Scientists appalled at the LACK of Global Warming.

[airmaxpenny1]

95% of you guys really have zero clue what you are talking about

 

[mf doomer]

We'll sense it's now evident nations won't chance billions into research, what would it be spent on?

 

[flasheightzero]

WASHINGTON - Since the 1997 international accord to fight global warming, climate change has worsened and accelerated - beyond some of the grimmest of warnings made back then.

As the world has talked for a dozen years about what to do next, new ship passages opened through the once frozen summer sea ice of the Arctic. In Greenland and Antarctica, ice sheets have lost trillions of tons of ice. Mountain glaciers in Europe, South America, Asia and Africa are shrinking faster than before.

And it's not just the frozen parts of the world that have felt the heat in the dozen years leading up to next month's climate summit in Copenhagen:

_ The world's oceans have risen by about an inch and a half.

_Droughts and wildfires have turned more severe worldwide, from the U.S. West to Australia to the Sahel desert of North Africa.

_Species now in trouble because of changing climate include, not just the lumbering polar bear which has become a symbol of global warming, but also fragile butterflies, colorful frogs and entire stands of North American pine forests.

_Temperatures over the past 12 years are 0.4 of a degree warmer than the dozen years leading up to 1997.

Even the gloomiest climate models back in the 1990s didn't forecast results quite this bad so fast.

"The latest science is telling us we are in more trouble than we thought," Janos Pasztor, climate adviser to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

And here's why: Since an agreement to reduce greenhouse gas pollution was signed in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997, the level of carbon dioxide in the air has increased 6.5 percent. Officials from across the world will convene in Copenhagen next month to seek a follow-up pact, one that President Barack Obama says "has immediate operational effect ... an important step forward in the effort to rally the world around a solution."

The last effort didn't quite get the anticipated results.

From 1997 to 2008, world carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels have increased 31 percent; U.S. emissions of this greenhouse gas rose 3.7 percent. Emissions from China, now the biggest producer of this pollution, have more than doubled in that time period. When the U.S. Senate balked at the accord and President George W. Bush withdrew from it, that meant that the top three carbon polluters - the U.S., China and India - were not part of the pact's emission reductions. Developing countries were not covered by the Kyoto Protocol and that is a major issue in Copenhagen.

And the effects of greenhouse gases are more powerful and happening sooner than predicted, scientists said.

"Back in 1997, the impacts (of climate change) were underestimated; the rate of change has been faster," said Virginia Burkett, chief scientist for global change research at the U.S. Geological Survey.

That last part alarms former Vice President Al Gore, who helped broker a last-minute deal in Kyoto.

"By far the most serious differences that we've had is an acceleration of the crisis itself," Gore said in an interview this month with The Associated Press.

In 1997, global warming was an issue for climate scientists, environmentalists and policy wonks. Now biologists, lawyers, economists, engineers, insurance analysts, risk managers, disaster professionals, commodity traders, nutritionists, ethicists and even psychologists are working on global warming.

"We've come from a time in 1997 where this was some abstract problem working its way around scientific circles to now when the problem is in everyone's face," said Andrew Weaver, a University of Victoria climate scientist.

The changes in the last 12 years that have the scientists most alarmed are happening in the Arctic with melting summer sea ice and around the world with the loss of key land-based ice masses. It's all happening far faster than predicted.

Back in 1997 "nobody in their wildest expectations," would have forecast the dramatic sudden loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic that started about five years ago, Weaver said. From 1993 to 1997, sea ice would shrink on average in the summer to about 2.7 million square miles. The average for the last five years is less than 2 million square miles. What's been lost is the size of Alaska.

Antarctica had a slight increase in sea ice, mostly because of the cooling effect of the ozone hole, according to the British Antarctic Survey. At the same time, large chunks of ice shelves - adding up to the size of Delaware - came off the Antarctic peninsula.

While melting Arctic ocean ice doesn't raise sea levels, the melting of giant land-based ice sheets and glaciers that drain into the seas do. Those are shrinking dramatically at both poles.

Measurements show that since 2000, Greenland has lost more than 1.5 trillion tons of ice, while Antarctica has lost about 1 trillion tons since 2002, according to two scientific studies published this fall. In multiple reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, scientists didn't anticipate ice sheet loss in Antarctica, Weaver said. And the rate of those losses is accelerating, so that Greenland's ice sheets are melting twice as fast now as they were just seven years ago, increasing sea level rise.

Worldwide glaciers are shrinking three times faster than in the 1970s and the average glacier has lost 25 feet of ice since 1997, said Michael Zemp, a researcher at World Glacier Monitoring Service at the University of Zurich.

"Glaciers are a good climate indicator," Zemp said. "What we see is an accelerated loss of ice."

Also, permafrost - the frozen northern ground that oil pipelines are built upon and which traps the potent greenhouse gas methane - is thawing at an alarming rate, Burkett said.

Another new post-1997 impact of global warming has scientists very concerned. The oceans are getting more acidic because more of the carbon dioxide in the air is being absorbed into the water. That causes acidification, an issue that didn't even merit a name until the past few years.

More acidic water harms coral, oysters and plankton and ultimately threatens the ocean food chain, biologists say.

In 1997, "there was no interest in plants and animals" and how they are hampered by climate change, said Stanford University biologist Terry Root. Now scientists are talking about which species can be saved from extinction and which are goners. The polar bear became the first species put on the federal list of threatened species and the small rabbit-like American pika may be joining it.

More than 37 million acres of Canadian and U.S. pine forests have been damaged by beetles that don't die in warmer winters. And in the U.S. West, the average number of acres burned per fire has more than doubled.

The Colorado River reservoirs, major water suppliers for the U.S. West, were nearly full in 1999, but by 2007 half the water was gone after the region endured the worst multiyear drought in 100 years of record-keeping.

Insurance losses and blackouts have soared and experts say global warming is partly to blame. The number of major U.S. weather-related blackouts from 2004-2008 were more than seven times higher than from 1993-1997, said Evan Mills, a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.

"The message on the science is that we know a lot more than we did in 1997 and it's all negative," said Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "Things are much worse than the models predicted."

http://www.google.com/hos...WorsC2E8mUvBPzgD9C51DV01

As world governments prepare for a pivotal conference in Copenhagen next month to map future strategy to contain global warming, and the U.S. Congress debates legislation to reduce carbon emissions, evidence continues to accumulate that the threat is accelerating.

A new study by a team of British scientists indicates that man-made carbon emissions continue to increase despite the global recession. While emissions in the United States fell by 3 percent last year, they jumped 2 percent worldwide, most of the increase coming from China. The U.S. and China are the world's largest carbon emitters.

Equally ominous, the planet's oceans are steadily losing capacity to absorb the greenhouse gases that trap heat and fuel global warming.

The Global Carbon Project study concludes that unless emissions are substantially reduced, the result would be a rise in average global temperature by nearly 10 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. That is on par with previous worst-case scenarios outlined by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Scientists have estimated that temperature spikes above 2 degrees could have disastrous consequences, including large rises in sea level, droughts and stronger storms.

One of the authors of the study, Professor Corinne Le Quere of the University of East Anglia, says the conclusions raise the stakes for delegates to the Copenhagen gathering, who will try to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto Accords that committed signatory governments to emission reduction goals. The United States did not sign on to that agreement.

In another indication that global warming is accelerating, record minimum sea ice in the Arctic was reported last month. The Catlin Arctic Survey estimates that based on the dwindling expanse and thickness of ice coverage, the Arctic Ocean will become ice free in summer within two decades.

The latest developments should raise the political heat in Washington to produce workable legislation to reduce carbon emissions while propelling the U.S. into a leadership role in crafting an international agreement to limit climate change.


http://www.chron.com/disp...l/editorial/6734481.html

here's 2 articles from today that tell the opposite story, so who's right?

you can choose to believe whatever you want, but you're a fool if you blindly believe whatever you see or hear without learning about it yourself

 

[russoull]

Man, as soon as I learned what Global Warming was, I was convinced. Now I don't know what to believe. I never cared enough to change my ways though. Thehell kind of difference can I make? I bet Al Gore farts in jars.

 

[justscoreda100]

Global Warming is just a scheme to make the global elite more money. They only positive aspects of green technology is that it would decrease our dependable onforeign oil and limit the amount of pollution to our environment. It could also produce technologies that could make people grid self-sufficient.

 

[frank 7he t4nk]

Originally Posted by Dynamic X

Originally Posted by LimitedRetroOG

Dennis Quaid would know what's really going on.

 

[vsano]

Don't be ignorant... The climate here in PI is so different now as compared to the old days. There is climate change & Global Warming. In many cases,politics blocks the truth so many people bite the conclusion that there's nothing wrong, when, on the other hand, people from the opposite side of theglobe are already dying because of these changes...

 

[dmbrhs]

Originally Posted by Vsano

Don't be ignorant... The climate here in PI is so different now as compared to the old days. There is climate change & Global Warming. In many cases, politics blocks the truth so many people bite the conclusion that there's nothing wrong, when, on the other hand, people from the opposite side of the globe are already dying because of these changes...

Except for the part where people are dying because they live in crappy countries with zero infrastructure. To blame the climate is just anotherscapegoat in an embarrassingly long list of excuses for why their lives aren't better.

 

[devildog1776]

Global warming / climate change is a pretext for a global tax.... More money for the global elite. The scam isn't going as planned but it's still ineffect. Another distraction tongue masses who are blind to the cause and effects that will determine their future

 

[los yankees]

Originally Posted by JustScoreda100

Global Warming is just a scheme to make the global elite more money. They only positive aspects of green technology is that it would decrease our dependable on foreign oil and limit the amount of pollution to our environment. It could also produce technologies that could make people grid self-sufficient.

......

From The Times



September 14, 2009
[h1]Staff in carbon footprint trial face £100 fines for high emissions[/h1] [h2][/h2]
Ben Webster, Environment Editor

• 36 Comments

Recommend? (25)

People who emit more than their fair share of carbon emissions are having their pay docked in a trial that could lead to rationing being reintroduced via the workplace after an absence of half a century.

Britain's first employee carbon rationing scheme is about to be extended, after the trial demonstrated the effectiveness of fining people for exceeding their personal emissions target. Unlike the energy-saving schemes adopted by thousands of companies, the rationing scheme monitors employees' personal emissions, including home energy bills, petrol purchases and holiday flights.

Workers who take a long-haul flight are likely to be fined for exceeding their annual ration unless they take drastic action in other areas, such as switching off the central heating or cutting out almost all car journeys. Employees are required to submit quarterly reports detailing their consumption. They are also set a target, which reduces each year, for the amount of carbon they can emit.

Those who exceed their ration pay a fine for every kilogram they emit over the limit. The money is deducted from their pay and the level of the fine is printed on payslips. Those who consume less than their ration are rewarded at the same rate per kilogram.

[h3]Related Links[/h3]

• Passengers face new tax to halt rise in air travel

• Storing CO2 could be Britain's next boom industry

The maximum that an employee can earn or be fined has been capped at £100, but is likely to rise once staff have grown accustomed to the idea.

WSP, the global engineering consultancy, has been conducting the rationing scheme among 80 of its British employees for almost two years. In the first year the overall carbon footprint of participants fell by 10 per cent. The company is discussing its scheme with several FTSE 100 companies.

Three quarters of the employees were rewarded and a quarter, including Stuart McLachlan, the managing director, were fined. Mr McLachlan tried to cut his carbon footprint by buying a bike and cycling 12 miles to work from Richmond, Surrey, to Chancery Lane, in Central London. He also installed energy-saving lightbulbs, but he still exceeded his ration - and was fined £100 - because he flew to his holiday home in South Africa.

The idea of personal quotas for carbon emissions is being advocated by the thinktank the Institute for Public Policy Research. Everyone would be given a number of free "credits", to buy gas and electricity for their homes, fuel for cars and plane tickets for holidays. Those who did not use all their credits could sell the excess to people who used more fossil fuels.

WSP is planning to expand its rationing scheme next year to cover 3,000 employees in offices around the world. However, it will set different targets for each country to reflect national average emissions. In Britain the target this year is 5.5 tonnes, which is one tonne above the national average for home energy and personal transport. The US target is likely to be double the British target, to reflect much greater emissions per person.

David Symons, co-ordinator of the scheme, said that US employees would be unlikely to join a scheme with the same ration as British staff. "The teams in the States would think they would be in debit straightaway."

Mr Symons stayed within his ration last year by giving up his Mazda RX8 sports car and buying a diesel Peugeot 207. He met this year's target largely because his partner had a baby and he rarely left home except to go to work.

One employee, Dan Dowling, 29, switched the mode of transport for his honeymoon in Rome from plane to train. His colleague, Emma Bollan, stopped blow-drying her hair and cut down on roast dinners. She said: "The big incentive is not the prospect of earning £100 but in trying to ensure that you don't have to pay out."

Several WSP staff added that peer pressure played a part in persuading them to stay within their ration.

Mr McLachlan said: "There have been some interesting competitive dynamics in the company as a result of having this transparency."

 

[KingParappa]

Originally Posted by LimitedRetroOG

Dennis Quaid would know what's really going on.

 

[lazy b]

Originally Posted by airmaxpenny1

95% of you guys really have zero clue what you are talking about

Please enlighten me.

If the United States signs onto Copenhagen. Fun fact, each country that signs onto Copenhagen has to contribute 1% of their GDP to 3rd world countries.I'm all for development but when we can't ask where the money is going especially to states that are unstable I'd be very wary.

 

[smedroc]

Originally Posted by airmaxpenny1

95% of you guys really have zero clue what you are talking about

this..

No doubt there are people are making money off the back of this but to say it's all a sham is crazy imo.

People really think pumping all these emissions int the atmosphere has no effect on the climate?? If this stuff is so harmless then lets put you in a roomfilled with co2 and carbon monoxide and we'll see whats up??

Throughout history the climate has proved to be unpredictable. Some things are out of our hands but putting all this !*$$ in the air cant be helping. It'slike we're provoking nature to come and bite us in the !*@.

 

[dirtylicious]

They only positive aspects of green technology is that it would decrease our dependable on foreign oil and limit the amount of pollution to our environment. It could also produce technologies that could make people grid self-sufficient.

those tiny insignificant things?

pish posh

 

[j dilla himself]

Originally Posted by Dirtylicious

They only positive aspects of green technology is that it would decrease our dependable on foreign oil and limit the amount of pollution to our environment. It could also produce technologies that could make people grid self-sufficient.

those tiny insignificant things?

pish posh





son saw me say pish posh first and now he wanna use it.

 

[diego]

Originally Posted by J Dilla Himself

Originally Posted by Dirtylicious

They only positive aspects of green technology is that it would decrease our dependable on foreign oil and limit the amount of pollution to our environment. It could also produce technologies that could make people grid self-sufficient.

those tiny insignificant things?

pish posh

son saw me say pish posh first and now he wanna use it.


You aint end with "though", though.

 

[los yankees]

Originally Posted by Smedroc

Originally Posted by airmaxpenny1

95% of you guys really have zero clue what you are talking about

this..

No doubt there are people are making money off the back of this but to say it's all a sham is crazy imo.

People really think pumping all these emissions int the atmosphere has no effect on the climate?? If this stuff is so harmless then lets put you in a room filled with co2 and carbon monoxide and we'll see whats up??

Throughout history the climate has proved to be unpredictable. Some things are out of our hands but putting all this !*$$ in the air cant be helping. It's like we're provoking nature to come and bite us in the !*@.

CO2 is organic coumpound for sustaining life its vital for energy and sugars, CO is not. If you were put into a room with just pure Oxygen would be detrimentalto your life also.

 

[justscoreda100]

Originally Posted by Dirtylicious

They only positive aspects of green technology is that it would decrease our dependable on foreign oil and limit the amount of pollution to our environment. It could also produce technologies that could make people grid self-sufficient.

those tiny insignificant things?

pish posh




Tiny compared to the future that many pro climate change advocates try to paint. Some would have you think that no action on the issue could lead to 2012 typeclimate destruction. As said those are postive aspects, I just don't believe that government mandates should be used because they would force higher taxesonto people and businesses. Especially on a subject as controversial as global warming. The market will handle this.

 

[dirtylicious]

^you TRULY think "the market" aka private companies would police themselves on pollution?

 

[dsk aka illoquent]

Originally Posted by JustScoreda100

@ the avy.

 

[smedroc]

Originally Posted by Los Yankees

Originally Posted by Smedroc

Originally Posted by airmaxpenny1

95% of you guys really have zero clue what you are talking about

this..

No doubt there are people are making money off the back of this but to say it's all a sham is crazy imo.

People really think pumping all these emissions int the atmosphere has no effect on the climate?? If this stuff is so harmless then lets put you in a room filled with co2 and carbon monoxide and we'll see whats up??

Throughout history the climate has proved to be unpredictable. Some things are out of our hands but putting all this !*$$ in the air cant be helping. It's like we're provoking nature to come and bite us in the !*@.

CO2 is organic coumpound for sustaining life its vital for energy and sugars, CO is not. If you were put into a room with just pure Oxygen would be detrimental to your life also.

yeah i know that (my example was a stupid one smh)

but like you said, too much of a good thing can be bad for you. Since the birth of industry we been pumpin #%!$ laods of emissions into the environment and idon't think we've been doing it in order to sustain life. I don't whether its warming up the planet or not but it must be effecting the climate.

 

[corporatejp]

I'm all for cleaning-up and saving the environment, cutting down on CO2 emmissions.

It needs to be done.

But, the way Al Gore and the Democrats put it, they got you believing in the Tooth Fairy, Sasquatch, and the planet burning the atmosphere off itself by nextsummer.

SMH.

 

[los yankees]

Originally Posted by Smedroc

Originally Posted by Los Yankees

Originally Posted by Smedroc

Originally Posted by airmaxpenny1

95% of you guys really have zero clue what you are talking about

this..

No doubt there are people are making money off the back of this but to say it's all a sham is crazy imo.

People really think pumping all these emissions int the atmosphere has no effect on the climate?? If this stuff is so harmless then lets put you in a room filled with co2 and carbon monoxide and we'll see whats up??

Throughout history the climate has proved to be unpredictable. Some things are out of our hands but putting all this !*$$ in the air cant be helping. It's like we're provoking nature to come and bite us in the !*@.

CO2 is organic coumpound for sustaining life its vital for energy and sugars, CO is not. If you were put into a room with just pure Oxygen would be detrimental to your life also.

yeah i know that (my example was a stupid one smh)

but like you said, too much of a good thing can be bad for you. Since the birth of industry we been pumpin #%!$ laods of emissions into the environment and i don't think we've been doing it in order to sustain life. I don't whether its warming up the planet or not but it must be effecting the climate.

Prolonged direct exposure of CO2 is bad for a human, the thing is that CO2 makes up such a small portion of the atmosphere and since so many organisms on earthuse it, it is recylced back into organisms.

CO2 asphyxiates, but so does H2O and sand. I'm looking in my old chemistry book as I type this and it says that H2O stores and emits heat 4 times as muchas CO2. So if that is the case, how can CO2 contribute to this "Global Warming"?

 

[essential1]

^your sig OMG HA!!!!

 

[essential1]

Originally Posted by corporateJP

I'm all for cleaning-up and saving the environment, cutting down on CO2 emmissions.

It needs to be done.

But, the way Al Gore and the Democrats put it, they got you believing in the Tooth Fairy, Sasquatch, and the planet burning the atmosphere off itself by next summer.

SMH.

no one ever said that. What is said is we are at a breaking point where the damage will be difficult to reverse. It could be done, but considering the problemswith governmental debate the amount that needs to be done each year could never be accomplished. So we need something now, not because the world will explodetomorrow but because we need to get control of the damge before it won't make a difference what we do.