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Formerly Classified Global Warming Spy Photos Released
An anonymous reader writes "The Obama administration has released more than a thousand intelligence images of Arctic ice, following a declassification request by the National Academy of Sciences. The images feature a 1m resolution, and scientists who have had to base climate models on 15m- or 30m-resolution photos are rejoicing. The photos, kept classified by the Bush administration, show the impact of global warming in the Arctic and the retreat of glaciers in Washington and Alaska."
At least we're winning the battle against something!
Glaciers are not permanent structures. So what?
to your wealthy masters, Lord Messiah Obongo and Emperor ManBearPig...
Hey, wasn't a vast expanse of North America covered by a glacier at one point? Damn you cave men and your SUVs!
BTW, for those of you who didn't get the memo, the cover-your-ass term is now "climate change."
Oh, right...only since the last ice age.
I'm surprised a resolution of 15m wasn't enough. At the supposedly alarming rate that they are receding, wouldn't you think there wouldn't be such a need for this kind of precision?
Just listen to these IDIOTS rant and rave about melting ice. Jesus fucking christ, you lot of idiotic MORONS, how hard is it to understand that *ICE MELTS* when it's summer? Of course, next year when the ice doesn't melt, these al gore cock sucking, manbearpig worshipping imbeciles will be yelling and screaming that that proves global warming too.
Why were photos of ice classified in the first place?
Did the Bush administration actually deny requests to review these images, or did the request simply not get made until recently?
Since the summary and article do not mention it, 1m resolution = One Meter Per Pixel.
I had to research that to figure out why a one megapixel resolution was some how magically better than thirty megapixels.
Why was a spy satellite taking snaps of the ice classified? The ice launching an incursion into US territory? Are they afraid the terrible secret of ice will be revealed?
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
I can't think of a single reason that this information should have been classified. Pictures of ice!? Why would you keep helpful facts from your people? Of course there are a couple of conspiracy theories bouncing around in my head but I think they're too obvious to even mention.
prove he wasnt
I thought I was going to see a significant movement in the ice sheets, on the order of 10's or 100's of miles. From what I saw, the rate of decline was statistically meaningless, measured in mere feet. My guess is the previous administration was more concerned with releasing something that would show or capabilities of our spy satellites and not trying to conceal this.
... that is politically convenient...
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
What do they show regarding the antarctic?
Anything there? Or is just the top of the planet getting warmer?
To maximize the fullest potential of the LIDP dataset in scientific research, the committee recommended that the release include thumbnail copies of the images, exact information on the location of the images, calibration information, the time of acquisition, and the information on the pointing angle.
It takes time to scan an image at that resolution, so the "calibration information" probably gave info about the satellite's velocity. Combined with the "pointing angle," I'm pretty sure that means they just revealed the satellite's orbit, in agonizing detail.
(Presumably it is in a different orbit now.)
So are we supposed to get all hysterical over two data points now? Man, political power comes cheap these days.
The Obama administration has already taken steps to tackle America's flagging scientific lead. The president's economic recovery plan allotted $170m (£100m) to help close the gaps in climate modelling. The NOAA is seeking an additional $390m in its 2010 budget to upgrade environmental satellites, and help make data more available to researchers and government officials.
Yoink! Or should I say, Oink!
Closing the gaps in climate modeling != economic recovery.
In February, a Nasa satellite carrying instruments to produce the first map of the Earth's carbon emissions crashed near Antarctica only three minutes after lift-off.
Oh, Snap! More taxpayer money in the drink. Well, perhaps the money that the government dumped into the ocean... err... economy created jobs... for starving... NASA scientists? Salvage crews?
Somebody help me out here.
"I do not avoid women, Mandrake . . . but I do deny them my essence." - Gen. Ripper
Is always totalitarianism. No thanks.
Why are they using 2007 photos and not 2009? Because they know all of the ice is back again.
One particularly striking set of images - selected from the 1,000 photographs released - includes views of the Alaskan port of Barrow. One, taken in July 2006, shows sea ice still nestling close to the shore. A second image shows that by the following July the coastal waters were entirely ice-free.
The photographs demonstrate starkly how global warming is changing the Arctic.
Two pictures taken a year apart now show definative proof for global warming. Jesus H Christ.
You're told secret data has been wrestled from the grasp of the corporates and you're given a link. The page presents a pair of images right at the top, unavoidable; seen before anything is even read. Two images; one of vast quantities of ice, the second utterly free of ice. Global Warming has been implicated before you've read word number one.
If you look carefully you might notice one end of a landing strip just inland in both photos. These photos cover very small areas; only a few miles. The caption reads:
Sea ice forms along the coast in the winter, and generally melts or breaks away by mid July. Observations of sea ice position reveal considerable year-to-year variability. Changes in the timing of coastal sea ice breakup and in the location of offshore sea ice have significant local impacts: ecological, biological, and human. This image series portrays changes in the timing of coastal sea ice breakup, and gives information on smaller scale properties of ice. This information recorded over long periods, is required to understand and model the dynamics of sea ice and how changes or trends develop and influence other systems.
In other words these photos are 'evidence' of nothing. Minor, small scale year-to-year variation in ice flow patterns. The use of these photos in this manner is equivalent to claiming that because there was snow on my walk on January 10, 2008, but none on January 10, 2009, my environment has been ruined by Global Warming.
Yet there it is, fed to the reader at the very start of the story; no disclaimer provided. The pair of photos will now be repeated ad nauseam for years on end around the planet. Biden will have a blown up poster of these photos in his town hall kit by Wednesday. Fresh new memes the huckster elite will use goad "The West" into self inflicted poverty; "See? The planet is in peril! Man must be stopped!"
Here is a recent and well researched report on the $79 billion that has been spent by the US government (only) on climate research over the last 20 years. 19 pages and 52 citations. I dare you to read it. Global Warming advocates are not the underdogs. They rule vast quantities of public money.
In almost all other matters you can take it as a given that around Slashdot you will find if not cynics then certainly skeptics. On the other hand if it has a Bush taint, a little anti-business flavor and it's wrapped up in a Global Warming ribbon you people suck it up like hicks at a Benny Hinn sermon.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Even if Global Warming Alarmism were true, and
human activity was causing some effect, that
still is not a reason for me to cede my liberty
to a Carbon trading mafia based in Chicago.
There are many things in nature that I don't like,
causes that I could support. Again, not a reason to
cede my liberties to untrustworthy bureaucrats.
water freezes. Ice melts. the powerful scheme for
more control over the lowly.
The integrity of the president is in question in the sense
that his friend set up the carbon trading floor in Chicago,
funded by the foundation that our dear legacy president
worked for . . .
It is all in the public record but not widely reported by the media.
And so since we can not trust the people who scheme for these new
arduous taxes, we must reject them out of hand. Profiteering
by elected officials . . . will it ever end.
The race-baiting bigots who are the affirmative action
legacies have a very compelling argument that they
make about the corruption of the human soul.
They say that 'white' people have been traditionally
racist. I know that there is a flaw in their argument.
I say that is all people who are inherently self-centered.
So, I know this is true. And that people are selfish and
not immune to trying to enslave others, even it if is just in
a small way.
So I don't trust the motives of those who argue for the
carbon-credit tax. I think that they are doing this because either
they are brainwashed by the alarmism, or they are
going to profit from the new taxes.
Socialism if failure, Marxism is envy-mongering, Global-warming is
a clever scare tactic to allow for these new consumption based taxes.
Meanwhile the so-called global leadership class will continue with
their piggish consumption. No tax will curb their ferocious over-consumption.
So why curb my modest consumption?
I was raised to believe that all men are created equal.
Then I was told that 'my race' was always doing better so
we must be kept back. But I was tought that race isn't supposed to
matter. But it clearly still did. I realized that my parents had
trained me to believe in the equality of all men but that the
people who I was equal to thought that I must be a bigot. I must be doing
better than them. So I have to let them go to the front of the line based upon
their race. Isn't that racism? They said no. Then I was told that if I disagree than
I must be a racist.
Meanwhile affirmative action programs don't care about needs of the
candidates, only a racial preference based upon the arbitrariness of
place of origin or skin color.
I am tired of the descrimination, the racebaiting,
the continuous nepotism of the monied elites.
And also I am tired ot the global-warming-alarmist industry.
These alarmists really need to be put out of business.
Think of all the global warming they cause with their continuous
harping in the media on a false premise: that global warming is real so
give us all your money.
When we are finally free of these scare-mongerers who seek
to take our liberty and make our lives much more expensive,
then we can face the realities of climate change.
The greed-heads who seek our enslavement need to stop.
Still not sure why you need 1m resolution to show what looks like a half mile (805 meters) or more of ice melt.
Even with 15m that's 54 pixels or 3/4" inch on a 72dpi monitor. That's seems fairly visible to me.
Then again maybe I'm missing something.
This is a great example of sensationalized cherry-picked anecdotal evidence...which in reality means nothing. The picture showing ice was taken during an abnormal year. The ice melts away every year, usually in July. It took longer to melt in 2006 thanks in part to their being more than normal amounts of "multi-year" ice shoved down from the arctic that year.
Article (from AP): http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/372343/arctic_ocean_ice_crashes_on_alaska_shores/
Video (from NASA): http://www.nasaimages.org/luna/servlet/detail/nasaNAS~10~10~71195~176482:Ice-Surge-in-Barrow,-Alaska
I worry that they cheated you on your last purchase of tinfoil. It appears you made yourself a hat of wax paper instead...
If you're simply "Questioning the Mainstream", you're missing the point somewhat. The point is not to question something specific; the point is to question everything. Not only should you be sceptic of people who believe that global warming is real and man-made, but also of those who deny this. In fact, what you should do in all cases is not trust anyone, but look at the studies and data yourself, and judge it on sound scientific reasons.
I agree with the above comment. First of all: judging on just 2 years is insane. We had some snow this year, haven't had any last year, and the year before we had tons.. Oh no.. global warming has stopped, started again and then stopped a bit ?
I do think this kind of pictures with that resolution can make a nice contribution but let's leave the judging to the scientists who study more then just 2006, 2007.. it's not a before and after makeover..
That 85% of statistics are made up on the spot.
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It is "climate change" not "global warming".
"Global warming" implies man-made causes whereas anyone who actually went to secondary school and did geography and/or geology knows that for millions of years the Earth's ice has been expanding & contracting, resulting in at least four Ice Ages and all of which happened before man was ever here.
Sure, let's recycle more and let's burn less hydrocarbons because that's a good thing to do anyway - but "global warming" is about tax expansion, not ice contraction.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
... it can be strongly suggestive of causation.
Now what is that Preview button for again?
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Speaks volumes about how much "climate scientists" believe in their own evidence : Not. At. All. Clearly they believe repression is necessary to sustain the global warming theory (never mind anthropogenic global warming).
It also proves that the grandparent posts were correct in asserting that anyone, no matter how reputable, finding anti-global-warming evidence is attacked. I mean, this guy is right up there with Fermi, Hawking, Feynman and other legends.
I'd also believe you guys more if you could come up with a rational explanation for the massive hoax being perpetrated on the innocent public by the 90% or so of scientist who claim that Global Warming is happening and is caused by man. I've yet to hear anyone come up with a reasonable theory as to why these evil scientists would be doing such a thing.
It's a plot! Against ... um against ... yeah ... it's a plot against America!
I wonder where the babe is!!
It's a joke, but you know. I would not be surprised if we switch from a War on Communism, to a War on Drugs to a War on [Islamic] Terrorism to a War on Global Warming.
Why can't we have a War on Poverty or a War on Hunger or a War on Illiteracy? Maybe we won't win, but at least the basic premise isn't complete bullshit. And I don't think we'll have to suspend anyone's rights to fight Hunger. (at least I hope not)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I have karma to burn, and the rightwing conservative BS echo chamber on this story's comments is really getting to me...
It's hard to believe in this day and age, that despite overwhelming scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change, that there are still hordes and hordes of conservatives and fringe dwellers denying climate change.
Given that the scientific method is the gold standard of finding what the closest thing humans can get to absolute truth, and that real scientists (and not right wing fake scientists and shills paid for by various business, conservative and libertarian interests) have a huge burden of proof to justify their stances, it's absolutely ridiculous that anybody should deny climate change at all.
Climate change deniers are not scientists, and if they're scientists, they're weirdos, and certainly not trained climatologists.
Like many on the conservative side of politics, climate change deniers think that gut instincts, opinions and truths are as strong as scientifically proven fact. It's common amongst irrational, religious people to think that the truth is whatever you decide to believe. This is an affliction of the far Left too, although the Left is always called out on it -- the Right are not.
Climate deniers know they're getting thrashed when objective standards scientific inquiry and applied to their stupid and mistaken beliefs. So they've resorted to the slow drip-drip-drip strategy of conservative lying: repeat a lie over and over and over, and you can turn black into white, and lies into truth. They tried this with the lies that led to the Iraq War, and they succeeded -- at the cost of thousands of needlessly wasted lives.
With climate change however, the stakes are much higher, and it's the duty of all normal, rational scientifically-minded people to oppose the right wing lie machine.
I don't suppose anyone here is interested by reports stating something different than the "obvious" truth by Alan Gore and the like...
However, if there is one, please read the following:
http://cei.org/cei_files/fm/active/0/DOC062509-004.pdf
esp. paragraphs 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3
OBAMA IS HIS OWN FATHER!
It says right there.
Father's name: Barack Hussein Obama
Child's name: Barack Hussein Obama too
That would mean that sometime in the future he will use the newly developed time traveling device (created by the US Army) to travel back in time.
He obviously has all the answers then - he IS from the future.
"If you're simply "Questioning the Mainstream", you're missing the point somewhat. The point is not to question something specific; the point is to question everything. Not only should you be sceptic of people who believe that global warming is real and man-made, but also of those who deny this. In fact, what you should do in all cases is not trust anyone, but look at the studies and data yourself, and judge it on sound scientific reasons."
Idealy that is correct but you* cannot have expertise (let alone time) to investigate every issue personally at some point (usually in the land of the lobbyists) a critic turns from a skeptic into a cherry-picking conspiracy nut. This is where "consensus" comes in ("consensus" = "The republic of science"), at some point you have to trust other investigators. So you pick investigators with a good track record to be your surrogates, the most credible are public institutions such as the Royal Academy or NAS or a million other well known acronymns.
If every one of those surrogates agrees on a particular point then it's part of a body of tentative "scientific facts" that are the evidence behind such phrases as "science says light and radio waves are the same thing at different frequencies" or "scientists say a comet or asteroid is the likely cause of the new spot on Jupiter".
A scientific education ( when done properly ) helps you to negotiate this mountain of information more easily and gives you a basic framework to the body of knowledge called science. However self education can also do the job, James Randi is one of my favorite skeptics and his only qualifications are in magic.
I'm not a climatologists but I have followed the topic for nearly three decades. I joined "Al Gore's religion" around 1997 (specifically because of the 1997 IPCC reports). Apparently this makes me harder to convince than NAS who in the late 50's warned the US government that AGW was occuring and have not changed their minds since. My logic goes like this...
Science says:
- The globe is warming.
- Most of the warming is due to CO2 emmissions
- Ignoring the problem is not a rational option.
1. Since 1997 I have not seen any convincing contra-evidence to the consesus. Some of it has made me do a lot of research, most of it has simply been old talking points perpetuated by the Heartland Institute and their affiliates.
2. I cannot name one credible scientific institution that disputes any part of the consesnsus.
3. Dyson is the only credible scientist I can name who still disputes part of the consensus. When he publishes his ideas everyone can check them out.
4. The most interesting critisisms come from members of our own "religion". Especially at my cult leader's web site (realclimate.org), they slay a few psuedo-skeptics for breakfast and then spend the day argueing over real questions such as the "missing methane" that was predicted by climate models.
5. Computer model ensembles for defined senarios give accurate but conservative forecasts. ( I have some expertise in FEA computer simulations and the mathematical training to understand the algorithims )
6. I live in SE Australia that according to geologic evidence and recent experience is highly sensitive to a warming climate (natural or otherwise).
7. The fucking North Pole is melting.
*Disclaimer: not "you" personally.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The company I work for has some work in Uzbekistan. Reading up on the CIA page, it says that while there is no official censorship of the media, there is widespread self-censorship. Anyone who does not censor themselves is usually fired or "taken care of." So while there may be no official cabal of Global Warming alarmists, it does not mean there there are no dire consequences for taking a stance against it.
There are many reasons to migrate from fossil fuels, the most compelling being that they're going to run out very soon. The changing climate is also a worry (which we wouldn't want to encourage to change faster than it already is), but it's not the only reason, and the money spent on migrating to alternative energy sources certainly wouldn't be wasted.
Well, the question is, does the increased fuel efficiency actually pay for itself? The thing is, the more efficient you are, the more complex you are. The more complex you are, the more you cost. This relationship between efficiency and cost is exponential due to increased complexity efficiency demands. I put together a simple JavaScript model of this at http://www.treatyist.com/issue1/savetheearth.aspx . Basically, by jiggering the predicted cost of fuel (using gasoline as a baseline), versus, the exponent of increased energy efficiency costs, you can arrive at a number of scenarios where reducing greenhouse gasses actually doesn't pay for itself. If it pays anyone, it also pays the Chinese and the Europeans..
In any case, most models show that even a rather dramatic altering of CO2 emissions will not alter the course of climate change for a minimum of 200 years. Even if we stopped now, the glaciers are still going to melt. The CO2 is already in the air.
This is my sig.
Meanwhile in the real world there is no such thing as "the climate change cabal," what there is are thousands of mainstream scientists who basically agree,
My question would be, regardless of the academic opinion of the scientists, when do we start trusting global temperature measurements over their opinion? The RSS measured planetary temperature has been falling sharply for the last six months. In June the anomaly was 75, and in Jan it was 322.. Meanwhile, the CO2 actually climbs still. How long do you have measurements of the temperature going down, before scientists say that it is actually going down?
This is my sig.
In fact, I have some problems, but let's have some here :
- Artic ice cap, as antartic ice cap, melt and reform each year : something I didn't knew before doing my own research. Artic ice cap size reduce something like 5% per year in the last 20-30 years and the antartic ice cap size is GROWING, slower but growing each year.
- The growth in temperature for more than a century is less than a celcius degree (0.76 if I remember well). Half of this increase happen if I well remember before WWII.
- In recent years there have been no increase in temperature, even if co2 incresed
- Temperature measure are often done in inner city, where temperature is effectively slighthly greater
- Finally the point that wake me up to the possibility global warming is maybe political / taxation propaganda : ALL other planets got temperature increase.
So yes maybe a majority of climatologist could agree that global warming got a human original, but I'm not buying that. I could agree maybe for a point around 20% of global warming is human origin, but absolutly no more than that.
This being said, I'm very ecologic and I make a distinction between pollution and global warming.
Now if only we could get 'hi res' pictures of all the glaciers that are GROWING (http://www.iceagenow.com/List_of_Expanding_Glaciers.htm) then we could have an accurate picture of what's going on.
And as far as arctic ice melting, the last 'uninterpreted' data I saw (http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png) doesn't show much if any evident trend for the last 8 years.
-Styopa
Glaciers? In my Washington? Click here to find out!
The word is Skeptic, not Denialist. Denialist is clearly an emotionally loaded word designed to evoke thoughts of Holocaust deniers. Anyone who uses it has Godwined themselves.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
It's clear that you are not well versed in Conservative Science, because you're not being Fair And Balanced. The five basic principles of Conservative Science are as follows:
1) The earth is six thousand years old.
2) Pi equals three.
3) Global warming is not real.
4) Evolution never happened.
5) Cells are people too.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
From what I can recall, scientists discussed a correlation between pollution and global warming back in the early 1970's. So, since then, we cleaned up emissions from cars, emissions from factories, heck, people are using CF bulbs to reduce the use of electricity. Furnaces, Air Conditioners, Hot Water heaters continue to improve in efficiency indirectly reducing pollution. Wood and coal are not used as prevalently for heating homes; and the list goes on.
Shouldn't we be able to see some evidence of all these changes, of all the struggling to slow global warming, shouldn't there be some sign that it's working? Year after year we keep hearing that "We have to stop using this, or stop doing that" and we do, and yet, there has never been anyone who has ever said "IT'S WORKING!!!!!"
If the scientists have proof that humans are causing global warming, then they should also have proof that all of the things we have done have helped, no matter how little.
I don't deny that the climate is changing, it's just that year after year with no word that anything humans have done to lessen their impact on the environment has helped, it makes me wonder if it's even worth the effort.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
The Earth is cooling...so....why are we attributing this to global warming and not normal periodic ice melt?
Why hasn't this been tagged Waterworld or Kevin Costner yet!?
The problem with Liberals is that the only thing they ever want to see change is my bank account as my money is taken out and deposited into theirs.
... you give me all your money, and I'll fix it for ya. No, really. I promise. Global warming / climate change / whatever they want to call it this week is nothing more than a ploy. It's one more thing that we have to do that will just happen to require politicians to have more control, and require more of our money to resolve.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
From the article
"...The latest revelations have triggered warnings from scientists that they no longer have the funds to keep a comprehensive track of climate change."
Stopped reading right there.
Do you think that the rising temperatures in Greenland and Alaska and the shrinking north pole ice cover are lies? Come on, that's about as retarded and paranoid as the flat earthers. Just look at the pictures, man. They won't ALL be lying to you.
As for money to made with carbon credits, up until now it hasn't exactly worked very well, has it?
i really liked your little poem about global warming
Maybe you are now ready for open source governance.
Watched a special on Climate Change on TV last Sunday. Was a very well done piece, and the professor doing it was a good orator.
Normally I am not exactly a skeptic, but a skeptic of the scientific process, however this guy was pretty damn convincing.
He came at the problem from a different angle, primarily that of food production and what a 2% temperature increase would do to that, and what the political fallout and ramifications would be.
Pretty dire stuff. Made me want to go out and buy some guns and start hoarding food...
He went on to detail a solution, and then went on to say that practically there is no way we are going to hit that target in time due it being politically unpopular around the world.
He went on to say that the only saving grace may be geoengineering to postpone the target date so we can meet it politically. Problem is while he was more articulate and convincing about geoengineering, I am still convinced that A) it will not do enough, and B) we do know understand the full ramifications of doing some of these things and may do more harm than good. Having said that, I can only come to the conclusion that we are doomed to a MadMax sort of wasteland. Move aside! I need to get my guns and canned food!
Err. What?
More than a million square meters of missing ice and they needed previously classified 1 meter resolution spy photos to observe???
Of course they're going to release this stuff now. They need to get people fired up about global warming so they can pass Cap & Tax...'scuse me...Cap & Trade. The health care bill isn't going to pass so they desperately need a major success. But be that as it may, ten bucks says anyone could photoshop those images with little effort. Oh, and how convenient it is to change the term from Global Warming to Global Climate Change. That way you can blame the fact that it's 72.00001 degrees today when yesterday it was 72.00000 on George Bush.
The paper by McLean, de Freitas and Carter that is making the rounds in the denial-o-sphere has been shredded by the climatology community for fundamental errors in mathematics. Apparently the authors repeatedly failed Calculus I because they don't understand what a derivative is. One of the authors (McLean) is distancing himself from his co-authors as well. Carter says "The close relationship between ENSO and global temperature, as described in the paper, leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions.", but McLean says the paper doesn't reach that conclusion, the only conclusion that is drawn by the paper is that there is a relationship between the Global Mean Temperature and ENSO. Unfortunately for McLean, de Freitas and Carter the correlation is well known and has been discussed in the literature for well over 10 years. Further Carter has a long history of working for the oil and gas industry
That's because of the global ice age that's happening as a result of humans. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html If carbon emissions are causing a problem, I say we destroy all Magnoliophyta. These things just suck up oxygen all night and spit out CO2. We've gotta get rid of them!
As a kid I remember the big catch phrases being acid rain, the ozone layer and, to a significantly lesser degree, global warming. I remember seeing pictures of perfect blue lakes where all the life had been killed off by acidification and being told that the hole in the ozone layer would mean that I'd need to wear SPF 8000 sunscreen when I grew up, unless we did something about it.
So far as I know we cleaned up emissions from cars and factories to combat acid rain, and it's been very effective. I'm not sure why anyone would've thought that scrubbing pollutants out of the air would affect global warming though. CO2 was never getting scrubbed out.
The air conditioner thing you're referring to had to do with CFCs, iirc. CFCs were the primary agent wrecking the ozone layer, punching holes in it over the Arctic and Australia, as well as other places (to lesser degrees).
Acid rain and ozone layer depletion were issues with proximate, easily identifiable and fixable causes. Rain pH, pollutant content and ozone layer thickness are all very easy to measure and demonstrate, compared to global warming. It's difficult to pretend that these are the result of natural oscillations in the climate.
Only *this* climate is right, all others are wrong? Any change that happens (LIKE THE 3,000 RECORD SETTING LOWS IN AMERICA FOR JULY TEMPS) and GlobalWarming(TM) robots say that it, too, is global warming. Whether it's hotter or colder, both ways are because we drive cars and enjoy eating dinner by electric light.
What's wrong with them? This isn't science: it's religion!
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
As the glacier melts, sea currents that bring warmth to north from tropical areas slow down. In northern Europe, for example, this means that winters get warmer but summers get cooler.
Or well, that is what I remember being taught about it in elementary school. (Living in the mentioned area, they did teach us about it)
So that's the theory, overly simplified. I would not have a guilty conscience from signing that based on what I've seen especially during the last decade or so.
I agree. It is not a good example of anything except perhaps how extreme year to year variability can be.
So I guess revealing the fact that Cheney and his energy industry friends' policies were destroying the polar ice caps, the glaciers, and the environment in general would (somehow) threaten U.S. security, right? IMNSHO, just another reason to bring those thugs to justice.
As we talk about money for this and jobs for that, the real issue here is that even if drastic reforms are brought about, corporations will ALWAYS find a way to profitize anything. Look at organic food. It has become harder than ever to find real organic food since they started regulating it, because corporations can lobby to have exceptions made while small farms, where the real organic food comes from, can't afford to navigate the bureaucracy to become certified. Meanwhile a company in Texas actually got tap water certified as organic. It's a sickness.
Mark my words, there is a lot of profit to be made in saving the environment. We are not being controlled by violence, but by assimilation. Every revolutionary idea is eventually accepted, promoted, and profited from. And as long as people are happy with a suburban house, a big tv and the illusion of freedom, things can never change.
It costs about $150/year to join the AAAS and with that you receive an issue of Science magazine weekly. While some of the articles are dense and very domain-specific, many of the others are not and are (I think) quite accessible to most readers - especially if you read it more or less consistently. Climate change has been covered very thoroughly in Science over the years. So, don't go with (in the most general sense) media, go to a source where the research is being covered at first or second hand and read it/evaluate it for yourself.
It is also a great way to give yourself an education in general science. Though it can be a bit intimidating at first and is certainly a bit overwhelming (the magazine arrives relentlessly - if you've read the previous issue(s) or not).
Free trade isn't exactly an idea from the lef
Actually, that's not true at all. Lefties embraced free trade round the turn of the century in the USA in order to get southern votes and to also throw a cog into the wheels of the robber barons.
However, you are right, of all the ideas liberals had, Republicans have embraced the worst one in free trade.
Leftists promote a crackpot idea called "fair trade" instead of "free trade".
GASP! CHOKE! HOW DARE LEFTISTS ACTUALLY BE RIGHT ON AN ISSUE!!! :-)
Those leftists are actually right at least on that issue. My wife is a staunch leftist and I'm of course a right wing loony but we both have a solid common ground in supporting fair trade and buying local wherever possible. Unlike many conservatives, I'd rather support the UAW and General Motors than a foreign company...
This is my sig.
While the images seem to be highly decimated, there's definitely two different sensor types being used. One is definitely visible light (the cloudy ones are obvious, but less obvious is the way the water appears in a read/NIR image channel, which I imagine is the range we're looking at). The other is most likely a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). This becomes apparent when looking at ship wakes as well as looking at the structure of the surface of the water. Additionally, the telltale signs of speckle are present in the SAR images.
If you want to see some similar-looking, but civilian-produced images, I'd recommend checking out TerraSAR-X.
While I can't do analysis on the images (they're too highly decimated, have been orthorectified/geocoded, so a lot of the original signal structure has been lost), I'd guess based on artifacts I've seen that the SAR images are decimated by a factor of 4 (though that is just a gut feeling).
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Thanks to the Industrial Revolution we can build some protection against global warming.
In a hockey game I was watching, a breakaway skater came in with the puck and the goalie was all alone. Instead of staying by the net, the goalie skated out to meet the charging shooter because the farther the goalie was away from the net, the less area there was to shoot at to make a beeline to the net.
With this analogy, we can make some umbrellas in space orbiting far from Earth but crossing in front of the Earth-Sun line. The umbrellas would cause mini eclipses occasionally and thus reduce the greenhouse effect.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Yes, but the seldom-reported fact is the "ozone hole" disappeared about 10 times quicker than anyone predicted and eliminating CFCs had almost nothing to do with it. It needs to be stressed that it was a theory that the "ozone hole" was caused by CFCs and the theory was pretty much proven wrong. Nobody knows why there was a hole and nobody knows why it disappeared.
About the only thing known is that it had nothing to do with eliminating the use of CFCs.
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"You need to recognize that BOTH sides do EVERYTHING they do for money."
Sorry, but not true. Most academics would be happy to do their jobs for a decent wage, but reality is that you can't do research without funding, and most universities can't afford to fund it themselves.
If money were their primary motivator, no smart people would go in to academics or research, because very few people in those fields become rich. For most academics, money is the means, not the ends. Otherwise they'd be in finance, making big bucks.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
just look at the other planets in our solar system, people don't live in them. yet the climate still changes. climate change is driven by cosmic and radiant energy hitting the atmosphere. CO2 has little to do with it. its already in the atmosphere. plants need to it make food. so if your against CO2 go plant a tree! now if you want to patch up the ozone layer, release O3 (trioxygen) in to the atmosphere. ozone generators do exist. The Great Nikola Tesla built one.
Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe. - Nikola Tes
There are many reasons to migrate from fossil fuels, the most compelling being that they're going to run out very soon.
If they really are going to run out soon the market will handle it. Prices will rise as the fuels become scarce and the miners/drillers have to go after less accessible sources.
Fossil fuels are used instead of a host of other energy supplies primarily because they're cheaper. Shift that balance and the users will migrate away on their own with no need for legislation. And usage will taper off so there will continue to be a small amount available at a high price for other, non-fuel uses that are sufficiently important to command the price.
On the other hand my impression is that the fossil fuels will NOT be exhausted any time soon. 500 years or more at the current rate (including much acceleration due to industrialization of third-world countries) seems reasonable.
Don't be fooled by "known reserves". Those are the ones that have been explored for, proved out, and claimed. When about 30 years worth are on the books the energy companies have no incentive to spend money now to explore for more that won't be used for decades. So we've been at something like 30 years known reserves for a century or so.
Of course people who don't understand that are always raising a panic by assuming "known reserves" are "all there is" and we're going to suddenly hit the wall in a few years. (In fact, before the discovery of petroleum fuels, there was a similar concern over running out of whale oil if the poor kept earning enough in the factories to finally afford lamps...)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"If anyone, including noted scientists, say anything remotely the opposite of the climate change cabal, they are run out of town, belitted by their peers."
I'm sure you are absolutely correct. Good science is being run out of town left and right, and journals are refusing to print well researched opposition papers......
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:ypqfSnfiXoYJ:www.cnsnews.com/public/checker.aspx%3FrsrcID%3D51517+http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx%3FRsrcID%3D51517&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
Have you ever considered that there isn't a grandiose conspiracy, and perhaps good data speaks for itself? Maybe that means that the good data has been on the current 'winning' side, and that contrary evidence has been sparse?
The above paper was published, and is being taken seriously.
Personally, I don't care "who's right". There are many reasons having nothing to do with climate to move away from fossil fuels (air quality, finite resource, foreign dependency etc..), we should get started as soon as possible.
Ah, how I loathe the politics that drives the global warming debate. Just imagine, just as the planet cools, the Obama administration timely releases pictures of the north pole just to keep us from looking at the thermometer or talking about the south pole for that matter.
Remember, NEWS is something somebody is trying to KEEP FROM YOU. Everything else is plain ADVERTISING.
*for extremely large values of "very soon"
Carbon trading is a scam. There is no rational way to give out the credits, so you are basically give a whole bunch of random people a lot of money for no reason. They will come up with a bizarre scheme that's full of loopholes and hand-waving, and we will end up paying some rich guy with connections to buy a yacht. Gotta love politics.
we are towards the end of a solar cycle and galaxy shift... read the myan calendar, nuff said. it's affecting all planets, not just earth. Now excuse me the black cars are outside...
Yeah, but releasing records of American abuse on other humans is not worthy of our interest.
My God climate change is a total scam. Al Gore lied in the video. British courts ruled as such!! More scientists signed with full disclosure the petition against man made global warming theory, saying it IS BUNKUM than signed the IPCC climate paper, which was done in a highly compartmentalised way, so that most of the scientists who even signed it either rescinded their signatures, or did not agree with the conclusion which was NOT endorsed by the whole of the community. But as I said, a lot more scientists have signed on that it is bunkum that say it is real. Al Gore is a politician! endorsed by the OSCARS for crying out loud. My god... when will people WAKE UP.... more important things to worry about like depleted uranium being used on Iraqis torture and massive drug running operations by the CIA, and the fact that on 911 the towers fell down at free fall speed have a look at architects and engineers for 911truth ae911truth.org and see how many renowned and experienced architects say that the claim that no explosives were used was a scam and a lie by the media and the military that runs the countries. It's a scam just like the 1970's swine flu where the vaccine killed more than the flu did by like 1000 to 1, and paralysed many more, and just like asbestos is safe, ddt is safe, cigarettes are good for your health and oh yeah, the 1970's global COOLING propaganda, where we were all going to die in the future ice age... they were all so serious and certain yet WHO took responsibility for the alarm and panic every time... SCAM SCAM SCAM...
Why, thank you.
I was just reading in a book written in the 1950's that
for most of the Earth's History there was no polar ice.
From The Changing Face of New England by Betty Flanders Thomson:
"In the past century average temperatures have been rising, but we do not know enough about the causes of lang range fluctuations to tell in advance which changes are minor eddies in the current and which are part of a great and lasting trend." - p 17
And this was written in the 1950's.
This is the most disturbing news yet from the worst admin to ever hit this land. These monsters took it upon themselves to delay data that might cause the end of us all. Now that is HUBRIS!
Let me begin by pointing out that your criticism is a non sequitur. I did not claim either that Science per se of the science of climate change was indubitable and that anyone doubting it was as a consequence deluded. A careful reading of the post you are responding to reveals that I explicitly left room for the valuable contributions made by informed skeptics and specifically distinguishing them from "outright denialists." OTHO someone who argues that the science must be wrong because it's all a plot to bring about UN world police state ... well.
Instead what I was addressing was the apparently common belief that if the majority of scientists say A and a small minority say B, then B must (at least presumptively) be correct.
In the 1850s hundreds of scientists in the best scientific schools and departments in London were in consensus that "Miasma" was what was causing Cholera outbreaks in Soho, London.
The one individual - John Snow (who I'm sure was called the 18th (sic) century equivalent of a "denialist" and "deluded" by the scientific community and the likes of you who applied real rigourous science in the face of the "scientific consensus" found that to the contrary and completely correctly that it was tainted water not the air causing the outbreaks. Fortunately he had gone to great lengths to document and his research and the great and all knowing "scientific community" immediately reversed their position and accepted his better and obviously correct theory. Oh wait they didn't, they did exactly what you are doing here.
What I'm doing here is asking people not to reject well documented research on the basis of ideological bias, but instead to take seriously the "real rigourous science." So no they didn't do what I'm doing here. In fact they did what you are doing here: They "completely ignored the research" and told people to "stop placing so much faith in a new and very very undefined 'science.'"
They completely ignored his research, called him a fool and over the next ten years thousands more died ... It wasn't until nearly 10 years after his death that he was acknowledged as being correct.
In the C19th that kind of story is perhaps not as uncommon as it should have been. Indeed even at the beginning of the C20th the story of Joe Goldberger's struggle to get the medical and political community to accept that Pellagra was a dietary deficiency, bears the same hallmarks. Goldberger, despite the fact that he had irresitable evidence from prison experiments, was driven personally to consume inter alia faeces from Pellagra sufferers to demonstrate that it was not an infectious disease. However increasingly over the C20th and into our own century the liberal-romantic story of how science is done becomes less inappropriate (fortunately for scientists).
But let's attempt to apply it anyway. Let me tell you the story of another scientist. His name is Jim Hansen, and in 1988, arguably somewhat prematurely given the state of the science at the time, he became so alarmed at the trend he observed (being also mindful that the basic physics implied such a trend) that he warned Congress about the very real concern that GHG emissions could cause serious climatic change. Fortunately, it only took him about 10 years to be proven correct, and indeed the initial skepticism that much of the profession showed has served to make the science much the stronger. In any case here you are (and not you alone), some 20 years later, arguing for the climatological analog of Miasma theory!
I think the lesson you need to take away here is that when one (or more) scientists have good solid evidence, (be that Snow, Goldberger or Hansen,) we ignore that evidence at our peril.
Your argument is nothing more than the exact same argument the religious use to shut down dissent, an argument which goes "The establishment has formed consensus, and who are YOU to que
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
We are sure, eh?
I know that's the point you are unable to accept, but yes, we are as certain as it is possible to be about physical events as complex as these. Hopefully our certainty will prove ill founded, but unfortunately that seems extremely unlikely. The science is here. You can read what has been established (and to what level of certitude) for yourself. But you are not even going to read the summary, are you?
Go read 'Red Hot Lies', or watch 'Great Global Warming Swindle'.
That sums it up really. The authoritative science you won't trust, but debunked denialist propaganda you swallow with the credulity of a small child. I find it incredible that people can be gullable enough to be taken in by this kind of nonesense. But like they say there's a sucker born every minute, and I suppose it's no surprise you have been played for a fool, after all you actually want to be deceived, don't you?
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Does the report also show the massive increase in ice coverage in the antarctic? Since we're presuming human induced global warming caused the former, we must also assume it caused the later, no?