I could not agree more ....
Far more interesting though is the human behaviour which has recently become prevalent. The global warming "believers" are showing increased signs of fanaticism..............>
I think everyone needs to take a deep breath and say "what is going on here ?" We should all remember that its better to read books than to burn them. And before we all start panicking about polar bears, it wouldn't hurt to rememember that Greenland was indeed once green.
[quote=Mike Kremer}
Yes of course Greenland was once green.
In the Pliocene era, Greenland was further south than now.
The type of Fauna, ferns and other tropical plants unearthed around the coast of south Greenland prove that.
The continent of Antartica was also a tropical paradise at that time, and contains substantial coal reserves to prove it.
If you think Greenland was ice free, say 2000 years ago.
Just tell me why the oceans were not 20 feet higher then, in the past than now?
All the coastal flooded towns found under the sea today, prove that the oceans were many feet lower 5000 years ago than today.
The oceans have been rising recently....I wonder why?
Dont pretend to be an Ostrich, and bury your head in the sand.
Pollution, dust, dirty rain and snow is falling everywhere.
But nowhere does it cause more damage than where it falls upon snow and ice causing surface melting, and the undermining of glaciers, snowfields, and ocean ice. Russian Siberia is fast turning into a bog and qagmire.
Norway's oil rig production from within the Artic Barents sea, is alive and well. Something impossible to contemplate 20 years ago, since the sea was frozen all year round.
Manmade city heat, plus cooling water from power stations, are all contributing to man-made warming.
Why has the sale of air-conditioners risen world wide?
And if you tell me warming is due to an increase in the heat output of our Sun, or our 26,000 year precession around our ecliptic plane, you are closing your eyes to reality.
......>..Continuation by Mike Kremer
I'm afraid I must direct a couple of paragraphs to John Reynolds.
Who is misguidedly assuming that Vineland or Greenland was so warm that it was eagerly populated by the Vikings, who discovered it.
In fact hey had a hard time ecking out an existence from this new land.
But they did paint a rosy picture of this new country, back to their homeland in their endeavour to get more settlers especially women, to come out Vineland, and join them.
Vinelands history was cold, difficult and hard, a land the settlers eventually abandoned.
Just because Greenlands archeology found that vineland once supported lush tropical forest, please do not assume that this was the case 1000 years ago, when the Vikings arrived
It was probably almost as cold as the Vikings homelands of Norway and Sweden.
Thousands of Vikings came, conquered, and settled in England, and the western coast of Scotland, a much warmer place for them. Relatively few settled, to stay in Vineland (Greenland).
John, people buy Air-conditioners to keep themselves, their offices and living areas, cool.....not because they are getting cheaper. People generally buy what they have a need for, irrespective of price, dont you think?
Also note that the price of cars have also fallen, as has the cost of refrigerators, and flying.
How about the price of the billions of light bulbs?. Light bulbs in particular store billions of heat watts within buildings, world wide.
Non of the above were around 150 years ago. Cities are larger now, and produce a lot of heat.
Yes, John you should consider all the machinery that goes to make up the running of a modern city. Machinery that produces the well known 'hotspots' that hover above our citys.
In addition every particle of dust produced by automobile and aircraft engines, that absorbs heat, cannot be reflected back into space. Another example of manmade warming.
Further-more it is my projected idea that the billions of window glass panes in the world, are another cause of Man made warming. Since they allow the suns heat into offices and rooms, but glass dos'nt let the longer heat rays out.
Sunlight which under normal circumstances, would have been largely reflected back out into space. Yet another producer of 'hotspots' over the worlds cities, and a further example of Manmade warming.
I have just thought up another, not implausible idea, that soap might be responsible for a subtle change in climate?
Prehaps soap in our oceans lessens the surface tension of the seawater, which inturn allows the wind and waves to increase the evaporation rate, above what it might have been normally?
More water vapour than normal, constantly up in the atmosphere would have some effect. Possibley a latent heat effect. Or the conversion to longer heat waves, similar to window glass?.
A couple of comments upon S.Fred Singer's pdf
**Human activities are not influencing the global climate in a perceptible way.**
Well human activities are definately influencing local climate.
How about the air pollution in China and India? China releases over 6 Billion tons of CO2 every year.
Dam building, irrigation, and the diversion of waters, eg The virtual disappearance of the Aral sea. Dryness of grasses and forest fires that occur in Asia and Europe, (some are deliberate)
All these small imperceptabilities have added up to a noticable climate change in many parts of the world, over the last 150 years. In particular, the small rise in temperature of approx 0.6 degree and rising.
Or lets put it another way....Without any Human influence or activity, any natural Global Climate change would be imperceptable over the 1 million year time scale, that Fred Singer talked about.
Although I'm not quite sure what these natural phenomena are? Volcanoes? Even the biggest explosion in modern times, The Santorini volcanoe in the Mediteranean barely caused more than a few weeks of dust which soon settled. What natural phenomenon could possible cause the Global change we have been experiencing over the last 150 years? Try to answer that if you can.
**During much of the last century the climate was cooling while CO2 levels were rising. And we should note that the climate has not warmed in the past eight years, even though greenhouse gas levels have increased rapidly.**
Is Fred Singer kidding? Prehaps he should have checked the summer temperatures in Europe over the last 10 years. Europes climate is greatly influenced by the Gulf Stream and Atlantic trade winds. Thousands of people died from the summer heat in
France 3 years ago. While more thousands suffered from the heat in Greece this summer, with hundreds dying.
But don't pooh pooh the changes just because they were only over ten years. This heat was ground breaking,and had never ever had been experienced before. As were the floods in central Europe 5 years ago, that subjected the medieval city of Budapest to such severe flooding. Again not ever experienced before. Even America has been experiencing high heat, as well as low rainfall. As has Australia.
Fred S. Singer states-
**'Natural causes of climate change, for their part, cannot be controlled by man. They are unstoppable. Several policy consequences would follow from this simple fact:'**
Ha Ha! Now we come to the real reason why there are those that dont believe Man is responsible for Climate Warming.
These unbelievers are working hand in hand for their Goverments.
Goverments realise some years ago, that Global warming cannot be stopped.
They realise, that if they were to really try to implement KYOTO, it would bankrupt them.
It would certainly retard the development of that country, allowing others who did not subscribe to KYOTO to catch up and overtake them. Theres the reason.
The buying and selling of excess CO2 production, by Goverment, could only be realisable as a monetary burden, or tax, upon their population. I cant see any Goverment keeping in power, trying to solve an impossible solution by imposing extra taxes upon the public.
If China, India, and the oil derrick gas flare burners refuse to agree to cut their CO2 production, or implement KYOTO, then everyone else will say, 'Whats the use?'
For instance, here in the UK we produce a modest 2% of the Worlds CO2 output What is 2% against the Worlds 98% CO2 production.? Even if we were able to cut out our miserly 2% of CO2 production. We would end up as a 5th rate nation.
Correction, in fact I doubt if we would even exist as a country within a couple of years.
No, I just cannot see KYOTO being accepted.
I predict that Goverments, together with the collusion of their Scientists will be more than happy to blame Global Warming as a product of natural causes, however difficult that might be.
Just as long as they have the ear of the public and confidence of friendly countries
No doubt citing all sorts of scientific blather to account for this 'Natural' warming.
Those Scientists who blame the Suns heat fluctuations, Cosmic Rays, Meteorite dust, Magnetic or Gravity ideas will continue to be feted and employed by their Goverments, drawing fat pay checks. Just as long as they issue figures to support the 'Natural Global Warming' theory.
Its a pity the world will suffer in the end. KYOTO will die, the public will turn a blind eye,try to carry on as usual, batten down their hatches, and move to higher ground, and turn up their air conditioners.
Yes, its a tough one, those people that deny 'Man made global Warming', are just as bad, as future Goverments.
These people will be on the increase, and how will they be able to live with them selves? (Thats you and I)
I guess we will continue to exchange our light bulbs for the low energy type, and talk with smug satisfaction of how we are cutting down on the use of our car.
Then having done our bit to save the world, we will leave it at that.
And so no one, or no country will really do anything.
Everyone will leave the problem for the next generation to solve. Amen.