solar energy, and all solar energy is nuclear derived energy. Geothermal energy is nuclear energy coming from the decay of heavy nuclides formed in the supernovae out of which the solar system formed. Wind energy is nuclear energy, resulting from fusion reactions in the sun.

Physicists understand that there are limited practical ways to produce this energy, using only the elements at the extremes of the periodic table. Libertarian chanting will have no bearing on this basic fact of nature.

I am a very strong advocate of the expansion of fission energy because I believe we face an international emergency of enormous proportions. However, I am often misinterpreted on this score as representing nuclear fission as a panacea with absolutely no drawbacks. If you believe this is what I am saying then you are selectively reading my posts, just as you are selectively choosing "NASA data" to "prove" that global climate change "does not exist." (This type of selective data picking of course is not scientific thinking, so much as it is wishful thinking.)

I have several concerns about the expansion of nuclear energy even as I argue for it. One of the primary fears I have is that the development of such technology will result in indiscriminate - and highly unethical - wallowing in energy, partying endlessly at the expense of future generations. In short, I am worried about piggish libertarians waving their scientifically illiterate hands, saying "no problem!" and piggishly helping themselves to another piece of the future because of their own enormous selfishness and immoral myopia.

There are about three billion tons of Uranium and Thorium in the oceans and ores, enough for about 3000 years at 1000 exajoules a year. This is the blink of an eye. While it is true that I, personally, will not live to see the exhaustion of these resources, there is some small chance that humanity will survive the religious attitudes of many of its components - including the libertarians - and continue to exist for some millenia to come. In this case, ethics demands that we consider these generations. I believe that they - some of whom may be my descendants, in some sense my children - have as much right to a decent standard of living as I do.

(And please, please, please, don't start telling me about "nuclear fusion." I don't really have the stomach to repeat this particular physics lesson again for your benefit.)

As I have pointed out many times, the untrammeled expansion of nuclear energy will ultimately greatly reduce the radioactivity of the planet after about 1000 years of use. Frankly this makes me uncomfortable. I note that life on this planet evolved for billions of years in the presence of radioactivity, and I am concerned that depletion of this activity might have unforeseen long term consequences to living systems, particularly in the case - as now seems likely - the genetic diversity is greatly reduced through mass extinction.

Tree farms by the way, are rather dumb affairs, celebrated mostly by those who are too lazy to learn biology. One has to have a very limited imagination and a very limited understanding of science - a necessary condition I think for being a libertarian - to confuse a tree farm with a forest. One of the reasons that chocolate might vanish from the earth or else become an extremely scarce commodity in the coming century is because of "tree farm" mentalities. One can look it up - assuming that one can take time off from reading religious texts. In fact the Irish potato famine was the result of tree farm mentality - when the libertarian farmers, plugged on planting potatoes with no genetic diversity on the usual grounds that they were far too lazy to think.

I suppose that the only happy thought about human extinction is that libertarian "thinking" (and what an oxymoron that is) will lead to the extinction of libertarians along with those much detested "environmentalists." Ethical people, so long as there are ethical people, will however continue to struggle against libertarianism's on the grounds that ethical people prize knowledge and insight and that ethical people are aware that the human animal is a social animal.

If however, libertarianism prevails, when we go back to Easter Island and cannibalism is used to address the problem of there being nothing to eat, now not just on an island, but the planet as a whole, one hopes that the first group of people to be eaten will be libertarians. I imagine that future cannibals would find such persons appetizing: They are likely to be fat, lazy and pretty much otherwise useless.

[Muzzle Tough]

39. Yes, they will be.

We have been inventing new energy technologies for hundreds of years. Our knowledge of physics changes all the time. In 3000 years from now, our knowlegde of physics and energy sources will be way bigger than it is now.

Please think of the hypothetical person in the 17th century who said: "We must conserve the world's supply of candle wax, or else the people who live in the 21st century won't have a way to light their homes at night."

Sounds pretty silly, doesn't it?

Well, worrying about people not having enough energy in 3,000 years from now also sounds silly. The technologies for energy in 3,000 years from now will be so much more advanced than anything that we have today.

The Irish potato famine happened because it was illegal for the Irish to have legal title to land, or to legally rent land, or to grow food for profit, or to engage in trade. Potatoes are the one crop that requires the least amount of capital investment, and that's the only crop that they were allowed to grow. These restricitons are the exact opposite of libertarianism.

As long as there is profit to be made from growing and selling chocolate, and it's legal to do so, there will be an abundant supply of chocolate.

Cannabilism is the exact opposite of libertarianism. Easter Island was not libertarian. Libertarianism is based on individual liberty, property rights, and rule of law.

[rustydad]

42. Kyoto

Mussel Tough, isn't Kyoto now a law sense Russia has signed on? Do you plan on living with that law? The world has only one atmosphere. We share it with each other. Do you fart in church? Do you pollute my air? Does your "individual liberty" allow you or others to pollute my planet, the only one I or my children will live on and die on?

As far as new technological breakthroughs thousands of years down the road, sure, they will come if we live as a species that long. But right now technology has no clue as to how to fill in the gap of declining fossil oil and gas. None. MT, you think like an economist. That is that given enough demand a source of whatever will be found. This is pure 'economist' bullshit. You need to inform yourself before you go public and expose your Libertarian biases. Bob

[Muzzle Tough]

43. My answers.

"isn't Kyoto now a law sense Russia has signed on?"

Yes.

But the United States Senate rejected it 97-0 in 1997.

"Do you plan on living with that law?"

Yes. I don't plan on killing myself over it.

I have never owned an automobile. I am also a vegetarian, which means that my diet has a smalller environmental impact and uses less energy. And I have no children. My footprint on the earth is quite small, relative to most other poeple in the U.S.

"The world has only one atmosphere. We share it with each other."

True.

I favor shutting down the coal power plants, and replacing them with nucleaer.

Why are most Kyoto supporters against nuclear power?

The Kyoto Treaty will have no significant effect on global temperatures. It will cost huge amounts of money and destroy many jobs, and these things will hit the poor the hardest.

"Do you fart in church?"

I don't go to church. I don't practice religion.

But I do fart almost everywhere I go. Although I don't fart very often. Despite the commonly held belief that vegetarian diets promote gas, I don't fart very often.

"Do you pollute my air?"

Yes, a tiny bit. Everyone pollutes everyone else's air to a tiny degree.

"Does your "individual liberty" allow you or others to pollute my planet, the only one I or my children will live on and die on?"

Not to excess.

But carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.

Sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and lead gasoline fumes are all toxic pollutants. But carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has never killed anyone.

"As far as new technological breakthroughs thousands of years down the road, sure, they will come if we live as a species that long. But right now technology has no clue as to how to fill in the gap of declining fossil oil and gas. None. MT, you think like an economist. That is that given enough demand a source of whatever will be found. This is pure 'economist' bullshit. You need to inform yourself before you go public and expose your Libertarian biases."

Last year, Discover magazine had an article called "Anything Into Oil." We can make up for almost all of our energy imports by turning agricultural, commerical, and household waste into oil, natural gas, and fertilizer.

Nuclear fission is a technology that already exists. It is the cleanest, safest, most environmentally friendly way to generate electricity on a large scale for a country with a large population.

I am in favor nuclear power.

Why are most Kyoto supporters against nuclear power?

What is your favorite source of generating electricity?

And if you answer that by saying windmills or solar panels, then what source of energy do you favor to use to power the manufacturing plants to make the solar panels or windmills?

[Viking12]

45. The Senate has never voted on Kyoto

Why are most Kyoto supporters against nuclear power?

How do you define most? Where's your evidence for your unsubstantiated claim?

The Kyoto Treaty will have no significant effect on global temperatures. It will cost huge amounts of money and destroy many jobs, and these things will hit the poor the hardest.

Again, evidence please??? Maybe you can quote a Bush press conference for us. Or better yet, how about Micheal Crichton.

But carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.

Semantics. Arsenic wasn't classified as a pollutant 50 years ago, does that mean we shouldn't have regulated arsenic in our drinking water?

Last year, Discover magazine had an article called "Anything Into Oil." We can make up for almost all of our energy imports by turning agricultural, commercial, and household waste into oil, natural gas, and fertilizer.

No we can't.

Your continual habit of regurgitating disinformation is getting annoying.

[Muzzle Tough]

46. Yes they did.

They voted against it 97-0 in 1997. It's a matter of public record.

It was environmentalists who got the U.S. to stop the construction of new nuclear power plants in the 1970s. We haven't built even one new one for U.S. use since then. Most environmentalists are against nuclear power. The Sierra Club and Greenpeace are against nuclear power.

According to the computer models of the very people who support Kyoto, it won't have any significant effect on global temperatures.

People complain when the price of a gallon of gasoline goes up by 50 cents. That's nothing compared to the damage that Kyoto would do.

The fact is that people LIKE to use energy. They LIKE to use electricity. They LIKE to use autmobiles. They LIKE to use refrigerators, washing machines, furnaces, air conditioners, televisions, computers, etc.

Kyoto says the U.S. has to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 5% below 1990 levels. But since 1990, our population has gotten bigger, and the number of automobiles, houses, computers, refrigerators, furnaces, air conditoners, washing machines, televisions, etc., has gotten bigger.

There is no way that we could enforce the Kyoto Treaty without putting major restrictions on people's right to travel, use their appliances, heat and cool their homes, etc.

People love to TALK about how they allegedly love the Kyoto Treaty. But I have not heard one person explain what they have done in their own lives to reach the goals that are required by the treaty.

People who complain about the price of gasoline going up by 50 cents but then claim they they support the Kyoto Treaty obviously have no idea what the treaty would do in the U.S. if it was actually ENFORCED.

Yeah. Sure. RATIFYING the treaty would be easy. But actually ENFORCING it would would be a totalitarian nightmare that would give the government control of almost every aspect of your life and greatly reduce your standard of living.

[hatrack]

50. They did not vote on the Kyoto Protocol - they voted on Hagel-Byrd

The Hagel-Byrd Amendment was a nonbinding "sense of the Senate" proclamation stating that the Senate would never vote on a treaty which would limit economic growth, etc, etc.

However, the Protocol has never been submitted to the Senate for ratification at any time.

[Muzzle Tough]

53. OK. Thanks.

So it wasn't officially a vote on Kyoto, but the principle was pretty much the same.

[Viking12]

51. You're wrong. Take your disinformation somewhere else

They voted against it 97-0 in 1997. It's a matter of public record.


Then it shouldn't be so difficult for you to provide a link. I'll save you the time: The Kyoto Protocol has never been voted on by the US Senate

Your rant is funny but it doesn't have any basis in reality. There are problems with Kyoto, but you have no clue what they are.

[NickB79]

48. This one cracks me up

"Last year, Discover magazine had an article called "Anything Into Oil." We can make up for almost all of our energy imports by turning agricultural, commerical, and household waste into oil, natural gas, and fertilizer."

You do realize that we have to USE oil in order to produce the wastes going into that device, right? And that simple thermodynamics makes it impossible to recover 100% of the energy back from the recycled material into oil. You put a plastic cube that required 10 gallons of oil to make, and you only get out 6-7 gallons of synthetic oil. Does that sound like making up for our energy imports?

You could use biomass as a less energy-intensive source of synthetic oil, but you still need to use fuel to cultivate the land, fertilize and maintain the crops, and harvest and transport it. Then, you also face the problem of finding enough land to grow both food and fuel on (the classic problem of biomass fuels). The more you grow biomass, the less land there is for fuel. The more you grow fuel, the less food there is. Which one does a libertarian chose, food or fuel? Starve to death for lack of food or freeze to death for lack of heating? What does capitalism do when two resources that are equally vital compete with one another?

[NickB79]

47. Your analogy is flawed

Candle wax is a renewable resource. Fossil fuels are not, except in the timespan of millions of years.

Furthermore, you keep speaking in terms of centuries and even millenia to develop new energy technologies. We have a few decades at most until we reach Peak Oil. Some believe we are reaching it right now! We no longer have to time to sit back and theorize what our great-greatgrandchildren will use to power their homes and communities; we have to find a solution NOW. For example, if we settle on nuclear power as a replacement for fossil fuels, it would still take decades to build enough powerplants to compensate for the loss of oil at current energy usage. If we factor in the fact that demand for energy is increasing globally every year, it will prove very difficult to keep pace.

[NNadir]

52. I disagree about the relationship between libertarianism and cannibalism.

They are very much the same thing, except cannibals in starvation modes have more of a justification for their actions, since their actions are often connected with realities. The Easter Islanders were undoubtedly exercising their "property rights" when the cut down the last tree on the planet, just as you are appealing to "property rights" when you seek to heave the last chuck of benzofuran into my lungs. I stand by my characterization of Easter Island Cannibals as Libertarians; it is probably the best comparison I could imagine.

I hesitate to discuss science here, and the remarks about Physics you make because I make it more and more of a policy not to attempt to coddle people who appeal to science in order to justify their religions. Still it pisses me off when creationists or Libertarians or Marxists attempt to use highly edited "science" to justify bankrupt ideologies.

I stand on the credibility of my understanding of science as demonstrated in my posts on this site. You are simply issuing dictums like "Our knowledge of physics changes all the time. In 3000 years from now, our knowlegde (sic) of physics and energy sources will be way bigger than it is now," without simultaneously showing any evidence of either the history of physics or the nature of the physical principles. In short, your remark seems to be based on faith. Sorry, bub, but faith is not thinking.

All of the materialist religions, including Marxism and its close cousin, economic Libertarianism, posit the same nonsense about the supremacy of "ownership" as if such a concept has some innate physical connectivity. That one religion insists on the extreme of collective ownership - and the other, equally morally appalling, religion - insists on the extreme of "private ownership," is really a triviality. People do of course, attempt to place the imprimatur of "science" on either or both of these pitiable philosophies; Stalin used to prattle on about "Marxist-Leninist Science" for instance, between issuing orders for execution. Still it seems to me that both materialist religions, yours and Stalin's, fall back on that really ancient bit of silly dogma that posited "man" (usually excluding "woman") as the center of the universe, the ruler of the universe. This should be laughable by now, but inexplicably people somehow manage to take it too seriously. For the record, science disposed of this notion somewhere in the late 16th Century, and the religious have been wiggling curiously since.

In fact, I would defy any materialist religion adherent, whether the particular source of his or her poor thinking is Marxist or Libertarian, to demonstrate a physical change in matter that results from "ownership." You would think, listening to this Marxist-Libertarian materialist religious bullshit, that matter is fundamentally changed because a particularly amoral theorist holds it in his hands and is willing to see other people die for his "right" to possess it. There is no evidence for this. Bonds do not break because of ownership; the temperature/energy relationships in the atomic structure of matter does not change. Schroedinger found no cause to examine how the wave functions of particles changed if they were constituents of pens owned by Einstein or if they were constituents of pens owned by Heisenberg. If I place "my" glass of water in a pot, it boils at exactly the same temperature as would "your" glass of water.

In fact physics trumps religion; it always has and it always will because it is driven by observation and not by cant. Physicists are in a better position to demonstrate the applicability of religious principles than the religious are able to rule on the applicability of physics. This of course has never stopped the religious from trying to rule on physics; that is the point of this entire thread, an attempt to rule on physics through the application of religious principles. You will therefore excuse me if I decline to put much merit in your remarks about physics will and will not do.

It does matter however, if out of a blind elevation of "ownership" over scientific literacy one blindly stumbles into the abyss. One of the most important economic plants in the nineteen century was the American Chestnut, prized for its nuts that were "roasted on an open fire;" it's wood, which was impervious to rot and was essential to the railroad industry for ties. In a few short decades this tree was decimated by primitive libertarians in the primitive early twentieth century, who exercised - using their characteristic indifference to reality - their "property" rights to import Asian Chestnut trees to breed with the Americans in order to obtain bigger nuts. Within a few decades, this important tree was rendered nearly extinct because Chestnut blight was imported along with the Asian trees. In spite of its extreme economic importance, and no amount of libertarian religious prattle or chanting about money could save it. This had everything to do with genetics and nothing to do with mysticism about the physical changes magically incurred by "ownership" of the trees.

A response to the problem of chocolate and its dependence on genetic variability that consists of another dogmatic chant straight out a boring and ridiculous Randian John Galt speech is simply not credible. This is a subject on which the executives of corporations like Cadbury's and Nestles have been having many meetings in recent years - and as far as I know, praying is not involved. This is a problem demanding the exercise of intellect and not chanting. We should be discussing these matters with persons who know the differences between chalk and cheese and chocolate.

[Muzzle Tough]

6. Sorry for the duplicate post.

Oops!

[bemildred]

2. I'm generally not willing to get into this.

The question is: should we limit our use of non-renewable resources or not?

I consider the issue of whether "global warming" is occurring and to what
degree it is caused by humans a red herring of sorts. Not that
I'm accusing you of that.

Nevertheless, there seems to be a consensus of scientific opinion
that something is going on and that we are not helping. But, being
chaotic systems, the weather and climate must both be taken to be
unpredictable in their little ups and downs.

[Muzzle Tough]

8. That is an excellent question.

You asked:

"should we limit our use of non-renewable resources or not?"

Yes. And there are two things that we need to determine the limits: private ownersip and free market pricing. Among resources that are controlled by the combination of both of these characteristics, we have never had a long term chronic shortage or run out of any resource. It has never happened. Scarcity leads to higher prices. Higher prices encourage people to voluntarily conserve the reosurce, and to seek out cheaper substitutes. Higher prices also enocurage the invention of new alternatives that didn't exist before.

In fact, economics is defined as being "the study of the allocation of scarce resources which have alternative uses."

Problems occur when the government owns the resource or controls the price. For example, the government spends $300 to pump an acre foot of water, which is then sold to a farmer for $8, which the farmer then uses to grow crops in the desert, which the farmer then sells for $30. This is a terrible waste. Only the government would be dumb enough to waste money in this way. If water prices were controlled by markets instead of politics, this kind of waste would not happen, and water shortages would disappear.

Las Vegas has a shortage of water because the government keeps the price too low. But Las Vegas does not have a shortage of food, clothing, automobiles, computers, or televisions, because the prices of those things are based on supply and demand.

We can now desalinize water for $1,000 an acre foot. If water prices were based on markets instead of politics, Las Vegas could import sufficient quantities of water, just as it currently imports sufficient quantities of food.

Likewise, if the government forced all supermarkets to cut all of their food prices by 25%, then Las Vegas would have a shortage of food.

So should the use of resources be limited? Yes. It should be limited by the real world conditions that are communicated through prices.

[bemildred]

15. "private ownership and free market pricing" do not limit anything.

That is contrary to observation. "private ownership and free market
pricing" use things up, and so they have throughout history. Civilizations
fall, among other things, because they shit in their own nest. To limit
use, you need laws that protect resources from use, and enforcement
mechanisms, period.

I like libertarian ideas, but not in the economic sphere, there is all
this blather about "the market" and "free markets" and such horseshit.
There is no such thing. Markets do not exist in a vacuum, and all
participants in a market can be expected to do their best to manipulate
those markets in their own favor, and any attempt to make a market
"fair" requires a regulating agency, but even there you don't have a
"free market", you just have a market in which some attempt is being
made to have it operate in a "fair" way.

[Muzzle Tough]

22. Here are some real world examples.

The buffalo was almost hunted to extinction, because the animals were on public property. People hunted them and their population kept getting smaller.

But cattle are privately owned. So people raise them on farms. So their population is protected. Overhunting never happens with animals that are raised on private farms.

Gold is a very scarce resource. It's highly prized for jewelry. And it's very useful for electrical components. But it is scarce. And this scarcity is reflected in its high price. So people limit their use of gold, and they seek out cheaper substitutes.

Diamonds are very scarce. So their price is very high. So people limit their use, and seek out cheaper substitutes.

During the 1970s, there was an OPEC embargo on oil. By itself, this would have caused prices to rise enough so that supply and demand would remain equal to each other. But Nixon imposed price controls. So prices weren't allowed to rise sufficiently. So demand exceeded supply. So there were shortages and gasoline lines. After Reagan got rid of the price controls, the shortages and gasoline lines disappeared. In 2000, there was another OPEC embargo. But Clinton was smart enough to not impose price controls. So prices rose enough, so suppply and demand remained equal to each other, so there was no shortage.

The whole point of even having prices is to communicate information about supply and demand, and to encourage efficient use of scarce rssources.

If prices aren't allowed to reflect supply and demand, then what's the point of even having prices in the first place?

One of the biggest reasons, and perhaps even the single biggest reason, that the Soviet Union failed was because their government would not allow prices to be based on supply and demand.

If you want, you can certainly try to have a system where the government owns and controls all the resources. But what you end up with in that situation is huge amounts of waste and mismanagement.

For example, compare Eastern Europe to Wetern Europe from 1950-1990.

[bemildred]

27. Give me an example of "private ownership and free market pricing"

protecting any non-renewable resource or limiting its use for any other
reason but to drive up the short term price. You would get laughed
out of any corporate boardroom for even suggesting that their motive
should be anything but profit.

I made certain points about the nature of markets, the fact that they
are neither fair nor free, and that any approximation of those things
will occur only in the presence of a regulating agency. Do you have
no reply?

You are delusional about the Soviet Union and why it failed (and I
should make it clear I am not an advocate of their economic system
lest you call me a Commie next.)

I am not in favor of the government owning everything. I do favor the
government as a regulating agency and representative of the common
good in the economic system, which othewise is designed only to pursue
private profit. Where do you think private property comes from, if
not the government?

[Muzzle Tough]

30. Response

I agree with you that the motivation for private companies is to make a profit.

I agree with you that government regulation is necessary. Government must enforce contracts and the rule of law, and prevent excessive levels of pollution.

In all countries, regardless of the type of economic system, people use natural resources. I'm simply stating that resources are used more efficiently and more responsibly when there is private ownership and free market pricing. Such as comparing Eastern Europe to Western Europe.

[bemildred]

34. Still nothing about the "free markets" fiction?

Your last paragraph is yet another bald assertion as fact of
a mythological relation between "private ownership and free
market pricing" and responsible governance and management of
resources.

[IrateCitizen]

57. I always find the "Eastern vs. Western Europe" argument interesting...

... coming from libertarians, because public sector involvement in the economies of Western Europe is way, way, way beyond anything we've ever seen here in the United States. If anything, Western European economies are much closer to a hybrid between socialism and capitalism (seeking to maximize the positive influences of both while tempering their negative influences) than the United States, which is more of a corporate socialist or crony capitalist state.

Much of the better environmental policy in Western Europe is the result of massive government intervention through regulation, not from lasseiz-faire capitalism.

[Muzzle Tough]

58. My response.

In Eastern Europe during the Cold War, all property was owned by the government. All economic activity was controlled by the government. All businesses, factories, and farms were owned by the government.

In Western Europe, housing, factories, and businesses are privately owned. People make their own choices regarding their economic activity. The countries in Western Europe are capitalist. This capitalism created large amounts of wealth. They do have reasonable amounts of government regulation to protect the environment. It's because of their huge levels of wealth, which was created by capitalism, that they are able to protect the enviornment so well. Just as rich countries have better access to food, housing, medical care, etc., they also have better access to clean air, clean water, etc. The overall environmental record of Western Europe is relatively similar to that of the United States. Environmental health closely tracks GNP. On average, the richer the country, the better off its environment is.

[IrateCitizen]

59. Your response has many glaring errors

Biggest among them is the reason why Eastern Europe was so environmentally degraded. The reason for this was not because everything was "owned by the government" -- but rather because the government was extremely centralized and placed its highest priority on rapid industrialization, with environmental considerations not even registering a blip on the radar. All decisions were made not by popular consideration, but by the Communist Party leadership.

As I said previously, the reason that Western Europe takes environmentalism so seriously is not due to capitalist economic theory -- but rather, largely in spite of it. Environmentalism is not due to the creation of large amounts of wealth, contrary to what you say. The Iroquois had an environmental ethic that far outpaced anything that Indo-European civilization has been able to approach, yet they did not have tremendous amounts of "wealth". Rather, the basis of the environmental ethic is a mindset -- it is the acknowledgement that the earth is the source of everything upon which we depend for our survival, and therefore it is in our best interest to steward and preserve those resources.

I absolutely love how you libertarians like to pretend that monetary wealth is the source of everything good in modern society. It is not, especially WRT environmental matters. A basic idea in capitalist economics is that resources are things to be exploited in order to create wealth. It's like the lumber man who looks at a forest and sees nothing but dollar signs. However, viewed from an environmentalist perspective, the process of turning those trees into dollars is taking a living thing and making it dead. It places no premium on natural ecosystems or such that we depend upon to sustain our survivability. Instead, it seeks only to maximize profit by any means possible. That's why the government has to step in to actually SLOW private companies from exhausting natural resources like trees too quickly. The private industry (especially on a corporate scale) is interested in maximizing short-term profit, while the public interest (what libertarians often refer to as "socialism") needs these resources to be stewarded over the long-term.

Comparing Western European environmentalism to that in the United States is laughable, as well. They are light-years ahead of where we are in this regard. If anything, public policy in the United States is moving backward environmentally, all under the false cover of "pro-business" policy. If anything, this helps to prove my point that the libertarian belief system is an extremely flawed one, because freeing business to do what it wants will only result in the rapid exhaustion of resources and degradation of the environment, all in the name of short-term profit.

[Viking12]

17. Your toy economies are fun to play with

but don't have much application in the real world. You're obviously not familiar with other forms of govrnment intervention in the markets; investment, regulation, and market manipulation through taxation. Much of our technological advance over the last 50 years is becasue of government investment. The vast majority of our limited environmental improvements have been made through regulation. We have and can effectively stimulate any number of technological advance through tax incentives.

[Muzzle Tough]

23. I agree with you on those points.

A healthier environment comes from a combination of government regulation of polluting activities, private owership (when you own something, you take care of it), technological advance (from corporations, private researchers, universities, and government), and being richer (which means you have more money to spend on protecting the environment.)

I am not arguing for the government having a hands-off policy.

In fact, it is a necessary function of governemnt to protect the air and water from pollution, and to prevent corporations from wrecking the environment.

[rfkrfk]

38. California has made a start, in trying to limit greenhouse gas

from cars.
Well done.
f--- Washington, and shrub.

[The Traveler]

3. Interesting

Contradicts earlier findings. Doubtless, the massive polar ice cap melts experienced in recent years must be due to some other cause. Perhaps naturally induced microwave emissions produced by electrically charged migrating geese.

All kidding aside, given the Bush administration's established pattern of suppression/distortion of inconvenient scientific data, I have to cast a sceptical eye on this. Hmmmm ... now that I think of it their treatment of the scientific community is similar to their treatment of the military intelligence community.

My point here is that Sean O'Keefe is very much a Bush appartchik. This is a reversal of previous NASA buzz on the subject. Either new data has come to light, or they fudged the data.

Reading closer. Looks like they had to "recalibrate" data from earlier satellites ... ugh. That gets really complex ...

[Viking12]

4. Why do you find it interesting?

In other words, what's your point?

[Muzzle Tough]

10. Response

I'm not sure if you meant to address that to me or the person who put the word "interesting" in their post heading.

I just thought that it was worth pointing out that true GLOBAL temperature measurements can only be done with satellites.

[Viking12]

16. I was addressing you. What's your point?

BTW, Satellites don't measure temperature; temperatures are derived from microwaves. I'd also suggest that you read up on the latest MSU science, particularly Fu, 2004.

Combinations of different channels of individual Microwave Sounding Unit ("MSU") measurements have been used to generate a record of estimated atmospheric temperature change back to 1979, the “MSU Temperature Record". The complex vertical weighting functions relating the the various channels of the MSU to atmospheric temperatures complicate the interpretation of the MSU data. Moreover, while MSU measurements are available back to 1979, a single, continuous long record does not exist. Rather, measurements from different satellites have been combined to yield a single long record, further complicating the interpretation of the MSU record. Direct comparisons of the MSU Temperature Record with the surface temperature record are therefore difficult.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=61

Recent discussions of climate change (MSU Temperature Record, ACIA) have highlighted the fact that the stratosphere is cooling while the lower atmosphere (troposphere) and surface appear to be warming. The stratosphere lies roughly 12 to 50 km above the surface and is marked by a temperature profile that increases with height. This is due to the absorbtion by ozone of the sun’s UV radiation and is in sharp contrast to the lower atmosphere. There it generally gets colder as you go higher due to the expansion of gases as the pressure decreases. Technically, the stratosphere has a negative ‘lapse rate’ (temperature increases with height), while the lower atmosphere’s lapse rate is positive.


The effect on local temperatures of increasing greenhouse gases depends on this lapse rate. Greenhouse gases (like CO2, CH4 or water) absorb and re-radiate infra-red (IR) radiation that is emitted from the planet’s surface at rates that depend on the temperature (the Stefan-Boltzmann law). If the temperature below is warmer than the local temperature, IR radiation that is re-radiated is less than is absorbed, the net effect of the greenhouse gases is to warm that layer. Conversely, if the temperatures below are cooler, the local emissions will be larger than the IR radiation absorbed, and thus the net impact of the GHG will be to cool. In steady state, these effects are balanced principally by convection in the troposphere, and by ozone UV absorbtion in the stratosphere.

As GHG levels change though, especially in the case of the well mixed gases like CO2, the tendencies described above will be enhanced, and thus in the troposphere, where GHGs warm, they will warm further, and conversely, in the stratosphere, where they cool, they will cool further. Thus the impact of GHGs locally is dependent on the local lapse rate.

To be sure, this is a very rough picture and where other feedbacks are important (due to clouds, convection, dynamics etc.) the picture locally can be significantly different from this one-dimensional cartoon. Nonetheless, at the global mean level, this is the dominant effect.

more...

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=58#more-58

[Muzzle Tough]

24. Thank you. That is very interesting.

I would actually prefer to shut down all the coal power plants and replace them with Nuclear. I see that the poster "NNadir" has made some threads giving detailed reasons why that's a good idea.

[umass1993]

18. That article was written by Christy. Here's something on him...

The memo accuses Mr Watson of a "personal agenda" on climate change and suggests a fresh American team is placed on the panel of experts. Mr Randol says he will visit the White House to discuss a team "that can better represent the Bush administration interests". Among new appointments suggested are Dr Richard Lindzen, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an internationally known sceptic of global warming, and John Christy, from the University of Alabama-Huntsville, who told the US Senate that the world is being invigorated by extra carbon dioxide pumped out by man.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/tncs/2002/oilpressure.htm

[umass1993]

19. here. the CATO institute cites Christy..

All of this is very little science and very much politics. Watson is praising the Clinton administration, criticizing the Republican Congress, and implying that Americans are ignorant because they don't follow their government like good Germans -- no offense to Germans intended.

But what really irked the Bush administration was Watson's behavior in Shanghai on Jan. 20, 2001. There the IPCC adopted its latest compendium on climate change. Watson approved the insertion of a new "storyline" (that's what the IPCC now calls its future projections) that predicted an absurd warming of 11°F for this century. Those of us in the scientific community who had reviewed the document never saw this outlandish projection because it was inserted after our peer review. John Christy, a scientist from the University of Alabama who developed the satellite temperature history (which shows very little warming), told a subsequent global warming hearing chaired by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), "this is one forecast that isn't going to happen".

[umass1993]

20. here is another.... this is too easy..

Just weeks after Bush assumed office, ExxonMobil official Randy Randol sent
a memo to the White House, which was subsequently obtained by the Natural
Resources Defense Council through a series of Freedom of Information Act
requests. The memo cited a quote from Robert Watson, chair of the U.N.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: "The United States is way off
meeting its targets. A country like China has done more, in my opinion,
than a country like the United States to move forward in economic
development while remaining environmentally sensitive." Clearly, Watson's
assertion did not sit well with the memo's authors, who went on to ask:
"Can Watson Be Replaced Now At the Request of the United States?"

ExxonMobil recommended that the Bush administration remove Watson, along
with two officials instrumental in producing the U.S. National Assessment
on Climate Change, an EPA document that the White House would seek to
eviscerate in the spring of 2003. In their place, the oil giant recommended
appointing longtime climate "skeptics" John Christy and Richard Lindzen.

Ultimately, the Bush administration did scuttle Watson's reappointment.
But, apparently fearing a major backlash, it decided not to back such vocal
contrarians as Christy and Lindzen.

[umass1993]

21. libertarianism is not liberalism

Real liberalism is not a dogma, it is a method. It is the belief in using reason to better yourself and your fellow man.

Libertarianism is a belief in using reason to better yourself alone. Everyone is their own island. It is more common in the US, because the US has been the land of plenty and it seems feasible. Unfortunately, people tend to kid themselves about reality when it comes between them and what they want.

That's what we've got here.

[Muzzle Tough]

25. Response

Those are some interesting things that you posted. Thank you.

China has a big problem now with pollution from fossil fuels. But as they become richer, they will be able to afford cleaner technologies. I think air pollution in most countries peaks at about $4,000 per capita GNP, and then declines as they become richer and better able to afford cleaner technologies.

Whatever someone's political motiviation is, I don't think they changed any of the data from the NASA saletllies.

Personally, I consider the burning of fossil fuels to be a very primitive, outdated, 19th century techology. I would prefer that we shut down all our coal plants, and replace them with nuclear. My main concern with coal is the fact that about 24,000 people in the U.S. died from coal pollution last year.

[umass1993]

35. response to response

Those are some interesting things that you posted. Thank you.


You are welcome.


China has a big problem now with pollution from fossil fuels. But as they become richer, they will be able to afford cleaner technologies. I think air pollution in most countries peaks at about $4,000 per capita GNP, and then declines as they become richer and better able to afford cleaner technologies.


From what I've read, they seem committed to coal for the forseeable future. www.energybulletin.org


Whatever someone's political motiviation is, I don't think they changed any of the data from the NASA saletllies.


From the other peoples posts, it seems ignorance was just as effective as changing the data. ;-)


Personally, I consider the burning of fossil fuels to be a very primitive, outdated, 19th century techology. I would prefer that we shut down all our coal plants, and replace them with nuclear. My main concern with coal is the fact that about 24,000 people in the U.S. died from coal pollution last year.


I have asthma. You're preaching to the choir. It is issues such as this, that libertarianism fails. People gots to live together, and that takes WORK!

According to David Goodstein of CalTech, it would take 10,000 of the largest nuclear plants to replace the energy we get from fossil fuels. I haven't checked his calculation, but it certainly seems plausible.

What can I say! Houston, we have a problem!

[seasat]

26. You need to read more up to date information on the MSU.

The Microwave Sounding Unit data that Christy used had some problems. It was found that Christy was not taking into account variations in the orbital height of the sensor. The MSU looks at microwave emmission from oxygen molecules. The emmissions at a particular wavelength correlate with temperature. The unit is looking down through 120 km (if I remember it correctly) of atmosphere and they are trying to measure the temperature of the lower (4 km above the surface) troposphere based on the difference between two measurements at different angles. Since he didn't take into account the variations in orbital height, there were some errors in the original measurements.

There are also many different calibration issues associated with satellite measurements. When they have had two different satellites with MSU sensors, they've found 0.6 degree c differences sometimes between the two satellites. That is a pretty big error for the accuracy he is claiming.

Here's link to a National Academy of Science report on reconciling the observations. (LINK) The MSU data did cause scientists to reevaluate the forcings used in their models. They found that they didn't take into account reflective particles such as sulfur dioxides. The corrections to the MSU data and the inclusion of reflective particles has now resulted in agreement between the MSU tropospheric data and the global circulation models.

The stratospheric cooling is predicted under the green house gas theory for global warming. Greenhouse gases have effectively increased the insulation of the earth trapping more ifrared radiation near the surface. If the infrared radiation was leaving the atmosphere we would see stratospheric warming. Also ozone depletion results in a cooling of the stratosphere. You don't have absorption of UV radaition then reemmission as infrared.

So, the troposphere is warming and stratospheric cooling is expected with the greenhouse gas theory for global warming.

[hatrack]

28. Stratospheric Cooling Trend Also Accompanied By Mesospheric Cooling

In other words, the trend seasat describes of substantial stratospheric cooling is reinforced by data indicating a relatively rapid cooling in the mesosphere, the next layer up.

This would tend to support the observed and modelling data of increased temperatures in the lower troposphere due to CO2 forcing, with linked cooling taking place at higher altitudes.

http://www.copernicus.org/EGU/annales/16/1501.htm

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2003GL016887.shtml

[Muzzle Tough]

31. Thanks.

0.6 degrees C is a huge difference.

Wow!

Thanks.

[rustydad]

40. Thermal mass

According to sientists 90% of the increase in solar heating that the planet is experiencing due to C02 increases in the atmosphere and follow on effects such as increased water vapors (a powerfull atmospheric warming ingredient) is being absorbed by the oceans. Much of the ocean temperature rise is finding it's way to the arctic and antarctic regions. Sea level rise is the eliphant in the room and planners are in denial and refuse to acknowledge and plan for the implications. The oceans are a far larger "sink" for increased planet warming than the atmosphere is. As the oceans warm they carry the heat north and shed it at the poles. Anyone who doubts this needs to look north and/or south. It's real. Bob

Published on Thursday, December 16, 2004 by Inter Press Service
Sea Levels to Rise Faster - NASA
by Stephen Leahy

BROOKLIN, CANADA -- The predicted rise in sea levels caused by the
world's changing climate will have to be revised upward after U.S.
scientists recorded accelerated melting of ice in the Arctic and
Antarctic, one researcher said this week.

New and updated satellite data from Greenland, the Canadian Arctic
and Antarctica show parts of these regions are rapidly melting and
contributing three times as much than previously believed to sea
level rise.

"This is the first time researchers have been able to get real data
on this," said Waleed Abdalati, a researcher at the Goddard Space
Flight Centre of the U.S National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA).

Abdalati and NASA colleagues presented their findings at a meeting of
the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco this week.

The melting appears to be in direct response to the surface air
temperature warming in these regions. What is alarming is how quickly
these massive ice sheets are responding to temperature increases of
around 2C, said the scientists.

"We're seeing a response in months rather than in centuries as
previously believed," Abdalati told IPS.

About 10 percent of Earth's land is covered with glaciers, which
store about 75 percent of the world's fresh water. If all land ice
melted, sea level would rise approximately 70 m worldwide, according
to the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA).

Greenland's largest glacier, the Jakobshavn Isbrae, is galloping
towards the sea after about 50 years of doing very little, said
Abdalati.

The ice mass began its charge seaward in the early 1990s in response
to warmer air temperatures. By the mid-1990s it was the world's
fastest glacier, moving at an unglacial clip of seven km a year. By
1997 it began to accelerate, and NASA says today it travels 13 km a
year, dumping enormous amounts of ice into the sea.

In 2003 alone the Jakobshavn Isbrae contributed about four percent of
the estimated rate of sea level rise worldwide, according to the
agency.

Abdalati calls the speed of the meltdown "phenomenal" and says it
suggests glaciers are not as stable as once thought.

Canadian and Alaskan glaciers are undergoing similar transformations,
which began in the late 1990s and appear to be accelerating as well.

In 2001 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
estimated global sea level would rise 0.4 m to 1 m by 2100. That
estimate will have to be revised upward based on these findings says
Abdalati.

The picture is more complex in the Antarctic, where parts of the
frozen continent -- which holds nearly two-thirds of the planet's
fresh water -- have gotten cooler, while the west Antarctic is
warming.

NASA scientists reported this fall that a number of massive glaciers
in the west are sliding into the ocean at accelerating rates and
raising sea levels faster than expected.

"If the warming trend reaches other parts of the Antarctic we could
see some major and rapid changes in the ice," said Ted Scambos of the
University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Centre.

"There could be changes in the sea levels happening more quickly than
were thought possible," he added in a press conference.

Several large glaciers are currently bottled up by the Ross Ice
Shelf, the main outlet for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Should the
shelf break up as the Larsen B did in 2002, those glaciers would
slide into the sea. Water levels could rise by 4 m if they melted
completely.

The Arctic's perennial sea ice is also in decline. While this
floating ice, which lasts year-long, does not contribute to sea level
rise, any reduction in its coverage area allows more heat from the
sun to be absorbed by the Arctic Ocean. That leads to more sea ice
loss, which in turn means more open ocean for the sun to warm.

"It's the most remarkable change that has been observed in the Arctic
thus far," said Josefino Comiso of NASA's GSFC.

Comiso now measures this ice cover decline at 9.2 percent per decade,
up from a previous figure of 8.9 percent per decade in 2000.

Once again the change corresponds to warmer air temperatures observed
over the past 20 years in much of the Arctic.

And the trend means an ice-free shipping route through the region via
the Northwest Passage is not that far off, according to Comiso. "It's
close to that right now."

Shipping via the passage from Europe to the Far East rather than
using the current route through the Panama Canal would cut 4,000 km
from the voyage.

However, the route would traverse a region Canada has long claimed as
its own territory. The United States does not recognise that claim
and has sent its own ships to explore the region. Months ago, Canada
held its largest military exercise in the region -­ notably without
U.S. military participants and observers.

And just a couple of months ago the first scientific evidence emerged
hinting at the possibility of extensive oil and gas deposits in the
Arctic Ocean.

Computer projections show Arctic warming will continue and the region
will be 6C warmer on average by the end of this century, even if
Kyoto Protocol commitments to cut the greenhouse gases -- such as
carbon dioxide -- that cause global warming go into effect globally.

Copyright © 2004 IPS-Inter Press Service

###
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines04/1216-
04.htm

[rustydad]

41. Libertarian?

Perhaps your Libertarian roots lead you to post assertions that seem to refute global warming trends. I do realize that almost all advocates of reducing greenhouse gas emissions seek remedies in some form of regulations. And as I understand it Libertarians hate regulations. I suggest you read this article very closely. I live in California and this scares the hell out of me. The source you will see is impeccable, the National Academy of Sciences, USA. Bob

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/101/34/12422

Abstract

APPLIED PHYSICAL SCIENCES / ECOLOGY
Emissions pathways, climate change, and impacts on California
Katharine Hayhoe a, b, Daniel Cayan c, Christopher B. Field d, Peter C. Frumhoff e, Edwin P. Maurer f, Norman L. Miller g, Susanne C. Moser h, Stephen H. Schneider i, Kimberly Nicholas Cahill d, Elsa E. Cleland d, Larry Dale g, Ray Drapek j, R. Michael Hanemann k, Laurence S. Kalkstein l, James Lenihan j, Claire K. Lunch d, Ronald P. Neilson j, Scott C. Sheridan m and Julia H. Verville e

aATMOS Research and Consulting, 809 West Colfax Avenue, South Bend, IN 46601; cClimate Research Division, The Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Water Resources Division, U.S. Geological Survey, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0224; dDepartment of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305; eUnion of Concerned Scientists, Two Brattle Square, Cambridge, MA 02238; fCivil Engineering Department, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA 95053; gAtmosphere and Ocean Sciences Group, Earth Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720; hEnvironmental and Societal Impacts Group, National Center for Atmospheric Research, P.O. Box 3000, Boulder, CO 80307; iDepartment of Biological Sciences and Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305; jCorvallis Forestry Sciences Laboratory, U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, 3200 SW Jefferson Way, Corvallis, OR 97331; kDepartment of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720; lCenter for Climatic Research, Department of Geography, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716; and mDepartment of Geography, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242

Contributed by Christopher B. Field, June 23, 2004


The magnitude of future climate change depends substantially on the greenhouse gas emission pathways we choose. Here we explore the implications of the highest and lowest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emissions pathways for climate change and associated impacts in California. Based on climate projections from two state-of-the-art climate models with low and medium sensitivity (Parallel Climate Model and Hadley Centre Climate Model, version 3, respectively), we find that annual temperature increases nearly double from the lower B1 to the higher A1fi emissions scenario before 2100. Three of four simulations also show greater increases in summer temperatures as compared with winter. Extreme heat and the associated impacts on a range of temperature-sensitive sectors are substantially greater under the higher emissions scenario, with some interscenario differences apparent before midcentury. By the end of the century under the B1 scenario, heatwaves and extreme heat in Los Angeles quadruple in frequency while heat-related mortality increases two to three times; alpine/subalpine forests are reduced by 50–75%; and Sierra snowpack is reduced 30–70%. Under A1fi, heatwaves in Los Angeles are six to eight times more frequent, with heat-related excess mortality increasing five to seven times; alpine/subalpine forests are reduced by 75–90%; and snowpack declines 73–90%, with cascading impacts on runoff and streamflow that, combined with projected modest declines in winter precipitation, could fundamentally disrupt California's water rights system. Although interscenario differences in climate impacts and costs of adaptation emerge mainly in the second half of the century, they are strongly dependent on emissions from preceding decades.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.
Abbreviations: DJF, December, January, February; HadCM3, Hadley Centre Climate Model, version 3; JJA, June, July, August; PCM, Parallel Climate Model; SRES, Special Report on Emission Scenarios; SWE, snow water equivalent.

n See the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Flood Control Requirements for California Reservoirs, Sacramento District Water Control Data System, Sacramento, CA (www.spkwc.usace.army.mil).

o See Western U.S. Climate Historical Summaries (Western Regional Climate Center) at www.wrcc.dri.edu/climsum.html.

b To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: [e-mail].

© 2004 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA

[Muzzle Tough]

44. My response

I am in favor of government regulations to protect property rights, to protect people form pollution, and to protect people from theft and fraud.

I don't favor the Kyoto Treaty. It won't have any significant effect on global temperatures. But it will cost huge mounts of money and destroy many jobs, and these things will hurt the poor the most. The Kyoto Treaty fails a cost benefit analysis.

However, I do favor building more nucleaer power plants.

Now, if the Kyoto Treaty called for replacing coal power plants with nuclear power plants, then I could see a good case for it.

I really, really, really do not understand why most self-described "environmentalists" are against nuclear power.

[muriel_volestrangler]

49. The Kyoto treaty does not specify how countries should decrease

their carbon dioxide output. Replacing coal with nuclear power is perfectly acceptable under it.

The myth that Kyoto will cost jobs has never had any evidence. It is purely based on the observation that when economies have grown, energy consumption has grown at the same time. But the growth in the economy could be the past cause of increased consumption, rather than the other way round.

[XemaSab]

54. Frankly

Global warming is a tough issue. Scientists who assert that the planet is warming unnaturally have looked at surface temperature data, satellite data, ice cores (providing isotopes and greenhouse gas concentrations in air pockets), tree rings, glacial extent, melting permafrost, sea levels, written historical records, changing wildlife and plant ranges, and many other sources of data.

All of these sources agree that the earth is definitely getting warmer.

However, the point of contention is whether it's a natural warming or something we're doing.

Earth's climate changes all the time. We've had periods where the earth was much warmer, and periods where it was much colder. The changes may be caused by distance from the sun, volcanoes, meteor impacts, sunspots, distribution of the continents, and changes in oceanic currents.

However, scientists believe that none of these things is set up in such a way that the earth should be getting warmer like their data indicate.

Scientists seem to think that the only changing factor that really adequately explains the change in temperature is the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Since most fossil fuels were deposited in the age of the dinosaurs (when the earth was MUCH warmer), our recent climate has not had much carbon in circulation. Now we're releasing carbon that has been stored for millions of years and the amount of carbon in the atmosphere has been increasing.

Most of the aforementioned long term climate data shows a gradual warming beginning right around the time of the industrial revolution, when we began releasing more carbon. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, meaning that it traps heat near the earth. It also persists in the atmosphere, meaning we've really got no way of getting rid of it.

One of the major changes in temperature comes from night temperatures. Nights are staying warmer than they were. This is (ostensibly) because something new is storing heat at night.

There's really no incontrovertible "proof" that humans cause global warming, just a lot of data that is open to interpretation. But most scientists from a variety of disciplines agree that the earth has been getting warmer.

The burn is that the environmetalists want to see us end our reliance on fossil fuels for several reasons other than concern for low-lying coastal areas, and the oil industries want to keep making money hand-over-fist, so they demand increasing standards of "proof" as a way of buying time for themselves.

Finally, we really don't know what it'll do. It might make it drier, or rainier, or colder, or hotter. It might be a slow change over time, or it might be a fast climate change over a decade.

At any rate, we humans are hosing ourselves with this. Our entire global society depends on having predictable climates in certain areas to grow crops in.

One dude, I forget who, said "We'll grow our wheat further north." I dunno about you, but the idea of buying all our food from Canada (or any other country) freaks me out.

[Muzzle Tough]

55. What you said was really good.

I want to use you as a role model so I can be open minded like you are.

Thanks. I just learned a few things.

[Maestro]

56. I haven't read the entire thread

but what I am concerned about is that whether global warming is real or not, the ice caps are in fact melting. This is easy to see. With this happening, a deluge of fresh water is entering the oceans especially in the North Atlantic. The decrease in salinity will affect the warm water conveyer belt that brings warm waters up from the Carribean. When this shuts off, Europe will enter a deep freeze; especially the British Isles. Also, rainfall will decrease globally leading to drought conditions and loss of the few remaining tropical forests mainly in Central America.

The global community needs to recognize that something is happening and needs to find ways to alleviate the situation.