Topic: WE'RE STUFFED!!!

[erik]

Alex Jones Info Wars....


http://www.infowars.net/articles/december2008/101208Warming.htm

Thanks! That website is a treasure chest! 

[Jahn]

    CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or another….Every scientist knows this, but it doesn’t pay to say so…Global warming, as a political vehicle, keeps Europeans in the driver’s seat and developing nations walking barefoot.” - Dr. Takeda Kunihiko, vice-chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University in Japan.

How strange then that a Swedish researcher in Physics made a calculation back in 1890's on how an certain increase of carbon oxide would raise the global temperature. As we have new fresh data to apply on his 110 year old calculations we can only say one thing - his estimates were very good!

That is a statement from Science compared to emotional politics.

[Jahn]

Svante August Arrhenius born in Upsala 19 Feb 1859 and died 2nd Oct1927, Swedish physicist and chemist. Professor at the Stockholm Institute of Technology 1895 to 1905 and the first Swedish nobel prize winner in chemistry 1903.

It was Arrhenius that discovered the global warming effect in the year of 1896, i e the ability for carbon dioxide to reflect waves of heat back to Earth. By this discovery he explained his theory of change from ice ages and warmer periods.


Svante August Arrhenius, född i Uppsala 19 februari 1859, död 2 oktober 1927, var en svensk fysiker och kemist. Arrhenius var professor i fysik vid Stockholms högskola 1895-1905 och den förste svenska nobelpristagaren i kemi 1903. Det var Arrhenius som först upptäckte växthuseffekten år 1896, det vill säga koldioxidens förmåga att stänga inne värmestrålning. På detta sätt förklarade han sin teori om växlingen mellan istider och varma perioder beroende på växlingar i atmosfärens koldioxidhalt.

[TIOTIT]

Is it possible that the Sun may be the main factor in determining the earths
temp range and climate conditions?all scientific theory constantly changes as
more info becomes available...

Svante was a good scientist but the era in which he lived limited his research.


Svante Arrhenius

Arrhenius did very little research in the fields of climatology and geophysics, and considered any work in these fields a hobby. His basic approach was to apply knowledge of basic scientific principles to make sense of existing observations, while hypothesizing a theory on the cause of the “Ice Age.” Later on, his geophysical work would serve as a catalyst for the work of others.

In 1895, Arrhenius presented a paper to the Stockholm Physical Society titled, “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground.” This article described an energy budget model that considered the radiative effects of carbon dioxide (carbonic acid) and water vapor on the surface temperature of the Earth, and variations in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. In order to proceed with his experiments, Arrhenius relied heavily on the experiments and observations of other scientists, including Josef Stefan, Arvid Gustaf Högbom, Samuel Langley, Leon Teisserenc de Bort, Knut Angstrom, Alexander Buchan, Luigi De Marchi, Joseph Fourier, C.S.M. Pouillet, and John Tyndall.

Arrhenius argued that variations in trace constituents—namely carbon dioxide—of the atmosphere could greatly influence the heat budget of the Earth. Using the best data available to him and making many assumptions and estimates that were necessary, he performed a series of calculations on the temperature effects of increasing and decreasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere.

[Michael]

I would be interested in any reception comments on this minority report - I mean I don't wish to read it myself, but if anyone see any responses from the mainstream scientific community who are working on this issue, it would be good if you could post a link here.

As far as I am aware, the issue of the planet heating up is no longer a contested matter for the mainstream scientists.

The issue of what effects it will have for different areas is the big interest now for most working in this area.

But the whole issue of what is causing it and what we can do about that seems to remain in some contention. The effect of human CO2 activity having a major causal effect is still being spoken of as now accepted across the board - I only heard this a few days ago by one of the leading US scientists in the field, who is visiting Australia. That is why this minority report is of interest.

What we can do about it, is of course a huge debate, on many levels and in many areas.

[erik]

Change, but at what price?
After 2008 started with panic over food prices, the world seemed to be waking up to global warming. But then the recession hit

    * John Vidal
    * The Guardian, Wednesday 17 December 2008
    * Article history

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/17/climate-change-environment-2008


Ancient woodland in Britain is being felled at a faster rate than the Amazon rainforest. Photograph: Derek Croucher/Getty Images

No one could have predicted quite how dramatically 2008 would have ended. Even as President Bush was slashing his way through US environmental protection laws, president-elect Obama appointed Nobel prize-winning physicist Steve Chu as the next US energy secretary. Chu is seen as the repudiation of everything that Bush stood for, and predicts temperatures will rise by a staggering 6.1C by the end of the century if nothing is done. Although it does not mean the oil age is over, if you want a sign that 2008 was a tipping point, it could not have been clearer.

But go back to the start of the year. Empty shelves in Caracas, riots in India and Mexico, and rice shortages in Dhaka, Manila, and Kathmandu. Traders in at least 12 sub-Saharan African countries were hoarding food, and soaring maize and rice prices were leading to political instability. Governments were being forced one after the other to step in to protect supplies and control the cost of bread and dairy products.

The problem, said the analysts, was a mix of climate change and extreme weather leading to poor harvests in major grain-growing countries such as Australia. But the blame was also laid on the many millions of acres of maize, wheat and other crops planted in the US and elsewhere in 2007 to provide biofuels for cars rather than food for people. Catastrophe loomed, said the UN.

It happened slowly and out of sight of the cameras, in the burgeoning cities that are becoming the new frontline of deep poverty. Proof came one week ago, when the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reported that 2008 had seen the biggest increase in malnourished people in decades. According to its preliminary data, more than 960 million people - one in every six people in the world - now go to bed hungry, and 40 million suffered malnourishment in 2008 because of higher food prices.

This year will go down as the year of interlinked food shortages, climate change and the recession. But it was also the year when it may have dawned on governments that hell-for-leather, western fossil fuel-based, car-centred growth only ends in social and ecological disaster.

There was soaring air pollution, from transporting a record 622 million passengers, and near record loss of Amazon and other tropical forests. But climate change dominated the international agenda.

A flood of scientific papers showed Arctic ice melting faster than ever and the melting of the Greenland ice sheet close to becoming irreversible. Methane, one of the most damaging climate change gases, was found bubbling up from the tundra and the Arctic ocean. There were record temperatures and near-record hurricane seasons, and scientists and environment groups who believed only a year or two ago that it would be possible to just about hold global temperature to a 2C rise accepted privately that this could now be impossible.

But it also became clear in 2008 that climate change was disproportionately impacting on the poor. Subsistence farmers around the world reported a pattern of increasingly unpredictable seasons and social problems linked directly to water and higher temperatures.

In north-east Brazil, which has always been drought-prone but which has seen temperatures rise at least 1C in only 30 years, more than 1.5 million people now cannot access enough water, and must leave home to find work in the biofuel fields in the south of the country each year. In Bangladesh, Uganda, Niger, Malawi, Nepal and elsewhere people also said that temperatures were becoming hotter and rains less and less predictable.

Another trend became apparent. Rich countries, worried about fast rising global populations and dwindling food and fuel supplies, began buying up farmland in poor countries.

In the UK, environment secretary Hilary Benn said that Britain's food supplies, which come increasingly from abroad, were overdependent on oil - a situation, he said, that "must change".

But the most extreme admission of oncoming climate and food problems came from Mohamed Nasheed, the new president of the low-lying Maldives, who said he was looking for a new homeland, possibly in India, for the time when his country was swamped by rising seas.

The big, still unanswered question of 2008 was how far the financial, food and ecological crises were linked. The best evidence may come from a 1972 study. A group of economists and ecologists were commissioned to predict the consequences of a rapidly growing world population, rapid industrialisation in developing countries, and growing pollution. Their famous book, Limits to Growth, predicted widespread and growing hunger, oil shortages, and ecological and economic collapse by the mid-21st century if countries did not rethink economic growth.

Actually, for much of this year, it looked as if the rich world had begun to address sustainable development. Europe committed itself to generating 20% of all its energy from renewables by 2020, and banned incandescent light bulbs; Britain became the first country in the world to set itself a legal target of 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050; and more than 70 countries now have national goals for accelerating the use of renewable energy. Businesses, UN agencies, UK politicians and many individuals all genuinely tried to reduce emissions.

Led by Britain, pressure mounted for a global trading scheme, and Gordon Brown's forest adviser, financier Johan Eliasch, recommended that a multibillion-pound fund be set up to pay the owners of the world's rainforests not to cut them down. The irony was that a separate study by the Woodland Trust found that ancient woodland in Britain was being felled at a rate even faster than the Amazon rainforest.

Clean energy took off in 2008, and climate change mitigation became an industry, backed by the world's biggest companies. According to HSBC, companies in the climate mitigation business now generate $300bn (£201bn) in revenues each year. Last month, the International Energy Agency predicted that renewable energy would overtake natural gas to become the second largest source of power generation worldwide within two years, and that global wind and solar generating capacity would increase by more than 30%.

The energy revolution that had been predicted to start after 2015 appeared to be well under way. Architect Norman Foster designed Masdar, a car-free, solar- powered ecotopia for 40,000 people in the Arabian desert. Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi's ruler, was so impressed he ordered two, at $15bn each.

In mid-summer, with oil at over $130 a barrel and government-level talk of oil supplies "peaking", there was concern that the price could top $200 a barrel. As people rushed to buy smaller cars, fit better boilers and get into wind and solar power, it seemed possible that the constant rise of emissions might genuinely be reversed. Yet by this month, the global economy was crashing its gears, and oil had dropped to under $40 a barrel.

Whether the world weans itself off oil and fossil fuels will probably determine global sustainability over the next 20 years. Low oil prices traditionally push energy efficiency off the policy agenda. Economic recessions have punctured green economic bubbles in the past. When times are tight, the wisdom goes, no one invests in new or risky technologies, and countries stick to cheap and dirty energy.

Plummeting demand

That was happening in part by the end of 2008. Plummeting demand for recycled materials, especially in China, has drastically lowered prices for old paper, plastic and metals. US and European cities were forced to scale back recycling programmes. Meanwhile, South Africa decided this month that it could not afford "clean" nuclear power stations and plans to increase massively its cheaper but dirtier coal-burning stations. Britain, too, went ahead with plans for more opencast mines.

A more optimistic group of people say the recession may not only check unsustainable growth but also provide breathing space for the world to move to more sensible policies. Governments, said leading greens, have a historic opportunity to "climate proof" their economies in response to economic troubles. Obama and Gordon Brown both said that millions of jobs could be created in green building, wind power, solar thermal and other green technologies.

They were backed by energy gurus such as Amory Lovins, co-director of the Rocky Mountain Institute, and environmental analyst Lester Brown, who argued that the needs to deal with both climate change and energy security have set renewable energy on a path that cannot be reversed.

The consensus is that 2008 was volatile and dangerously unpredictable. But if governments don't change, it may come to be seen as a calm before the storm.

[Michael]

I have more on the sceptical scientists. I heard this evening an interview with Prof Freeman Dyson, about an article he wrote against the Climate Change orthodoxy.

Here is his article if you want to read it:
The Question of Global Warming

I have not read the article, but he did in the interview explain under hard questioning, what his position is.

He says there is no doubt the planet is warming up. Also there is no doubt the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are very high.

However his primary argument was that he was not convinced that global warming was bad for us. In fact there is a good chance it will be beneficial - he gave the example of how the people in Greenland are happy that it is warmer.

He also says that it will be fifty years before we see any consequences worth noting, which is plenty of time to get a better idea of what is happening - then it will be two hundred years before any real problems arise.

He said the rise in sea levels has been happening for 10 thousand years, and is not necessarily connected with Global Warming.

But he also revealed himself as one of those who have the belief that science can find answers to the bad side-effects of Global Warming - he was very up-beat about the ability of science to solve problems. He had one idea of putting kites and balloons around some areas of Antarctica to change the wind patterns, and to direct snow to drop in the inland of Antarctica which would lower the sea levels.

I personally found his arguments silly, as I think the interviewer did also. The interviewer put to him the risk factor, which he dismissed.

My first suspicions began as the interview launched in discussing an article he had written about the Galápagos Islands. There is a growing question of whether they should retain the islands as a national park - not for humans. The settlers are growing and they want more land for themselves.

Dyson compared it to UK, thousands of years ago - what would have happened is the Brits were not allowed to occupy the whole of the British Isles? There would have been no Charles Dickens, and no Darwin. The man's a twit.

But he is one voice in this debate, and I don't think his view of harmlessness of Global Warming is the only argument these sceptical scientists have, so I will keep my ear to the ground. (Oh and he also scorned Hanson)

[Jahn]

Why rely on scientist in the most important matter of our time?

Are we not warriors connected to nature and Mother Earth?
So do we not have a dialogue with Nature and Mother Earth of our own eeh?

So what does that dialogue tells us ....:

About "Global warming", "deforestation", "general pollution", "extreme weather situations" etc.

What does Mother tell you?
   
                                                    ~.~     ~.~

[Michael]

Why rely on scientist in the most important matter of our time?

Are we not warriors connected to nature and Mother Earth?
So do we not have a dialogue with Nature and Mother Earth of our own eeh?

So what does that dialogue tells us ....:

About "Global warming", "deforestation", "general pollution", "extreme weather situations" etc.

What does Mother tell you?
   
                                                    ~.~     ~.~

This is the argument Julie uses - surely it's obvious what's humans are doing to the planet...

[tangerine dream]

Why rely on scientist in the most important matter of our time?

Are we not warriors connected to nature and Mother Earth?
So do we not have a dialogue with Nature and Mother Earth of our own eeh?

So what does that dialogue tells us ....:

About "Global warming", "deforestation", "general pollution", "extreme weather situations" etc.

What does Mother tell you?
   
                                                    ~.~     ~.~

 

                            ~.~

[Jahn]

This is the argument Julie uses - surely it's obvious what's humans are doing to the planet...

And ... what is our answer/connection/dialogue connection tell us.

Women ... they usually have the most eminent connection to Mother Earth, what else can one expect?

[daphne]

Why rely on scientist in the most important matter of our time?

Are we not warriors connected to nature and Mother Earth?
So do we not have a dialogue with Nature and Mother Earth of our own eeh?

So what does that dialogue tells us ....:

About "Global warming", "deforestation", "general pollution", "extreme weather situations" etc.

What does Mother tell you?
   
                                                    ~.~     ~.~

We rely on 'scientists' to connect to this forum.. perhaps Mother also relies on scientists to connect to other forms of 'forums'  eh?

[Taimyr]

Very good photos http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/

Seemed suitable for this thread (there's a gellery under each photo).

[Muffin]

He also says that it will be fifty years before we see any consequences worth noting, which is plenty of time to get a better idea of what is happening - then it will be two hundred years before any real problems arise.

When I was 10 I used to build snowmen, to ride the sledge on the hill side, to slide on the icy snow and generally I haven't seen the soil for 3 months.
When I was 14 the sledge got rusty between two rides. And it is *not* a figure of speech!!
When I was 18 we had snow less then 5 times in a year, and I was glad if I could find enough to make a snow ball.
When I was 22 the whole winter we had not seen one snow flake.

It's one decade, and these are changes that are definitely worth noting!
In my place people used to sow in the late autumn and wait for the snow to cover the seeds. The snow kept the seeds from freezing until the spring, when they would break and grow much faster.
Not having snow impacted the whole agriculture.
The old traditions, based on the cycle of the seasons, the secular experiences gathered from the study of the whether phenomenons, in less then a decade became useless, obsolete or even detrimental.

And then this scientist has the courage to talk about "changes worth noting".

I actually hope people will continue to live in denial, this way they won't prevent the inevitable. (as absurd this might sound)

[Jahn]

We rely on 'scientists' to connect to this forum.. perhaps Mother also relies on scientists to connect to other forms of 'forums'  eh?

Not sure that I am following in what you say Daphne. Mother Earth has no other connection to scientists more than they are a part of the ecological system upon her.