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Black Soot May Be Aiding Melting In the Himalayas
Hugh Pickens writes "The Himalayas, home to some 10,000 glaciers, are the main source of replenishment to lakes, streams, and some of the continent's mightiest rivers, on which millions of people depend for their water supplies. Since the 1960s, the acreage covered by Himalayan glaciers has declined by more than 20 percent with a rate of warming twice the global average over the past 30 years. Now Live Science reports that tiny particles of pollution known as 'black carbon' — and not heat-trapping greenhouse gases — may be causing much of the rapid melting of glaciers in the Himalayas. 'Tibet's glaciers are retreating at an alarming rate,' says James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. 'Black soot is probably responsible for as much as half of the glacial melt, and greenhouse gases are responsible for the rest.' The circulation of the atmosphere in the region causes much of the soot-laden air to 'pile up' against the Himalayas. The soot mixes with other dust from nearby deserts, creating a massive brown cloud visible from space that absorbs incoming solar radiation. As this layer heats up in the Himalayan foothills, it rises and enhances the seasonal northward flow of humid monsoon winds, forcing moisture and hot air up the slopes of the mountain range."
When you ride your ten-speed bike, you can usually spin the pedals backwards without any resistance whatsoever. It doesn't matter how fast you pedal backwards, you never will affect your forward momentum. The course you have already chosen remains unchanged.
So when we see scientists trying to come up with excuses for why ice packs are melting without a huge increase in global temperatures, we need to question both their motives and their data. Yes, we can see oceanic water levels rising *in certain localized areas*, but we aren't seeing the massive deluge that was predicted.
Hopefully we can finally put to bed the reality of global warming and focus on the real problem of global pollution.
Yes, but in a summary, leaving off the "hundreds of" is fine when you're trying to express the concept of "a lot" in rough terms. I'm fairly sure (non-retarded) people can figure out that there are more than two million people in India.
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Global warming is clearly false. My evidence: It's so cold right now! And those emails which someone told me meant that all climate research was a scam. Give it up, hippies. You lost, we won, get over it.
The right wingers will surely use this as "proof" that global warming is wrong. Yet... if we started using renewable energy, it would still solve the problem.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1