Showing posts with label GLOBAL WARMING. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GLOBAL WARMING. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
GARY STEVENS WRITES ON GLOBAL WARMING
Bruce, The Global Warming Issueby Gary Stevens This is a response to KFALLS Ranching/Grazing News submission to the website. KFALLS writes, "This summer may see first ice-free North Pole. There's a 50-50 chance that the North Pole will be ice-free this summer, which would be a first in recorded history." This may actually happen. If it does, it will be a part of a larger trend of cooling/warming cycles. Recorded history covers the last 5000 years, out of several billion years. To help visualize this: if the entire existence of the Earth, up to today, is represented as a line a mile long, recorded history would be the last 1/16 inch. This is an insignificant amount of time, in the overall scheme of things. "Global Warming" is a theory, not a fact.Here are some facts: Over the eons of time that the Earth has existed, there have been countless ice ages and warming trends, as well as highly toxic atmospheres and major geographical shifts. The Earth is, and always has been, in a state of continuous change. The last notable cool down was at the time of the founding of this country. Crops in Europe were decimated by the cold. New York Harbor was frozen solid. The last major ice age was 30,000 years ago, about the time the desert southwest was settled by brave people traversing the Bering Sea ice from northern Asia. During this time, New Mexico was experiencing constant freezing temperatures. Between these cool times, there have been warm periods. The point is: the Earth's environment goes through repeating cycles of cooler and warmer trends, as well as other natural phenomenon. The current warming trend may be influenced by our activity, to a small degree. More than likely, it is a part of a general warming trend, nudged along by our activity. This trend will, no doubt, reverse sometime in the future, as it always has. Most of the global warming in the past century occurred before 1940, before CO2 emissions could have been a major factor. Temperatures actually fell between 1940 and 1970, even as CO2 levels increased. Antarctica, as a whole, is getting colder, and the ice is getting thicker, although the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica has been melting for the past 6,000 years. Greenland might lose its ice pack in the next thousand years. Temperature readings from reporting stations outside the U.S. are poorly maintained and staffed; those in the U.S., which are more accurate, show little or no warming trend. Temperature sensors on satellites report much less of a warming trend in the upper atmosphere than is reported by temperature sensors on the ground. The "theory" of global warming predicts the upper atmosphere should warm first. Data from weather balloons agree with the satellites. No one can predict if global warming will result in more clouds, or fewer clouds, yet cloud cover plays a major role in global temperature changes. Sea levels have been rising at the rate of four to eight inches per hundred years for the past 6,000 years. This is nothing new. Gary Stevens Organ, New Mexico
GLOBAL WARMING A MORBID RELIGION OR THE 'REAL' THING
This summer may see first ice-free North Pole There's a 50-50 chance that the North Pole will be ice-free this summer, which would be a first in recorded history, a leading ice scientist says. The weather and ocean conditions in the next couple of weeks will determine how much of the sea ice will melt, and early signs are not good, said Mark Serreze. He's a senior researcher at the National Snow and Ice Data Center and the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colo. The chances for a total meltdown at the pole are higher than ever because the layer of ice coating the sea is thinner than ever, he said. "A large area at the North Pole and surrounding the North Pole is first-year ice," Serreze said. "That's the stuff that tends to melt out in the summer because it's thin." Preliminary February and March data from a NASA satellite shows that the circle of ice surrounding the North Pole is "considerably thinner" than scientists have seen during the five years the satellite has been taking pictures, NASA ice scientist Jay Zwally said Friday. He thinks there is slightly less than a 50-50 chance the North Pole will be ice-free. Last year was a record year for ice melt all over the Arctic and the ice band surrounding the North Pole is even thinner now....
Forwarded:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121433436381900681.html?mod=opinion_journal_federation
The question we need to be asking, over and over, goes something like this . . .
In science, every verifiable process can be explained through a scientific formula. If carbon dioxide is capable of regulating global temperatures, there has to be a formula that accurately and consistently demonstrates the causative relationship between carbon dioxide concentrations and global temperatures.
Where is that formula?
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June 25, 2008
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121486841811817591.html?mod=todays_columnists
July 1, 2008
GLOBAL VIEW
By BRET STEPHENS
Global Warming as Mass Neurosis
July 1, 2008; Page A15
Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the mass hysteria phenomenon known as global warming. Much of the science has since been discredited. Now it's time for political scientists, theologians and psychiatrists to weigh in.
What, discredited? Thousands of scientists insist otherwise, none more noisily than NASA's Jim Hansen, who first banged the gong with his June 23, 1988, congressional testimony (delivered with all the modesty of "99% confidence").
AP
The New True Believers
But mother nature has opinions of her own. NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954. Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world's oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years, never mind that "80% to 90% of global warming involves heating up ocean waters," according to a report by NPR's Richard Harris.
The Arctic ice cap may be thinning, but the extent of Antarctic sea ice has been expanding for years. At least as of February, last winter was the Northern Hemisphere's coldest in decades. In May, German climate modelers reported in the journal Nature that global warming is due for a decade-long vacation. But be not not-afraid, added the modelers: The inexorable march to apocalypse resumes in 2020.
This last item is, of course, a forecast, not an empirical observation. But it raises a useful question: If even slight global cooling remains evidence of global warming, what isn't evidence of global warming? What we have here is a nonfalsifiable hypothesis, logically indistinguishable from claims for the existence of God. This doesn't mean God doesn't exist, or that global warming isn't happening. It does mean it isn't science.
So let's stop fussing about the interpretation of ice core samples from the South Pole and temperature readings in the troposphere. The real place where discussions of global warming belong is in the realm of belief, and particularly the motives for belief. I see three mutually compatible explanations.
The first is as a vehicle of ideological convenience. Socialism may have failed as an economic theory, but global warming alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of industry and consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism. Take just about any other discredited leftist nostrum of yore – population control, higher taxes, a vast new regulatory regime, global economic redistribution, an enhanced role for the United Nations – and global warming provides a justification. One wonders what the left would make of a scientific "consensus" warning that some looming environmental crisis could only be averted if every college-educated woman bore six children: Thumbs to "patriarchal" science; curtains to the species.
A second explanation is theological. Surely it is no accident that the principal catastrophe predicted by global warming alarmists is diluvian in nature. Surely it is not a coincidence that modern-day environmentalists are awfully biblical in their critique of the depredations of modern society: "And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." That's Genesis, but it sounds like Jim Hansen.
And surely it is in keeping with this essentially religious outlook that the "solutions" chiefly offered to global warming involve radical changes to personal behavior, all of them with an ascetic, virtue-centric bent: drive less, buy less, walk lightly upon the earth and so on. A light carbon footprint has become the 21st-century equivalent of sexual abstinence.
Finally, there is a psychological explanation. Listen carefully to the global warming alarmists, and the main theme that emerges is that what the developed world needs is a large dose of penance. What's remarkable is the extent to which penance sells among a mostly secular audience. What is there to be penitent about?
As it turns out, a lot, at least if you're inclined to believe that our successes are undeserved and that prosperity is morally suspect. In this view, global warming is nature's great comeuppance, affirming as nothing else our guilty conscience for our worldly success.
In "The Varieties of Religious Experience," William James distinguishes between healthy, life-affirming religion and the monastically inclined, "morbid-minded" religion of the sick-souled. Global warming is sick-souled religion.
Write to bstephens@wsj.com1
Forwarded:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121433436381900681.html?mod=opinion_journal_federation
The question we need to be asking, over and over, goes something like this . . .
In science, every verifiable process can be explained through a scientific formula. If carbon dioxide is capable of regulating global temperatures, there has to be a formula that accurately and consistently demonstrates the causative relationship between carbon dioxide concentrations and global temperatures.
Where is that formula?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
June 25, 2008
**************************************************************************************************************************
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121486841811817591.html?mod=todays_columnists
July 1, 2008
GLOBAL VIEW
By BRET STEPHENS
Global Warming as Mass Neurosis
July 1, 2008; Page A15
Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the mass hysteria phenomenon known as global warming. Much of the science has since been discredited. Now it's time for political scientists, theologians and psychiatrists to weigh in.
What, discredited? Thousands of scientists insist otherwise, none more noisily than NASA's Jim Hansen, who first banged the gong with his June 23, 1988, congressional testimony (delivered with all the modesty of "99% confidence").
AP
The New True Believers
But mother nature has opinions of her own. NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954. Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world's oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years, never mind that "80% to 90% of global warming involves heating up ocean waters," according to a report by NPR's Richard Harris.
The Arctic ice cap may be thinning, but the extent of Antarctic sea ice has been expanding for years. At least as of February, last winter was the Northern Hemisphere's coldest in decades. In May, German climate modelers reported in the journal Nature that global warming is due for a decade-long vacation. But be not not-afraid, added the modelers: The inexorable march to apocalypse resumes in 2020.
This last item is, of course, a forecast, not an empirical observation. But it raises a useful question: If even slight global cooling remains evidence of global warming, what isn't evidence of global warming? What we have here is a nonfalsifiable hypothesis, logically indistinguishable from claims for the existence of God. This doesn't mean God doesn't exist, or that global warming isn't happening. It does mean it isn't science.
So let's stop fussing about the interpretation of ice core samples from the South Pole and temperature readings in the troposphere. The real place where discussions of global warming belong is in the realm of belief, and particularly the motives for belief. I see three mutually compatible explanations.
The first is as a vehicle of ideological convenience. Socialism may have failed as an economic theory, but global warming alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of industry and consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism. Take just about any other discredited leftist nostrum of yore – population control, higher taxes, a vast new regulatory regime, global economic redistribution, an enhanced role for the United Nations – and global warming provides a justification. One wonders what the left would make of a scientific "consensus" warning that some looming environmental crisis could only be averted if every college-educated woman bore six children: Thumbs to "patriarchal" science; curtains to the species.
A second explanation is theological. Surely it is no accident that the principal catastrophe predicted by global warming alarmists is diluvian in nature. Surely it is not a coincidence that modern-day environmentalists are awfully biblical in their critique of the depredations of modern society: "And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." That's Genesis, but it sounds like Jim Hansen.
And surely it is in keeping with this essentially religious outlook that the "solutions" chiefly offered to global warming involve radical changes to personal behavior, all of them with an ascetic, virtue-centric bent: drive less, buy less, walk lightly upon the earth and so on. A light carbon footprint has become the 21st-century equivalent of sexual abstinence.
Finally, there is a psychological explanation. Listen carefully to the global warming alarmists, and the main theme that emerges is that what the developed world needs is a large dose of penance. What's remarkable is the extent to which penance sells among a mostly secular audience. What is there to be penitent about?
As it turns out, a lot, at least if you're inclined to believe that our successes are undeserved and that prosperity is morally suspect. In this view, global warming is nature's great comeuppance, affirming as nothing else our guilty conscience for our worldly success.
In "The Varieties of Religious Experience," William James distinguishes between healthy, life-affirming religion and the monastically inclined, "morbid-minded" religion of the sick-souled. Global warming is sick-souled religion.
Write to bstephens@wsj.com1
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