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Post by Old Badger on Jun 18, 2019 15:01:31 GMT -5
"Permafrost at outposts in the Canadian Arctic is thawing 70 years earlier than predicted, an expedition has discovered, in the latest sign that the global climate crisis is accelerating even faster than scientists had feared. A team from the University of Alaska Fairbanks said they were astounded by how quickly a succession of unusually hot summers had destabilised the upper layers of giant subterranean ice blocks that had been frozen solid for millennia." linkThis is not alarmism. It is not hysteria. It's just fact: global warming is doing exactly what it was predicted to do, only even faster than expected. Apparently the alarmists weren't alarmist enough.
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Post by leftylarry on Jul 10, 2019 11:57:53 GMT -5
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Post by Old Badger on Jul 10, 2019 20:02:36 GMT -5
the? Who's probably correct, LEFTISTS with a socialist agenda or NASA scientists?
Poor Larry, once more taken in by the faux-news sources where he gets his misinformation. In this case, the link is to a Town Hall article (curiously in "finance" rather than science), which uses as its source not NASA, as one might be led to believe, but another right-wing website, Thpe New American, which itself never links to a NASA article saying anything at all about Sun activity and climate change. Instead, it cites two technical articless, neither of which has a single word on the subject of climate change. However, through this new-fangled online app called "search" (which I highly recommend to those curious to separate fact from ideology) I tracked down the source of the statement quoting Martin Mlynczak of NASA’s Langley Research Center: “High above Earth’s surface, near the edge of space, our atmosphere is losing heat energy. If current trends continue, it could soon set a Space Age record for cold.” linkOMG! Why didn't we hear about this sooner? The quotation comes from a pop-science interview last September, and was picked up by The New American by October 1. It took Town Hall until January to publish its piece, and Larry until July to read it. But surely this news is so Earth-shattering that it should have been on the front pages of newspapers around the world. Fox should have spent days mulling over its implications. How come that didn't happen? Conspiracy? Confusion? Delusion? Well, no. It turns out that The New American piece was disingenuous. It carefully did not say that Mlynczak was arguing for global cooling, because he was not. As for the two scientific papers they link to, neither discusses global warming or climate change at all; they're technical papers on measurement: "Ultraviolet Flux Decrease Under a Grand Minimum from IUE Short-wavelength Observation of Solar Analogs" link and "On a role of quadruple component of magnetic field in defining solar activity in grand cycles" link A word search fails to find "global warming", "global cooling", or "climate change" in either article. The reason is clear from this piece published by NASA, copied here in its entirety: Is the Sun causing global warming? No. The Sun can influence the Earth’s climate, but it isn’t responsible for the warming trend we’ve seen over the past few decades. The Sun is a giver of life; it helps keep the planet warm enough for us to survive. We know subtle changes in the Earth’s orbit around the Sun are responsible for the comings and goings of the ice ages. But the warming we’ve seen over the last few decades is too rapid to be linked to changes in Earth’s orbit, and too large to be caused by solar activity. One of the “smoking guns” that tells us the Sun is not causing global warming comes from looking at the amount of the Sun’s energy that hits the top of the atmosphere. Since 1978, scientists have been tracking this using sensors on satellites and what they tell us is that there has been no upward trend in the amount of the Sun’s energy reaching Earth. A second smoking gun is that if the Sun were responsible for global warming, we would expect to see warming throughout all layers of the atmosphere, from the surface all the way up to the upper atmosphere (stratosphere). But what we actually see is warming at the surface and cooling in the stratosphere. This is consistent with the warming being caused by a build-up of heat-trapping gases near the surface of the Earth, and not by the Sun getting “hotter.”
climate.nasa.gov/faq/14/is-the-sun-causing-global-warming/
Ironically, the italicized sentences directly contradict the implication of the piece that Larry linked. So, let's think about his question with these facts in mind: "Who's probably correct, RIGHTISTS with an ideological agenda or NASA scientists?" I think we know the answer.
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Post by leftylarry on Jul 11, 2019 23:08:51 GMT -5
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Post by Old Badger on Jul 12, 2019 9:38:48 GMT -5
LOL, poor Larry. You bite on every hook, don't you? Here's the scoop on Principia Scientific International: "Principia Scientific International (PSI) is an organization based in the United Kingdom which promotes fringe views and material to claim that carbon dioxide is not a greenhouse gas. PSI was formed in 2010 around the time they published their first book, titled Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory...The two named directors were John O'Sullivan, of the UK, and a Walter James O'Brien, with a US address listed in Fargo, North Dakota." linkSo, who is John O'Sullivan, and what does he know about actual science? "John O'Sullivan has not written any peer-reviewed scientific papers on climate change. O'Sullivan has written many blog posts about climate change...O'Sullivan once claimed to have written articles in two high profile publications, but investigations by Gareth Renowden and Andrew Skolnick found that this was in fact the work of another individual, also named John O'Sullivan." link Well, O'Sullivan actually doesn't even claim to be a scientist, so there's that. However, he also seems to be a liar about his actual profession: "The affidavtits filed by science writer Andrew Skolnick [in a British Columbia court case] showed O'Sullivan had made several false claims in relation to his qualifications and past experience. As DeSmogBlog reported, the false claims included: *that he was an attorney with more than a decade of successful litigation in New York State and Federal courts; *that he was employed by a major Victoria, B.C. (Canada) law firm that is representing Ball in the libel action; *that he is a widely published writer, with credits in Forbes and the National Review; *that he had received his law degree from the University College, Cork, Ireland and/or from the University of Surrey (O'Sullivan's actual legal accreditation, apparently obtained after the Mann-Ball action commenced, comes from an online degree mill, Hill University, which promises delivery in two weeks); *that he is a member of the American Bar Association. "New Zealand climate blogger and author Gareth Renowden also looked into O'Sullivan's background on his Hot Topic blog, finding that O'Sullivan's claims that he was qualified as a lawyer were bogus. Climate sceptic blogger Pete Ridley has also investigated O'Sullivan's claimed work history and qualifications, finding many irregularities including O'Sullivan's claim to have a law degree." Even his fellow climate skeptics know this guy's a phony. You must be the easiest mark on the East Coast, given the sheer volume of misinformation you regurgitate, with apparently sincere belief in its authenticity. Here's a word of advice: before you swallow claims that seem outlandish use the search engine of your choice to find out something about the source. Just because someone posts something on the Interwebs doesn't make it so. Caveat emptor, remember?
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Post by Old Badger on Jul 26, 2019 17:01:22 GMT -5
For several decades various scientific communities have been warning us about the effects of pouring greenhouse gasses into Earth's atmosphere. They've been met by industry-bought pseudo-scientists, lawyers, and PR flacks (including the entire line-up over at Fox News), supported by craven politicians, trying to convince them that either: (a) it's not happening, (b) if it is the forces at work are "natural" (sunspots, for example), or (c) good news. These charlatans spend years arguing that there was no evidence of the prophesied catastrophes, so the whole thing must be a "hoax" (lots of those around these days, apparently). Yet, here we are in 2019 and the prophesies are coming true right on schedule. Take the prediction of more extreme weather events, and such events happening more frequently, as in the European heat wave of the past few days, as reported by the WP: Paris set an all-time record temperature of 108.7 degrees on Thursday. The previous record was 104.7 degrees set in June 1947. This means Thursday’s temperature surpassed the 72-year-old record by an astonishing four degrees... Germany set a national temperature record when a sensor in Lingen measured 108.7 degrees on Thursday, eclipsing the old record, set just the previous day, by 3.8 degrees. Belgium set a national record of 107.2 degrees on Thursday in Begijnendijk. According to Meteo-France forecaster Etienne Kapikian, this beat the previous Belgium record by an astonishing 6.1 degrees. The Netherlands set a national record high temperature of 107.1 degrees on Thursday. The previous record was 101.8, set in August 1944. That’s a difference of 5.3 degrees. According to the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, none of their sensors had ever ticked above 104 degrees before. linkSo, here's the thing: “'Some of these records were not beaten by a small increment,' wrote J. Marshall Shepherd, director of the University of Georgia’s atmospheric sciences program, in an email. 'They established an entirely new baseline.' Shepherd likens the significance of beating a record by five or even six degrees to having a dangerous fever. 'If you have temperature of 99.6 degrees, it is alarming,' he said, and 103 degrees 'would send you right to the doctor.' ” And this heat wave comes just weeks after the previous record-breaker in late-June and early-July that led to this conclusion in a new study: "The observations show a very large increase in the temperature of these heatwaves. Currently such an event is estimated to occur with a return period of 30 years, but similarly frequent heatwaves would have likely been about 4 ºC cooler a century ago. In other words, a heatwave that intense is occurring at least 10 times more frequently today than a century ago." link And this heat wave may be easing in Europe, but "In the coming days, that system is set to target the Arctic." Holy sea-rise, Batman! The warming weather is not just uncomfortable. It's actually letting loose dangerous new forms of life: "Three years ago, U.S. health officials warned hundreds of thousands of clinicians in hospitals around the country to be on the lookout for a new, quickly spreading and highly drug-resistant type of yeast [candida auris] that was causing potentially fatal infections in hospitalized patients around the world...Fungal infections in humans are rare. Mammals have more advanced immune systems than other organisms at risk of fungal infections, and most fungi in the environment cannot grow at the temperatures of the human body...But as the climate has gotten warmer, the researchers say C. auris was able to adapt, which helped it replicate in the human body’s temperature of 37 degrees Celsius." link In other words, warming the atmosphere to something closer to our own body temperatures makes it possible for deadly diseases from which we now are protected to learn to live at our high temperatures--and therefore to attack us. For want of some solar panels...
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Post by Old Badger on Jul 31, 2019 12:05:55 GMT -5
"Temperatures have been above average across Alaska every day since April 25. None of the state’s nearly 300 weather stations have recorded a temperature below freezing since June 28 — the longest such streak in at least 100 years. On Independence Day, the temperature at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport hit 90 degrees for the first time on record. More than 2 million acres have gone up in flames across the state as thousands of firefighters have worked to contain wildfires. Stores have sold out of fans and ice. Moose have been spotted seeking respite in garden sprinklers. Alaska, which logged its warmest June on record, now seems destined to register not only its warmest July but also its warmest month... "The entire Arctic is suffering under extreme temperatures. In Siberia, sweeping wildfires are sending smoke thousands of miles away and lofting dark soot particles onto the vulnerable Arctic ice cover. Arctic sea ice is melting at an alarming pace and could break the 2012 record. In addition, the weather system that caused last week’s heat wave in Western Europe has now settled above the Atlantic side of the Arctic, accelerating surface-ice melting in Greenland. Mark Parrington, a senior scientist with the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service in Europe, said that through July 28, wildfires in the Arctic region, including Siberia and Alaska, had emitted the greatest total of carbon dioxide — 125 metric megatons — of any year-to-date since such monitoring began in 2003... "The early retreat of sea ice from the Bering and Chukchi seas has led to a jump in sea surface temperatures, altering weather patterns and upending the lives of residents who typically depend on the ice cover for hunting and fishing. It’s also affecting native species that inhabit the area, including seals and seabirds...As of July 28, the Chukchi Sea, northwest of Alaska, had just 20 percent of its ice cover left — a record low for this time of year, according to figures from the National Snow and Ice Data Center...In south-central Alaska, residents face a different outlook: streams that are running high because snow and glaciers are melting quickly. While this is peak season for fly-in fishing trips, some pilots have had to revise their fight plans, wary of dropping off clients near rivers that are surging from the snowmelt." linkJust waiting for LL to stop by to give us some good news about Arctic ice, while decrying global warming as a hoax. C'mon, man--I know you can do it!
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Post by Old Badger on Aug 1, 2019 19:38:25 GMT -5
"An extraordinary melt event that began earlier this week continues on Thursday on the Greenland ice sheet, and there are signs that about 60 percent of the expansive ice cover has seen detectable surface melting, including at higher elevations that only rarely see temperatures climb above freezing...According to Ruth Mottram, a climate researcher with the Danish Meteorological Institute, the ice sheet sent 197 billion tons of water pouring into the Atlantic Ocean during July. This is enough to raise sea levels by 0.5 millimeter, or 0.02 inches, in a one-month time frame, said Martin Stendel, a researcher with the institute. This might seem inconsequential, but every increment of sea-level rise provides a higher launchpad for storms to more easily flood coastal infrastructure, such as New York’s subway system, parts of which flooded during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Think of a basketball game being played on a court whose floor is gradually rising, making it easier for even shorter players to dunk the ball. As a result of both surface melting and a lack of snow on the ice sheet this summer, “this is the year Greenland is contributing most to sea-level rise,” said Marco Tedesco, a climate scientist at Columbia University." linkNope, no such thing as global warming, none at all. Where's LL to remind us before we fall for this hoax?
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Post by Old Badger on Aug 5, 2019 16:21:33 GMT -5
"Pending verification by the Colorado Climate Center and the National Weather Service, Colorado may have hit its all-time hottest temperature on record last month. A reading of 115 degrees was observed at the John Martin Dam, near Lamar, in southeast Colorado on July 20, according to the National Weather Service (NWS) office in Pueblo’s database. While NWS Pueblo said last week that they had “no reason to believe it is a bad reading,” the record must pass a verification process before officially etching its way into the history books." linkAs we all know, the Fahrenheit thermometer is a hoax. ;-)
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Post by Old Badger on Aug 15, 2019 16:10:23 GMT -5
"Data from thousands of surface monitoring stations worldwide, including ocean buoys in the Pacific and land-based thermometers dotting the continents, show that July 2019 was the warmest month on Earth since at least 1850. Berkeley Earth, an independent climate monitoring and research organization, released data Thursday showing last month beat August 2016 for the title of the warmest month by 0.14 degrees (0.08 Celsius)...Previously, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service had found that July 2019 was the warmest month on record...The NOAA also announced Thursday that July was the warmest month on record, with the global average surface temperature coming in at 1.71 degrees (0.95 Celsius) warmer than the 20th century average. According to Deke Arndt, head of climate monitoring for NOAA, July 2019 marked the 415th straight month that was warmer than the 20th century average. In keeping with accelerating global warming, nine of the 10 warmest Julys have occurred since 2005, NOAA found...At the end of the month, both Arctic sea ice and Antarctic sea ice were at their lowest levels on record for the month, missing a total of 1 million square miles of ice, according to NOAA. If this were a country, Arndt said, it would be the 10th largest nation worldwide." link The data are unambiguous, and undeniable. Perhaps that's why Lefty Larry has stopped posting the ludicrous claim that Arctic sea ice is returning. In any case, this is just what climate scientists have been predicting for decades. Now, it's happening. Just when will our political leaders (well, the Republican ones) quit playing denial games and start acting to protect their constituents?
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Post by Old Badger on Aug 22, 2019 22:37:32 GMT -5
"The world’s first solar farm to power a railway line directly is due to plug into the track near Aldershot, paving the way for solar-powered trains. From Friday, about 100 solar panels at the trackside site will supply renewable electricity to power the signalling and lights on Network Rail’s Wessex route. The 30kW pilot scheme could pave the way for a larger project capable of directly powering the trains that use this route from next year. The solar breakthrough comes as Network Rail plans to spend billions of pounds electrifying rail lines to avoid running trains on diesel. This could help reduce air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and costs.Solar panels are already used to power the operations of train stations, including Blackfriars in central London. But the Aldershot project is the first time a solar array will bypass the electricity grid to plug directly into a railway’s 'traction' system." linkThe old-fashioned country that gave the world the first coal-powered steam locomotive nearly 220 years ago is now moving to solar power. Under a Tory government, no less. Meanwhile, here in the ostensibly modern United States our President is fighting a last-ditch battle to keep using coal. Go figure.
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Post by Old Badger on Sept 17, 2019 9:13:43 GMT -5
Remember when climate change deniers were asking "what happened to those predictions?" Well, as to that: "The Northern Hemisphere just had its hottest summer on record since 1880 [meaning since they started measuring], according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data released Monday. NOAA found the average global surface temperature taken by thousands of thermometers, buoys and other sensors on land and sea tied with that of 2016 for the top spot, with a temperature anomaly of 2.03 degrees (1.13 Celsius) above the 20th-century average. In addition, August was the world’s second-hottest such month, according to both NOAA and NASA, with unusually hot conditions seen from pole to pole and across every ocean. " link![](//storage.proboards.com/6190148/thumbnailer/WljSeUCoKyJSCXUIKVvI.png) Yeah, just look at that graph, which runs from 1880 on the left to last month on the right; blue is below average, red above. You do not have to be a scientist to get that patter, but just in case you do have a problem here's the big takeaway: "Nine of the 10 highest August land and ocean surface temperatures have occurred since 2009, with the five warmest Augusts occurring since 2014. August 1998 is the only August from the 20th century to be among the 10 warmest Augusts on record." linkThat almost one-way rise over the past 140 years is consistent with the explanation that emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gasses from the massive use of fossil fuels beginning with the Industrial Revolution is causing the atmosphere, and thus the land and oceans, to grow warmer. It is not consistent with various explanations based on cyclical activities. For example: "What’s remarkable about 2019′s record warmth is that it comes in the absence of a strong El Niño event in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Such events tend to boost global temperatures by warming the seas and sending more heat into the atmosphere. Instead, a weak El Niño has been present at times during 2019 but nothing like what occurred in 2016, which was the last time a Northern Hemisphere summer was this warm." And other global-warming predictions also continue to come true: "This summer featured unusual events that are symptomatic of a rapidly warming planet. There was a brutal heat wave across Europe in July that established new national high temperature records and broke Paris’s all-time hottest temperature. In addition, Arctic sea ice plummeted to the second-lowest level on record for the month of August. Furthermore, the Arctic was ablaze, from the boreal forests of Alaska and Canada to the Siberian tundra and vast spruce forests, highlighting the possibility that the region could go from an absorber, or “sink,” of carbon to a source of additional carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere." So, enough with dodging the obvious: yes the Earth's surface and atmospheric temperatures are rising, yes it's because of human emissions of greenhouse gasses, and yes we need to do something about it. Instead of arguing these points we should be debating what to do, not whether to do anything. We can do a lot without destroying civilization as we know it, but the longer we wait the harder it will be. Better to start now.
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Post by Old Badger on Sept 23, 2019 22:32:13 GMT -5
Takes a little girl to dress down the "adults" who should know better:
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Post by Humboldt on Sept 28, 2019 18:35:12 GMT -5
Remember when climate change deniers were asking "what happened to those predictions?" Well, as to that: "The Northern Hemisphere just had its hottest summer on record since 1880 [meaning since they started measuring], according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data released Monday. NOAA found the average global surface temperature taken by thousands of thermometers, buoys and other sensors on land and sea tied with that of 2016 for the top spot, with a temperature anomaly of 2.03 degrees (1.13 Celsius) above the 20th-century average. In addition, August was the world’s second-hottest such month, according to both NOAA and NASA, with unusually hot conditions seen from pole to pole and across every ocean. " linkYeah, just look at that graph, which runs from 1880 on the left to last month on the right; blue is below average, red above. You do not have to be a scientist to get that patter, but just in case you do have a problem here's the big takeaway: "Nine of the 10 highest August land and ocean surface temperatures have occurred since 2009, with the five warmest Augusts occurring since 2014. August 1998 is the only August from the 20th century to be among the 10 warmest Augusts on record." linkThat almost one-way rise over the past 140 years is consistent with the explanation that emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gasses from the massive use of fossil fuels beginning with the Industrial Revolution is causing the atmosphere, and thus the land and oceans, to grow warmer. It is not consistent with various explanations based on cyclical activities. For example: "What’s remarkable about 2019′s record warmth is that it comes in the absence of a strong El Niño event in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Such events tend to boost global temperatures by warming the seas and sending more heat into the atmosphere. Instead, a weak El Niño has been present at times during 2019 but nothing like what occurred in 2016, which was the last time a Northern Hemisphere summer was this warm." And other global-warming predictions also continue to come true: "This summer featured unusual events that are symptomatic of a rapidly warming planet. There was a brutal heat wave across Europe in July that established new national high temperature records and broke Paris’s all-time hottest temperature. In addition, Arctic sea ice plummeted to the second-lowest level on record for the month of August. Furthermore, the Arctic was ablaze, from the boreal forests of Alaska and Canada to the Siberian tundra and vast spruce forests, highlighting the possibility that the region could go from an absorber, or “sink,” of carbon to a source of additional carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere." So, enough with dodging the obvious: yes the Earth's surface and atmospheric temperatures are rising, yes it's because of human emissions of greenhouse gasses, and yes we need to do something about it. Instead of arguing these points we should be debating what to do, not whether to do anything. We can do a lot without destroying civilization as we know it, but the longer we wait the harder it will be. Better to start now. "NOAA found the average global surface temperature taken by thousands of thermometers, buoys and other sensors on land and sea" How many thermometers, buoys and there sensors on land and sea were there in 1880?
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Post by Old Badger on Sept 28, 2019 20:06:51 GMT -5
How many thermometers, buoys and there sensors on land and sea were there in 1880? Ignorance is bliss at your house, I see.
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Post by Old Badger on Oct 4, 2019 17:58:09 GMT -5
"Another month, another record: "September 2019 was the warmest such month on record, tying the old record set in 2016, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, an organization funded by the European Union that tracks global temperatures. This makes September the fourth-straight month 'to be close to or breaking a temperature record,' according to an agency statement. Based on Copernicus’s data, which uses computer models fed with billions of observations from air, land and sea, June 2019 set a record high for that month, July 2019 was the warmest month ever recorded, and August 2019 was the second-warmest such month globally...According to Copernicus, September was about 1.02 degrees above the 1981-2010 average for the month, and about 1.2 degrees above the preindustrial level. It was also slightly warmer, by about 0.04 degrees, than September 2016, which had been the warmest such month on record." linkThe climate change deniers keep finding it harder and harder to ignore the facts, kind of like the Flat Earth Society. Both groups are cranks, and deservedly subject to derision.
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Post by Old Badger on Dec 6, 2019 0:19:00 GMT -5
On Friday protesters, including Jane Fonda and Ted Danson, plan to block intersections around the World Bank's headquarters near the White House to protest climate change, and urge the Bank to divest its loans to fossil fuel projects. I commented on the WP article: Climate change is a serious issue. As a father and grandfather I worry constantly about what my kids/grandkids will face down the road. But blocking traffic around the World Bank is a weird way to call attention to this problem. For one thing, the WB is investing heavily in climate change prevention and mitigation projects around the world. But more importantly they really are a small player in the world economy, with disbursements of just $37 billion in the latest fiscal year; that's just 0.04 percent of the world economy of $86.599 trillion (with a t). Why such a small target? Not to sound dismissive, but I suspect it's in part because WB headquarters is adjacent to the George Washington University campus, where the demonstration is being organized. Also, here's some advice from the 1960s/70s: If Jane Fonda is the face of your demonstration, few are going to take it seriously. Fonda's showboating trip to Hanoi during the Vietnam War actually hurt the anti-war movement here at home, to the point that in 1988 she expressed regrets for some of her comments there. Ever on-trend, in the 1970s she turned to feminism and Native-American rights. Following that she spent years selling work-out videos, before getting back to protesting over the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, then the Iraq War, and in recent years climate change. I don't doubt her sincerity, but she makes for an unfortunate choice of spokesperson as she flits from issue to issue about which she seems not very well-informed. BTW, stopping up traffic in DC actually increases emissions. Admittedly, only a little and only for a day, but still, it's a bit counter-message, isn't it?
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Post by Humboldt on Dec 6, 2019 18:16:33 GMT -5
On Friday protesters, including Jane Fonda and Ted Danson, plan to block intersections around the World Bank's headquarters near the White House to protest climate change, and urge the Bank to divest its loans to fossil fuel projects. I commented on the WP article: Climate change is a serious issue. As a father and grandfather I worry constantly about what my kids/grandkids will face down the road. But blocking traffic around the World Bank is a weird way to call attention to this problem. For one thing, the WB is investing heavily in climate change prevention and mitigation projects around the world. But more importantly they really are a small player in the world economy, with disbursements of just $37 billion in the latest fiscal year; that's just 0.04 percent of the world economy of $86.599 trillion (with a t). Why such a small target? Not to sound dismissive, but I suspect it's in part because WB headquarters is adjacent to the George Washington University campus, where the demonstration is being organized. Also, here's some advice from the 1960s/70s: If Jane Fonda is the face of your demonstration, few are going to take it seriously. Fonda's showboating trip to Hanoi during the Vietnam War actually hurt the anti-war movement here at home, to the point that in 1988 she expressed regrets for some of her comments there. Ever on-trend, in the 1970s she turned to feminism and Native-American rights. Following that she spent years selling work-out videos, before getting back to protesting over the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, then the Iraq War, and in recent years climate change. I don't doubt her sincerity, but she makes for an unfortunate choice of spokesperson as she flits from issue to issue about which she seems not very well-informed. BTW, stopping up traffic in DC actually increases emissions. Admittedly, only a little and only for a day, but still, it's a bit counter-message, isn't it? Global warmimg is simply a tool of yhe anti mainstream left, a method to take power and subjugate the unknowing masses by forcing them to get rid of theit cars and houses snd to change their diets to what the left wants. It is evil and wrong. Even if the globe is warming, it eill mot negativle affect more than a token number of americans snd far fewer than warming temps will benefit
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Post by Old Badger on Dec 6, 2019 22:12:25 GMT -5
Global warmimg is simply a tool of yhe anti mainstream left, a method to take power and subjugate the unknowing masses by forcing them to get rid of theit cars and houses snd to change their diets to what the left wants. It is evil and wrong. Even if the globe is warming, it eill mot negativle affect more than a token number of americans snd far fewer than warming temps will benefit No, it's not. The phenomenon is real, thoroughly documented by actual data. No one is trying to "get rid of cars and houses", just make them less harmful to the environment we all rely on to sustain life. Try being less ideological and more rational; it's actually good for you.
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Post by Old Badger on Dec 10, 2019 22:37:26 GMT -5
"The Arctic is undergoing a profound, rapid and unmitigated shift into a new climate state, one that is greener, features far less ice and emits greenhouse gas emissions from melting permafrost, according to a major new federal assessment of the region released Tuesday. The consequences of these climate shifts will be felt far outside the Arctic in the form of altered weather patterns, increased greenhouse gas emissions and rising sea levels from the melting Greenland ice sheet and mountain glaciers. The findings are contained in the 2019 Arctic Report Card, a major federal assessment of climate change trends and impacts throughout the region. The study paints an ominous picture of a region lurching to an entirely new and unfamiliar environment." linkAnd then there's this related story: "The Greenland ice sheet’s losses have accelerated so fast since the 1990s it is now shedding more than seven times as much ice each year, according to 89 scientists who use satellites to study the area. The sheet’s total losses nearly doubled each decade, from 33 billion tons per year in the 1990s to an average now of 254 billion tons annually. Since 1992, nearly 4 trillion tons of Greenland ice have entered the ocean, the new analysis found, equivalent to roughly a centimeter of global sea-level rise. While a centimeter may not sound like much, that uptick is already affecting millions. 'Around the planet, just 1 centimeter of sea-level rise brings another 6 million people into seasonal, annual floods,' said Andrew Shepherd, a University of Leeds professor who co-led the massive collaboration with NASA researcher Erik Ivins." linkRemember when predictions that things like this would happen were called "alarmist"? OK, that was earlier this year. Yet, here we are. Another article noted that the Inuit, who for millennia have relied on the permafrost to preserve the meat they hunt, now find that meat going bad because they don't have the permafrost anymore. The result is that the old "selling freezers to the Eskimos" joke no longer is a joke: the Inuit are having to buy freezers for real. And while even the US government's scientists are reporting these data, the Chief Executive and his fellow-travelers in the Cabinet and Congress are pretending none of it is happening. Sad.
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Post by Old Badger on Dec 21, 2019 0:03:57 GMT -5
This one's for the denialists out there: "Deforestation and other fast-moving changes in the Amazon threaten to turn parts of the rainforest into savanna, devastate wildlife and release billions of tons carbon into the atmosphere, two renowned experts warned Friday...This month, nearly 100 scientists detailed how the Greenland ice sheet’s losses have accelerated in recent decades, growing from 33 billion tons lost per year in the 1990s to a current average of 254 billion tons annually...Separately, a report this month from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration laid out evidence suggesting that the global Arctic already has become a net emitter of carbon dioxide because of the thawing permafrost...At the same time, a global die-off of coral reefs in 2016 and 2017, which included the loss of nearly half of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, shocked scientists." link
Withering tropical forests, disappearing glaciers, melting permafrost, dying corals: all these were predicted years ago--and all were called "hysterical" by the denialists. Yet, here we are. And here's the thing: "models that scientists created decades ago regarding the average global temperature have largely held true." That's right, warming has proceeded at a speed predicted long ago, but the changes wrought by that warming already exceed those "hysterical" predictions? How can this be? “Greenland is losing ice faster than expected, partly because climate models aren’t good at predicting extreme melting events, but also because many of the ice sheet’s smaller glaciers have started to speed up, too...So the [worst]-case scenario now becomes business as usual.” And, "The models that scientists have used to try to determine how the Arctic region is processing carbon were too conservative when it came to losses in winter in particular." Yeah, ironically, those "hysterical" models turn out to be good at predicting global warming, but "too conservative" in estimating the effects of warming. Models, in general, have a hard time making estimates of extreme outcomes simply because we have little or no data on exterme events to inform the models. So, contrary to denialist claims, the science community actually was underestimating the damage, not exaggerating it. Go figure.
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Post by Old Badger on Jan 5, 2020 22:55:36 GMT -5
The massive fires across much of the continent of Australia is just a prelude to what global warming is going to bring around the world; indeed, even in the US we saw the future in California this summer. A friend who lives in Canberra writes:
"The [Australian] federal government has opened its masks stockpiles. 100,000 are coming to Canberra; 450,000 to Victoria. Our smoke is very heavy today. We went out for dinner to celebrate a friend's birthday. It is eerily quiet and eerily ORANGE. It is a thick, smelly orange fog that required headlights even this afternoon. We expect heavy smoke for a day or two more, and will stay inside as much as possible. We have been breathing in small particle dust for over a month, with potential cause to lung damage, and only today were masks released by the government."
Why the one-month delay? An Australian volunteer firefighter explains: "Much of Australia’s forested East Coast was already on fire by the time images emerged last month of Scott Morrison, our prime minister, holidaying in Hawaii. Sydney was blanketed in smoke. I’d been frantically updating emergency-services maps, checking on friends and relatives in four states, making sure my parents knew which kind of masks to get. I wondered whether Morrison realized he was on the verge of a Hurricane Katrina moment — whether he would rush back with a swift response, if only out of fear for his own political reputation. 'I don’t hold a hose, mate,' he said on talk radio from Hawaii. 'I don’t sit in a control room'.” In fact he was on a beach in Hawai'i while his populace battled fire and smoke, with at least 23 dead so far.
Apparently recognizing--belatedly--that he was having his Katrina Moment, "Morrison did come home from Hawaii a little early, and he then wandered onto the fire ground in search of caring imagery. But out of the smoke has emerged a man of ashes. Video is making the rounds of this desperately awkward man getting a cold reception in the New South Wales town of Cobargo, where three people died and the main street burned to the ground last week. 'I don’t really want to shake your hand,' muttered an exhausted-looking firefighter. 'Piss off,' residents called after Morrison as he fled his own media event."
We've seen the future, and it's not very pretty.
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Post by leftylarry on Jan 10, 2020 14:28:04 GMT -5
Another year and the ice is thicker in the Arctic than it was 6 years ago on this date.
Just another inconvenient truth.
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Post by Old Badger on Jan 10, 2020 16:17:55 GMT -5
Another year and the ice is thicker in the Arctic than it was 6 years ago on this date. Just another inconvenient truth. Yeah, Larry, but you forgot the context: "At the close of December, sea ice growth had gained enough ground for daily extent to rank only seventh lowest, the highest at this time since 2014...Including 2019, the linear rate of decline for December ice extent is 3.6 percent per decade. This corresponds to a trend of 46,500 square kilometers (18,000 square miles) per year, which is roughly twice the size of the state of New Jersey. Over the 41-year satellite record, the Arctic has lost about 1.9 million square kilometers (734,000 square miles) of ice in December, based on the difference in linear trend values in 2019 and 1979. This is comparable to the size of Alaska and California combined." link![](//storage.proboards.com/6190148/thumbnailer/Yyw0StriguYtUeZAduYR.png) In other words, you just cherry-picked a number that's meaningless, your usual tactic. The question is: Are you really this incapable of understanding data, or are you just trolling for fun?
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Post by Old Badger on Jan 10, 2020 17:52:52 GMT -5
Meanwhile, "The planet registered its second-hottest year on record in 2019, capping off a five-year period that ranks as the warmest such span in recorded history. In addition, the 2010s will go down in history as the planet’s hottest decade, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), a science initiative of the Europe Union." linkOops! Funny how the data constantly refute Larry, and yet he persists. Maybe he's related to Liz Warren? ;-)
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Post by Old Badger on Jan 15, 2020 12:55:20 GMT -5
"The past decade was the hottest ever recorded on the planet, driven by an acceleration of temperature increases in the past five years, according to new data released Wednesday by the U.S. government. The findings, released jointly by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), detail a troubling trajectory: 2019 was the second-hottest year on record, trailing only 2016. The past five years each rank among the five hottest since record-keeping began. And 19 of the hottest 20 years have occurred during the past two decades. The warming trend also bears the unmistakable fingerprint of humans, who continue to emit tens of billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, scientists say." link![](//storage.proboards.com/6190148/thumbnailer/EgBSvMrrrSEwzBaEsDnE.png) Can't wait for Larry's take on this data from the Trump Administration. ;-)
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Post by Old Badger on Jan 17, 2020 13:43:19 GMT -5
News flash: the GOP is leaving the climate change deniers behind. To wit: "The Republican Party’s position on climate change is rapidly evolving, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) saying that we need conservative solutions and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) warning that the party ignores the issue at its own peril. Just Thursday, House Republican leadership, in its first policy conference of the year, presented a new climate strategy to GOP House members. The newfound Republican climate position can be summarized as follows: The climate problem is real, the Green New Deal is bad and the GOP needs a proactive climate solution of its own." linkThe linked article, co-authored by George P. Schultz, former Secretary of State for Reagan and before that Treasury Secretary under Nixon (and apparently still alive all these years later!), argues for a carbon tax, to be rebated to most households both to offset the higher energy cost the tax would impose and to keep the plan revenue-neutral (i.e., not raise more money for the federal government, lest conservatives go ballistic). Fine with me, though I'm pretty sure that this would be done in conjunction with two other approaches they reject: regulations to control greenhouse gas emissions, and subsidies to develop clean-energy technologies. Indeed, Germany's conservative government just announced that they will provide billions of euros in such subsidies to get utilities to switch from coal to new energy sources. link And in the US investment in renewables reached "a fresh record of $55.5 billion last year, despite the government’s attempts to roll back supportive policies, a report showed on Thursday. As renewable energy costs have plunged and onshore wind and solar developers rushed to qualify for tax credits before they are scaled back this year, investment surged 28 percent from a year earlier." linkIf McConnell and McCarthy are holding meetings of congressional Republicans to discuss how to deal with climate change, the denialist hoax is over. Not because these guys suddenly were persuaded by the science--they're not stupid and knew that a long time ago. No, it's the politics that have changed. GOP voters and even donors suddenly want them to do something, so they will. It's how democratic politics works. Trump may be a lagging variable here, but eventually he'll figure it out, too. Change is coming, even to the Republican Party.
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Post by leftylarry on Jan 17, 2020 13:48:23 GMT -5
Arctic sea ice growing at a good rate this year:, LOL how is this possible when there is more CO2 than 10 years ago and the obsessed , Autistic Greta Thundberg say's I'm going to die! LMAO
Re: 2020 Sea ice area and extent data
NSIDC Total Area as at 16 January 2020 (5 day trailing average) 12,000,402 km2 Total Area 12,000,402 km2 150,494 km2 > 2010's average. 67,038 km2 > 2019 -298,358 km2 < 2000's average. Total Change 45 k gain Peripheral Seas 36 k gain Central Seas__ -6 k loss Other Seas___ 15 k gain Peripheral Seas Bering _______ -9 k loss Baffin Bay____ 12 k gain Greenland____ 10 k gain Barents ______ 23 k gain CAB Seas Beaufort_____ -4 k loss CAA_________ 0 k gain East Siberian__ -4 k loss Central Arctic_ 4 k gain Kara_________ 13 k gain Laptev_______ -3 k loss Chukchi______ -12 k loss Other Seas Okhotsk______ 14 k gain St Lawrence___ 1 k gain Hudson Bay___ -0 k loss
Daily gain 45 k, 12 k MORE than the 2010's average of 33 k.
- 2020 Area more than the 2010's average by 150 k. - 2020 Area is MORE than 2019 by 67 k - 2020 is more than 2017 by 900 km2 - 2020 area 9th lowest in the satellite record.
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Post by Old Badger on Jan 17, 2020 15:09:34 GMT -5
Arctic sea ice growing at a good rate this year:, LOL how is this possible when there is more CO2 than 10 years ago and the obsessed , Autistic Greta Thundberg say's I'm going to die! LMAO You're making fun of a teenager for being autistic? What class! Aside from that, as usual you reprint numbers without understanding what they say (how do you keep from going bankrupt with your innumeracy problem?). To clarify: Arctic ice cover on Jan. 14 was 12,919,142 km 2. That's up 0.1 percent from the same date in 2019, but down 2.3 percent from 2010. It's also up 0.2 percent from the 2010s average, but down 3.5 percent from the 2000s, 7.9 percent from the 1990s, and 10.5 percent from the 1980s. In other words, it's melting, melting, melting! ![](//storage.proboards.com/6190148/thumbnailer/sSxKVkeQbRrYlIQTfJXJ.png) So, basically, you once more fell into your own trap. The sea ice melt is not the big issue, of course. That's the melting glaciers in Greenland, the Antarctic, and elsewhere. In regard to that: Have you bought your snorkel yet? You'll need it when you're underwater. I hope you can swim, or at least tread water.
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Post by leftylarry on Jan 22, 2020 13:34:12 GMT -5
" You're making fun of a teenager for being autistic? "
Uh, no, I'm making fun of leftists like you who bring her to DAvos and put her on TV like she isn't an obsessive compulsive autistic person.
The news from the Arctic just keeps getting better and better, if CO2 is the issue and world climate collapse is imminent how is this possible: LMAFAO
Daily gain 56 k, 15 k MORE than the 2010's average of 31 k.
- 2020 Area more than the 2010's average by 196 k.
- 2020 is more than 2017 by 920 km2
- 2020 area 9th lowest in the satellite record. (Last year was second lowest on record) ________________________________________________________________________ Freezing Outlook?
GFS says overall Arctic temperature anomalies diminishing from +0.4 to -1.6 celsius over the next 5 days. The Bering / Chukchi and the Atlantic Front cold to very cold.
Overall the outlook still seems more favourable than not for the recovery in sea ice to continue.
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