????'s on Global Warming......

[Neal Myers]

Not much gets by you guys. Any reasonably intelligent person sees that the Obama energy initiative is just another scam.

But, those of us with degrees in science are mostly in agreement that there is something terrible going on with planet. Global Warming, along with many other problems, probably is occurring. Our atmosphere is quite thin; check out some of the higher elevations. I toured Rocky Mountain National Park in Estes Park, Colorado, & was amazed; the glaciers that have been there for tens of thousands of years have just about disappeared within the last 100 years (they have photos showing this). Same thing at Glacier National Park, & many of the good skiing places throughout the country are now meadows. Something is going on, & it isn't good!

Water is becoming scarce in much of the country. Southern California barely has enough water to meet demand; any thing that upsets their supply could cause havoc. Central Florida is in trouble with collapsing aquifers.

We can't even get rid of our trash without fouling the environment. Huge areas of the Pacific Ocean off California & the Gulf of Mexico are dead zones due to pollution & trash. 40% of the Chesapeake Bay is a dead zone. Rivers, lakes, & wetlands are disappearing due to development & pollution.

Domestic oil production has been dropping for several years. Even with new drilling, we can't possibly continue for 100 years. Shale oil extraction remains a fantasy; Shell Oil scientists say they won't know if it will be possible to get oil from it for 5-7 years. Yet, no one is even talking about building new nuclear plants.

The rest of the world will continue to reproduce & produce pollution at an increasing rate, so what we do will have no effect on that. But, we can't even take care of our country. We can probably support a population of 150M people indefinitely, but we are already at twice that. Our failure to control population increases through lower birth rates or limiting immigration are both being ignored by leadership of both parties.

I, too, would like to leave the world a better place for my children, but I don't see it happening.

[0311Shooter]

Let's consider that the earth may be getting "wormer" but I would like to know just what I, a simple peon going about my normal business, have to do with it?????

I don't waste any more energy than I did 10, 20, 30 years ago, in fact probably less. I don't burn any more fires than I did even 40 years ago when I was a grunt and heated up my C-Rations.

In fact I bought all my groceries back then in big brown paper bags, today I get them in plastic Walmart bags where they put two items in a bag. I am told those plastic bags are something called bi-o-degradable. If they don't fall apart while I am carrying them, they soon will decintagrate.

I have no control what goes on 200 - 300 miles above the earth. If there's some kind of cloud there, I can't see it.

If the polar ice caps are melting, I can't see it from my back door.

The bottom line is this. The earth may be undergoing changes but I doubt that I can do anything about it, neither can Al Gore. Unless he decides to turn off some of his lights or takes fewer trips in his private jet.

We need to go about our lives and quit worrying about what goes on in other places that we have no control over.

[jon_norstog]

Neal,

thanks for a sensible word. I'm not a scientist, but I got a pretty good education, courtesy in part of the GI Bill. I took a class in soils and really got into it, still use the soil survey for practically everything in my work and also looking for good places to hunt and fish.

One thing I learned is that soil will store carbon, up to a certain percentage that depends mainly on climate. Most of the world's soils are carbon-depleted from centuries of "management." This is bad news and good news.

I did the numbers, worldwide just managing arid and semi-arid grasslands would take out enough CO2 to get us back to 1970 levels. It would work for at least 40 years or until soil carbon levels reached an equilibrium. Add in reforestation and changes in agricultural practices and you get even more carbon storage.

The energy bill is biased toward hi-tech, hi-buck "carbon sequestration," an approach that puts a lot of money into corporate pockets. I like the low tech approach, it puts money into the hands of farmers, foresters, herders and hunters and puts food on the table to boot.

My mother lived through the dust bowl on the Great Plains. It was low-tech that remedied that problem - windbreaks, leaving stubble and straw on the ground, putting blown out areas into alfalfa or grass. All it took was a little leadership and assistance from SCS, plus a break in the drought. It was SCS leadership and assistance that got *lots* of people doing these things. It was cheap, it put money in the hands of the people on the land, and it helped put food on a lot of tables.

Well, if we do something like that, CO2 levels drop and global warming keeps going, then we'll know it wasn't CO2 after all.

Just my 2 cents. Something to think about when you're out hunting and there's no action of any kind ....

jn

[jcoyote]

Gentlemen,


Quote------------------
The energy bill is biased toward hi-tech, hi-buck "carbon sequestration," an approach that puts a lot of money into corporate pockets. I like the low tech approach, it puts money into the hands of farmers, foresters, herders and hunters and puts food on the table to boot.
----------------------------------- Thanks - jon norstog

Just an old mans observation, Yes I lived thru the "dust bowl" been thru 2 wars and have seen the US of A from coast to coast and the Pacific from Frisco to Hong Cong, with all the little islands in-between.

IMHO all this bull roar is about global warming is nothing more than about CONTROL. . . PERIOD. Our poorly elected officials, better known as the "do nothing" Congress and Senators, are buying into 'cry baby' Gore and his failure to capture the top seat. "If I can't have it, I can make it pay for me" attitude and snake oil salesmanship, he has and is, and will continue to put dollars into his life style. And at WHO'S EXPENSE.

There is so much testerostone floating around the "Hill" that they all are falling over themselves (the polititicans, that is) and that the 'sheeples'
(that is us) don't know which way to turn, mostly because we don't realize we are being had BIG TIME. Yea I have been in the old time carnivals with the "pitch men and the "switcher - rue artists" (shell game to you young bucks) I know when I am being bamboozled

Sure we wont have to pay the bill, BUT our grand-children's grand-children will be still be paying through their life span. (If they come to be and live that long)

Please don't get me started on B.O. I need some sleep and might be up here all nite. Sides - - this is my first (and maybe only) post. No rant here - just looking at life in real time.

Good night all

jcoyote

[John Kepler]

Hint on rising CO2 levels: Where is 95+% of the carbon on this planet located? Secondary hint....it isn't in soils, you CAN'T "manage" it, and it is pure hubris to suggest you can. Tertiary hint: Listen to John Muir, "Climb the mountains and get their good tidings."....the mountains that contain the answers are in South Asia, and stoichiometry and geostasis are wonderful things that hold the key.

To recapitulate. It's getting warmer because it supposed to, and man can no more stop it/change it than King Canute could order the tides. We could completely dismantle our industrial civilization and return to the Dark Ages without changing the planetary dynamics one iota. Geology is doing it, not man....it's normal, it's natural, it's happened MANY times before, it'll happen again down the road...live with it!

[John Kepler]

One last comment before I go get some sleep. ALL of this human-caused "global warming" hysteria is based on a series of computer climate models. There's a very simple check on the validity of those models....you run them backwards and see how well they end up "predicting" events that have already occurred. Those checks have been run and NONE of them work...not even close in fact! Not a single one operates accurately for more than a decade or two. In my world, that's a flawed model and a clear example of "junk science" running wild...certainly NOTHING to be basing public policy on!

That people are saying it is one thing....crackpots are nothing new. The truly sad part are the number of people that uncritically accept it!

"We define thinking as integrating data and arriving at correct answers. Look around you. Most people do that stunt just well enough to get to the corner store and back without breaking a leg. If the average man thinks at all, he does silly things like generalizing from a single datum. He uses one-valued logics. If he is exceptionally bright, he may use two-valued, 'either-or' logic to arrive at his wrong answers. If he is hungry, hurt, or personally interested in the answer, he can't use any sort of logic and will discard an observed fact as blithely as he will stake his life on a piece of wishful thinking. He uses the technical miracles created by superior men without wonder or surprise, as a kitten accepts a bowl of milk. Far from aspiring to higher reasoning, he is not even aware that higher reasoning exists, yet he classes his own mental process as being of the same sort as the genius of an Einstein. Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal. For explanations of a universe that confuses him, he seizes onto numerology, astrology, hysterical religions, and other fancy ways to go crazy. Having accepted such glorified nonsense, facts make no impression on him, even if at the cost of his own life. One of the hardest things to believe is the abysmal depth of human stupidity." R.A. Heinlein

[talucah]

From the EPA report. Also if you missed it, scroll down to simular threads and click the link to the post Debunking CO2's role in Global Warming.
Bob

Carbon Dioxide DOES NOT Cause Global Warming

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) Data
The Truth For seven and a half years, is that global
temperatures have been falling rapidly. The UN IPCC's predicted
warming path (pink region) bears no relation to the global
cooling data that the IPCC has observed in the 21st century to
date. Source: SPPI global temperature index.

Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Is Food For Plants not "Air Pollutant"

CO2 is not an "air pollutant," but rather food for plants and
marine life. And its atmospheric levels are controlled by
temperature and other biological/chemical variables -- not the
other way around (Just as: Lung Cancer does not cause smoking).
But most of all, a magical CO2 knob for controlling weather and
climate simply does not exist.

The possible effect that forcing down CO2 levels may have on
plants by reducing the food supply are catastrophic.

[Louis of PA]

For quite a while, I accepted that global warming was probably due to man-made causes. In recent years, I've seen more and more respected scientists produce evidence to the contrary.

The left has seized on global warming as if a religion.

But the big thing is, socialism needs money as you and I need air; cap & trade laws and fees to "fight" global warming is their excuse for having money change hands from evil private industry to government who knows what's best for you and don't you forget it.

I've learned first hand that much of this also has to do with keeping the flow of government study grants (money again) to the universities. Studies that always support the government's claim of global warming. It seems that they can be as corrupt as our news media.

This article in the Wall Street Journal explains more.

Louis of PA

The Climate Change Climate Change

The number of skeptics is swelling everywhere.

By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL



Steve Fielding recently asked the Obama administration to reassure him on the science of man-made global warming. When the administration proved unhelpful, Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation.

If you haven't heard of this politician, it's because he's a member of the Australian Senate. As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme.

Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.




Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role.

In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspendbut the geochemist has since recanted the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers.

Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief.

Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)

The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

Credit for Australia's own era of renewed enlightenment goes to Dr. Ian Plimer, a well-known Australian geologist. Earlier this year he published "Heaven and Earth," a damning critique of the "evidence" underpinning man-made global warming.

The book is already in its fifth printing. So compelling is it that Paul Sheehan, a noted Australian columnist -- and ardent global warming believer -- in April humbly pronounced it "an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence."

Australian polls have shown a sharp uptick in public skepticism; the press is back to questioning scientific dogma; blogs are having a field day.

The rise in skepticism also came as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, elected like Mr. Obama on promises to combat global warming, was attempting his own emissions-reduction scheme. His administration was forced to delay the implementation of the program until at least 2011, just to get the legislation through Australia's House. The Senate was not so easily swayed.

Mr. Fielding, a crucial vote on the bill, was so alarmed by the renewed science debate that he made a fact-finding trip to the U.S., attending the Heartland Institute's annual conference for climate skeptics. He also visited with Joseph Aldy, Mr. Obama's special assistant on energy and the environment, where he challenged the Obama team to address his doubts. They apparently didn't.

This week Mr. Fielding issued a statement: He would not be voting for the bill. He would not risk job losses on "unconvincing green science." The bill is set to founder as the Australian parliament breaks for the winter.

Republicans in the U.S. have, in recent years, turned ever more to the cost arguments against climate legislation. That's made sense in light of the economic crisis. If Speaker Nancy Pelosi fails to push through her bill, it will be because rural and Blue Dog Democrats fret about the economic ramifications. Yet if the rest of the world is any indication, now might be the time for U.S. politicians to re-engage on the science. One thing for sure: They won't be alone.

Write to kim@wsj.com

[Louis of PA]

Dupe msg deleted

[TDH]

So this is what I got from this debate and what little knowledge my pea brain has been able to figure out from close to 60 years of reading various materials, with the exception of the liberal media. Global warming is a natural occurence based on many factors such as gravitational pull of the planet on it's axis. (How many degrees does it need to tilt on it's axis to make a huge difference in climate?)
That Co2 is not poison but food for plants. That's what I learned in H.S. many decades ago before the socialists got their hnads on our childrens minds. So the solution should be stop cutting forests, especially the rain forests, so that most trees and plants can eat the Co2 and produce {Oxygen}. Imagine that. More oxygen should mean cleaner air.
The polar caps are melting. Wasn't Greenland GREEN when the vikings found it? I take that to mean that it wasn't covered by a galacier at the time. There was a time when the lake I live near and grew up on was covered by a mile thick chunk of ice. It's called Lake Erie and there are rocks on our islands that have huge gooves in them caused by advancing and retreating ice. And by the way Jon we have had alligator gars here since the '50's that I know of, I swam with them.
We need to eliminate polution and hot air. Let's throw up walls around the big cities,(Especially D.C.) where most all the hot air comes from and sooner or later they will devoid themselves from our presence. As far as the pollution in The Peoples Republic of Californistan goes I decided a long time ago it was a blight on the planet and we wouldf all be better off if it fell into the sea. Just make sure the likes of Pelosi, Feinstein, Boxer and the rest of the commies are home when it happens.

So my take on it is simply slim government, let the cities kill themselves off, quit cutting all the o2 producing plants and trees which will solve the Co2 problem and let the planet do it's thing. Then just maybe in the year 2525 if man is still alive everything we think do or say won't be in the pill we took today.

When Injustice becomes law
Rebellion becomes Duty
Thomas Paine