A new Ice Age

According to the recent BBC Horizon programme we in Northern Europe had best start preparing not for increased temperatures due to global warming but for a possible big chill. The basic premise was that because global warming is causing the polar ice sheats to melt the sinking of the salt water that drives the Gulf stream or Conveyer as it is known is being lessened by increased dilution. Alarming evidence has been found showing that this process is already underway and even more concerning were computer models showing that this could result in the Conveyer ceasing within a possible twenty years. The effect could well be globally devastating. Northern Europe will freeze, whilst elsewhere there will be heat and drought. Power failiures that run into many weeks no longer become unique and many will die in the dark and cold. I just hope they've got it wrong because this was disturbing viewing. Perhaps we in the UK had best start seeing how for example the Canadians deal with severe winters instead of looking at how to deal with ever hotter weather as we are led to believe will result through global warming.

Hula.

I wonder if the global warming folks could all move to Europe and help keep it warm? I am under the impression that if we could get the global warming folks to close their mouths for 6 months the resulting reduction in hot air would bring temps. down 5 degrees. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

I wouldn't get too alarmed. Consider the source and agenda of the people that compiled the evidence. It may very well be correct and it may also be more hype and wishful doom and gloom.

There's been lots of news lately about the errors in the data used by the global warming crowd.

i have spoken with 3 meteorologists (that is a long word!) that have all stated that none of them, including many very bright minds, believes that global warming is happening let alone being caused by humans.


they state that is is impossible for our emissions to cause global warming, and what little warming there is appears to be caused by cyclic changes in the sun.

true? not sure.

i report...you decide.

Bob

this is the hole in the o-zone as of September 11th, 2003.. it would be the more vivid blue round spot.. altho the o-zone hole changes, that particular hole is larger than North America..

Guardian article

"Australian scientists yesterday revealed new evidence of global warming, suggesting that sea ice around Antarctica had shrunk 20% in the past 50 years."

AP Online article

"Warming conditions pushing average temperatures above freezing are being blamed for the breakup of an ice shelf at Ellesmere Island in northern Canada."

hmmmm... seems to be a trend here.

.

I think the arrogance is in any of us thinking that we can control whatever, if anything, is happening in this regard. I happen to be one of the PC "anti global warming folks". But that aside, if... HUGE "IF"... global warming is as severe as some might think, it's just flat out too late. The genie is out of the bottle and the ***** ain't goin' back. Technology has come too far and there's no going back to the Ice Age. Slow it down? Your odds are better in Vegas.

If ice melts and cracks, it's getting warmer.

[edit] What scares me is that China is now joining the technological age. They have a population of about 1.3 billion people. The US is about .35 billion. What will happen if the Chinese want to have the same number of vehicles per capita that the US has?

30 years ago, there was the the Global Cooling garbage; that a new ice age was coming because the earth was cooling down.

Now it's the Global Warming garbage; we're getting too hot!

Um, nope...Humans can't do anything to effect the weather or climate. It's all cyclical over thousands of years.

Go here: www.junkscience.com

--dan

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20031027005843&newsLang=en

October 27, 2003 01:56 PM US Eastern Timezone

TCS Newsflash: Important Global Warming Study Audited -- Numerous Errors Found; New Research Reveals the UN IPCC 'Hockey Stick' Theory of Climate Change is Flawed

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 27, 2003--Canadian business executive Stephen McIntyre and economist Ross McKitrick have presented more evidence that the 20th century wasn't the warmest on record. In their article for the journal "Energy and the Environment," McIntyre and McKitrick cited numerous errors in data used in Mann, et al. (1998), a temperature record that has been frequently cited by global warming alarmists.
Previously, Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) constructed a temperature history of the Northern Hemisphere for the period 1400-1980. The result was the well-known "hockey stick"-shaped graph suggesting that the 20th century was unusually warm when comparing it to preceding centuries. This graph has been widely cited by global warming alarmists and advocates of global warming legislation introduced by Sens. McCain and Lieberman (S. 139) now being debated in Congress.

"The particular 'hockey stick' shape derived in the Mann, et al. proxy construction -- a temperature index that decreases slightly between the early 15th century and early 20th century and then increases dramatically up to 1980 -- is primarily an artifact of poor data handling, obsolete data and incorrect calculation of principal components," stated the report.

The report detailed four categories of errors found in Mann, et al.

-- Collation errors

-- Unjustified truncation and extrapolation

-- Obsolete data

-- Calculation mistakes

The report by McIntyre and McKitrick was the first published audit that has been conducted of the data used in Mann, et al.

This Hole-In-The-Ozone-Layer stuff really has me puzzled. Why is it that Hair Spray, the Concord (RIP), Air Conditioner Refridgerant, and Cows are all blamed for global warming and the hole in the ozone layer, yet this ADVERTISED hole is over the least populated continent on the planet? Is Oznone rushing out of the Antarctic to fill in the blanks created in civilized areas?

And another thing...I wish folks would stop calling it a "HOLE". The word "hole" indicates emptyness or a void. Using the phrase Hole-In-The-Ozone-Layer is not correct. The facts are, that there is NO hole, only a slightly lower concentration of Ozone over the south pole.
This is most likely due to the Mount Erebus volcano spewing Florine gas into the atmosphere.
Jeez, dont you just hate junk science

[ QUOTE ]
Jeez, dont you just hate junk science ...

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah.. it's just.. junk. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Back in the early '60's, I had a Geology Prof that was convenced that the Ice Ages were NOT over with. He believed that we are just in the warm part of the Ice Age cycles. It was his belief that nothing has changed geologically in the last few million years to change the cycle.

"Item: Despite all the talk of global warming, there is just as much scientific evidence for the coming Ice Age. Experiments have failed to detect solar neutrinos in the quantities expected, and astronomers tell us that we are going into a new period of minimum solar activity. The last such prolonged period was known as the "Maunder Minimum," and coincided with what has come to be known as "The Little Ice Age." Moreover, archeologic evidence shows that in the last Ice Age, Britain went from a climate a bit warmer than it enjoys now to being under sheet glaciers in considerably less than a century." Niven

I've spoken with a number of physicists and applied mathematicians about global warming. The general concensus is that it is not known one way or the other whether the emission of Carbon Dioxide is in fact contributing to global warming. It may very well be the case, but it isn't provable. The problem is too complicated to model with reasonable precision. There are simply too many factors.

Also, about ice ages, I'm no geologist, but I once taught a geology course at a community college. It's funny, because I told the chairman that I wasn't a geologist, and he basically said "Well you are now!" /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif It makes you think twice about some of the academic standards now a days. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Anyways, what I was able to glean about ice ages was that the mechanisms that produce them are not well understood, and that there are only speculative theories about what produces them. Maybe there has been more progress in this area, since this was several years ago. I don't know.

Are we talking about global warming or ozone holes

the requirements for ozone loss are:

-The polar winter leads to the formation of the polar vortex which isolates the air within it.

-Cold temperatures form inside the vortex; cold enough for the formation of Polar Stratospheric Clouds (PSCs). As the vortex air is isolated, the cold temperatures and the PSCs persist.

-Once the PSCs form, heterogeneous reactions take place and convert the inactive chlorine and bromine reservoirs to more active forms of chlorine and bromine.

-No ozone loss occurs until sunlight returns to the air inside the polar vortex and allows the production of active chlorine and initiates the catalytic ozone destruction cycles. Ozone loss is rapid. The ozone hole currently covers a geographic region a little bigger than Antarctica and extends nearly 10km in altitude in the lower stratosphere.

Re: Are we talking about global warming or ozone h

What Man does may contribute, but not Cause. There is no single cause, trigger, or whatever. Earth has been frozen solid at least once. That has been proven. (surface only)

There is too much politics, huge egos, vested interests in certain paradigms (research grants), so-called junk science debunkers (inquisitors for Orthodox Science) that gets in the way of true science.

Science is supposed to be open minded by not ignoring evidence that one personally doesn't like. Scientific investigation of this magnitude should be like a criminal investigation:

1: Consider all evidence, no matter how obscure or out of paradigm.

2: Does any existing theory account for all of the evidence?

3: If not, then a theory must be constructed that does account for all of the evidence!!

From what I have seen, the anti-warming crowd points to regional discrepencies and says "Not happening!" They are ignoring that the planet's weather and climate change are the planet's heat Exchange system at work, trying to balance out.

Re: Are we talking about global warming or ozone h

Whats really a shame is that the chicken littles have made such politics and sweeping generalizations based on such poor science. It's very difficult now to tell the difference between good science and bad since it's all so politically motivated. The activist groups that have latched on to this are not helping their cause at all.

I like the junk science debunkers and the "inquisitors of Orthodox Science". I like them because I can evaluate their statements and when they are lacking I can tell. Science doesn't let you just yell "Your Mama!" at somebody who's results you don't like, you have to duplicate, or fail to duplicate their work. It's obvious when scientists stoop to this level, but it's impossible to tell with politicians, since that IS how their job works /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif junkscience.com sometimes strikes me as almost saying "there is no proof it hurts you, therefore you should do it" kind of philosophy. Which I think is a bit extreme. There are some things that we do that even if they wont ultimately lead to death and destruction I don't think it's necessarily a good idea. Just like finding out that okra isn't poisonous doesn't mean that I actually want to eat the stuff /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif Never the less I think they are catering to the same crowd that the activists are, the people that need absolute rights and wrongs and don't want to deal with the grey area that we find ourselves in. Thats why they play opposites with such extreme malice. In the political game it's the perception of the masses that matters, and that is the kind of reporting that appeals to the masses, or at least so they think.

I want more studies, I want more supercomputers to do climate modeling and I want to have an alternative to selling a billion SUV's to an up and coming Chinese middle class. I want to be able to visit the arctic national wildlife refuge someday. I am willing to pay something for this too.

If someone went to congress today and asked them "I am curious about how the climate of the world works, in order to test it's limits I would like to release several million tons of carbon dioxide into the air each year just to see what might happen" You would probably lock them up as being crazy, but this is what we're doing isn't it. You can't do things on that scale without at least accepting the possibility that it might make a difference. And so we need good science and more modeling.

Yes, natural processes release as much or sometimes many times more. And natural processes absorb and recycle as much or more. Like any system that has some feedback in it we're buffered from severe swings, at least in the short term. In the long term wild swings of climate have happened quite happily without any help from us at all. But I'd sure like to understand better how this works so we know where on the curve we are.

It's certainly not likely to be necessary to hamstring industry, and Kyoto is just a way to redistribute wealth and won't actually do anything to reduce CO2 emissions.

Re: Are we talking about global warming or ozone h

very nicely stated, James.

im not convinced one way or the other, and would like to see continued research on the subject. better safe than sorry. my statement above was simply to illustrate the differrences of opinion even among professionals.

your natural process statement struck a note. discover had an article--i dont recall if it was on global warming/climate change or volcanoes--that stated that a single large volcanic eruption spewed more noxious "greenhouse" gasses into the atmosphere than we have in the last 100 years combined. i wish i could find the article.

this isnt to downplay the possible damage we may be doing, just placing things into better perspective.


the kyoto statement also struck me. i have read a LOT of info on this. one of our professors was involved in a research committee (both economic and environmental issues) when kyoto was formulated. they stated essentially the same thing you said above.

not trying to start any bickering, but in my OPINION, kyoto was heavily stacked against the US, and was rightfully rejected.

Bob