WE Blog

No one doubts that the climate is warming. I used to climb the glaciers of Mt. Rainier regularly for 10 years and noticed that the terminal snouts of the glaciers were rising to higher altitudes. This activity has been measured and documented about the Mt. Rainier glacial system for about 100 years now, long before the “global warming” alrmists got on the band wagon.

The debate is really about whether mankind’s production of CO2 is really what’s behind the current warming trend or not. To call climatologists work that points to other causes as junk science is a bold step to take for a layman. Junk science is what Al Gore and the comitee of Alfred Nobel foundation believe in. In my opinion, soclimatologists that readily buy into the idea that the climate is controllable are probably getting alot of funds from the World’s politicians for research into global warming. Now that’s junk science!

Mr. Steger, trudging across the frozen tundra with a dogsled team qualifies you to talk about the effect of global warming, but it does not qualify you to talk about the causes of global warming. I prefer to here two climatologists debate about the cause of global warming instead.

stumper

“Notice I said climate change, not global warming, for all who doubt.”

What I noticed is that you are hedging your bet, like many alarmists. Global cooling, Global warming, errr no, Climate Change, thats it.

I wonder if Mr. Steger realizes that the Larson Ice Shelf is in the extreme North West part of Antarctica? In fact, it’s probably the farthest point North for the country.

Does Mr. Steger realize what happens when ice melts in water? The water level doesn’t rise.

Has Mr. Steger heard that underwater ocean currents undulating around Antarctica may be the primary cause of the breakup?

How about the much larger ice shelfs in lower Antarctica? Are they melting Mr. Steger?

Sigh…

The guy has only been there and seen it.

But who do we have here to dispute him? Anyone credible? Anyone of any respect or experience?

That would be no.

Ah junior,

I see the lack of credentials doesn’t seem to stop you from chiming in.

Any knowledge that Steger might have gleaned from his many years of following dog butts accroww frozen tundra is anecdotal at best.

He’s not a scientist. At best he is a ‘arctic tourist’!

By the way, I might be the only one on this BLOG that’s been to the North Pole!

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Hank Price
Posted February 14, 2008 at 8:15 am | Permalink

By the way, I might be the only one on this BLOG that’s been to the North Pole!
—————-
I’ve been there once on Santa’s sled. :)

Heckler you got the right of it. I’m getting tired of all the daily hype on global warming which is out of mankind’s control.

I use the term Climate Change for a very good reason: the anthropogenic warming that IS taking place is also effecting other aspects of the climate systems. So, along with overall warming we are also seeing significant alterations in rainfall patterns, storm tracks, etc.

If it were ONLY warming it would be bad enough. However, the migration of the Ferrell-Hadley boundary to higher latitudes may be even worse. Add to that the acidification of the oceans, also a result of anthropogenic CO2, as we have a real mess.

Hank Price
Posted February 14, 2008 at 8:15 am | Permalink
By the way, I might be the only one on this BLOG that’s been to the North Pole!

So what — how is that relevant to this thread — release a weather balloon then ? … a snow ball fight ? a ship barb b q —- scientifically totally irrelevent

Dear Huh?

As a special celebration of the event we watched the flick “Ice Station Zebra” that night.

Right up there with “Quiet Man” as one of my favorite underway flicks!

Actually the whole purpose for sending fast attacks to the North Pole (under ice operations) was research. We did extensive research 24/7 on ice thickness, ocean currents, temperature gradients, ocean floor topography and, the most important of all, the patterns and locations of polynias.

Weather balloons? Why, yes we did! Snow ball fight? You betcha! BBQ? Great idea, but no.

Let’s see who has more credibility? The guy who has spent his entire life crisscrossing the polar ice caps or Regular, a guy who never leaves his house in East Wichita?

Hmmm . . . . let’s mull that over . . .

Good morning Capn!

When did your first notice your memory loss? I’m pretty old, but I can remember ‘thunder snow’ several times.

If it is happening more often mow, wouldn’t that be evidence of man made global cooling?

Just wondering.

Hey regular!

Considering the content of his posts his nic is appropriate!

Right or wrong, it’s best to treat global warming like Pascal’s wager. All through this thread a lot of canards have been bandied about. Essential truths but so many qualifiers have been omitted as to leave the argument meaning less. I’m totally unconvinced by either side of the argument, and I’m an old-time tree hugger.

Good morning Ben!

Mauna Loa Observatoy! They’ve been monitoring CO2 concentrations for the last 50 years and it’s increased about 20%? LOL!!

I’ve actually been to the Mauna Loa Observatory! It’s on a damn volcanoe! DUH!!!

So, tell me, if I wanted an acurate number for the man made cause of CO2 where would you recommend I get my data from? Oh, lets see. . .Let’s go to an observatory on a volcanoe!

Hank, I have to agree, you don’t measure for CO2 at a volcano. Unfortunately other observations substantiate similar effects.

Let’s see? The earth has several billion years of history. Hot and cold cycles, ice ages, volcanic periods, and yess Mass extinctions. Global warming, Yes it is real! So what! Are we really to blame or is it natural processes? Volcanic activity is up over 300% from two decades ago. We have Hillary Clinton and Al Gore’s hot air to deal with. The sun is expanding as it consumes the hydrogen, so it is closer to us. We have cement and brick plus millions of street lights holding and producing heat.
Guess what? The government can’t fix anything so why should we let them raise taxes to deal with this problem? They can’t even control illegal immigration.

From Ben’s link:

“Is the planet really warming up?

“In a word, yes. Independent teams of scientists have laboriously combed through more than a century’s worth of temperature records (in the case of England, closer to 300 years’ worth). These analyses all point to a rise of more than 0.7°C (1.3°F) in the average surface air temperature of Earth over the last century (see the graph on the inside front cover). The chapter Keeping Track (p.171) explains how this average is calculated. The chart overleaf shows how warming since the 1970s has played out regionally.”

Note the discussion about independent evaluations. Replication.

“But don’t many experts claim that the science is uncertain?

“There is plenty of uncertainty about details in the global-warming picture: exactly how much it will warm, the locations where rainfall will increase or decrease, and so forth. Some of this uncertainty is due to the complexity of the processes involved, and some of it is simply because we don’t know how individuals, corporations and governments will change their greenhouse emissions over time. But there’s near-unanimous agreement that global climate is already changing and that fossil fuels are at least partly to blame.”

BTW, Hank. Remember when you were posting an “expert a day” from Inhofe’s list? Remember that some of them denied that global warming was occuring at all, others claimed that it was occuring but that humans didn’t cause it. Note the lack of coherency, other than the opposition to the position of human caused or aggravated global warming/climate change.

The fact is, however, the increase in temperatures (occasional cold weather to the contrary) is well established. Increasingly, the correlation between this temperature increase and the increase in CO2 concentrations is also being well documented. While correlation does not equal causation, in this case it certainly suggests it.

Again, I think it is very unfortunate that some conservatives, either on the bases of “regulating business is bad” or just as a reflexive negative response to Al Gore, seem to want to make opposing the very idea of human caused global warming an issue is very unfortunate. This is not, nor should it be, a left-right issue. It’s a reality verses truthiness issue.

I think the reich-wingers may be right about one point though–it’s quite likely too late to do much more than watch this global experiment play out.

“Interesting point here. The correlation does not even tell us which one is causing the other to happen. Does elevated CO2 levels cause global warming or does global warming cause elevated CO2?”

Sorry, but the arrow of causation that can be inferred is not nearly so ambiguous. The CO2 levels are also correlated with increased industrial activity. When I said that the correlation was suggestive, I was understating the situation. However, there is considerable concern that elevated CO2 content from human activity is causing warming, which in turn results in the release not only of more CO2, but of methane from previously frozen in the bottoms of lakes and sea beds.

rfl
Posted February 14, 2008 at 12:29 pm | Permalink

So what you’re saying is that this is a question of what came first, the chicken or the egg?

Hank, we used retired sailors:-)

Actually one of the cooks at the NCO club was native Eskimo. And one of the initiations was eating whale blubber he brought in for just such occasions. You were not allowed to upchuck. You were allowed a splash of Tabasco sauce. I opted for the sauce splash, and it was a wise choice. But the blubber still tasted like one would think whale blubber tastes like.

So, was the blubber cooked, or ’sushi’ style??

cosmos – what is really neat about the graphs is how clearly they show the seasonal ’sawtooth’ variation – including the more subdued and ‘out-of-phase’ southern hemisphere.

Ben,

The shape of the seasonal variation is also interesting, in the tower graphs (top level) for NC and Wisconsin.

Then, I can see why it would need some of that sauce… Yuck!! Hey, cooked blubber cant be a whole lot different than really fatty bacon, or fatty pork… It is mammal meat, of course…

Hank Price posted February 14, 2008 at 9:49 am

“You’ld have to be around here for a while to understand the context of my initial post.”

The context is that both Al Gore and Hank Price have been in a sub under the Arctic sea ice — but Al Gore convinced the Navy to release their ice thickness data to climate scientists.

Heckler posted February 14, 2008 at 8:08 am

“What the story didnt tell is that total ice coverage as seen by satellites is near an all time high since we’ve been able to watch them from space.”

What Heckler does not want you to know is that the SH sea ice extent was much larger before satellites started monitoring it.

And Heckler’s “all time high” is very insignificant.

‘Sea Ice, North and South, Then and Now’
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/10/08/sea-ice-north-and-south-then-and-now/

“Many Islands are seeing a rise is sea level that impacts them enough that some of them are destined to be covered by the oceans in the not too distant future.”

Sea levels having been rising continually for the last 10,000 years. Before the end of the last Ice Age it was possible to walk from Normandy to Dover. Now the English channel is 400 feet deep. Anthropogenic CO2 had nothing to do with that.

Global Warming Theology

The Earth gets a whole bunch (non-scientific term) of radiant energy from the Sun and man contributes to the Earth’s warming to some degree (no pun intended). Nevertheless, the majority of heat the Earth receives comes from the Sun, so it would appear from the “evidence” provided by our little green people here on Earth that it is actually the Sun that is getting warmer. This may be directly related to the Earth’s temperature increase of one degree over the last 100 or so years.

However, we cannot overlook the past – The Little Ice Age. It began about 1300 A.D. and ended about 1850 A.D. This condition/period was created by the Sun. This period involved a reduction in the number of Sun Spots and Solar Flares called the Maunder Minimum. During this period, the Earth was cooler than normal (whatever the hell normal is) which could explain why the Earth is now warmer than it was during the 19th Century. On the other hand, we must remember that the Great Lakes and other natural lakes along the northern boundaries of the United States were created during an older Ice Age, perhaps only as recently as 10,000 years ago. There have been at least four ice age/glacial periods going back as early as 2.3 billion years ago. In between these ice ages, the Earth warms up. There must be some degree of truth to this natural cyclicality thing that some conservatives speak of. Apparently we are in another warming cycle – the big question is this, is it a normal warming cycle or manmade?
From the Internet: http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf051/sf051a05.htm – Europe’s so-called “Little Ice Age” (1645-1715) coincided with the Maunder Minimum — a period during which sunspots were exceedingly rare. How was the sun different during the Maunder Minimum? This subject of solar variability (in both diameter and period of rotation) has been long debated. Some early measurements of solar diameter, begun at Greenwich in 1830, seemed to some to show a steadily shrinking sun, but others found cyclic patterns.
E. Ribes et al have just presented some data on solar diameter actually taken during the Maunder Minimum.
“By analysing a unique 53-year record of regular observations of the solar diameter and sunspot positions during the seventeenth century, we have shown for the first time that the angular diameter was larger and rotation slower during the Maunder Minimum.”
A larger sun might be cooler, providing less heat, thus accounting for climate changes. (Ribes, E., et al; “Evidence for a Larger Sun with a Slower Rotation during the Seventeenth Century,” Nature, 326: 52, 1987.)
Comment. Just why the sun expands and contracts over a period measured in hundreds of years is a major astro-physical conundrum. End quote.
In addition, there were about five or more major volcanic eruptions during a three hundred year period that put a very large volume (another non-scientific term) of volcanic ash into the air which caused a major cooling over the entire Earth. These eruptions were as much as 15 to 20 times larger than the eruption of Mount Saint Helens in Oregon in 1980. Some historians refer to the year 1815 as the year without a summer because of the large amount of volcanic ash in the atmosphere and the reduced Sun Spot activity mentioned earlier.

Is it possible that those clowns that inhabit the Sun actually contributed to the warming of the Sun over the last 150 years? See what happens when there is no government or bureaucrats to control the daily activities of people. Perhaps it is the Sun that got hotter and Earth only heated up (one degree) as a direct result of this deliberate Global Solar Warming. Perhaps Al Gore (Old Buffalo Head) and his minions need to conduct a hearing about the activities on the Sun to find the underlying cause of all these mysterious conspiratorial events. Perhaps we should set up a Travel-To-The-Sun Fund for Al Gore and have his wife, Tipsy, accompany him. If there is room, we could also put Michael Moore on board the vehicle (just a passing thought).

After a careful look at the recent physical appearance of Al Gore, PETA says that too many cows roaming the prairies cause “global warming” and that we contribute to this alleged global warming by eating these roaming and methane-producing cows. I remember, not too long ago in grade school (actually it was really longer ago than I care to remember), reading about vast herds of American Bison that roamed our prairies. These herds were so large that it took days for them to pass by a single landmark. One source says, “No one knows how many bison there were, but the naturalist, Ernest Thompson Seton, estimated their numbers at sixty million when Columbus landed “ (Google) that would be 1492 A.D. or C.E. for those of you that practice political correctness. Now that is what I call a real “Texas-sized” herd of livestock. In addition, the American Bison is the largest land animal found in North America. And, if you consider their size to that of a regular methane-producing bovine, a Bison must produce a proportionately greater quantity of methane gas.

Anyway, back to the point and my question, why are we just now becoming aware of this “warming thing” when the earth should have become a giant ball of fire with 60,000,000 Bison roaming, eating and passing plenty of methane gas about the time Christopher Columbus and his crew “discovered America”? And with 60,000,000 Bison (buffalo to the non-initiated) at home on the range (let us not forget the deer and the antelope) didn’t the barefoot crew of the Nina, Pinta and the Santa Maria have to be careful where they stepped? Perhaps our Congress should form Sub-Committees to investigate which mammal creates more methane, the cow, the Bison or bloated politicians.

I’m no rocket scientist, but my above points, hypothesis, conjecture, and hunches makes as much sense as my ability to purchase carbon credits to offset my use of gasoline and electricity, assuming that such a thing as carbon footprints exist. First, it was hubris, and then it was gravitas, and now its carbon footprints. Is there no end to these code words?

In addition, when it comes to conspiracies, vast right-wing conspiracies, and other such nonsense, the UFO-ologists need to look at Area 52 because I have heard that Area 51 was a decoy set up by a super secret branch of the U.S. Government in 1947. This information comes from reliable but un-named non-governmental source(s). No kiddin’.

PS – If the oceans rise 20 feet, why rebuild New Orleans? Maybe I’ll produce a film and call it a “Don’t Worry, Be Happy!”