[ridenrain]

romanP romanP:

That's a political issue, not an environmental one.

Well here's a news flash. This whole thing is a political issue.
If you demand all western countries shut down industry and give money to a hand picked group of other countries, that's political.

[Zipperfish]

Arctic ice thinning, glacier melt accelerates

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

$1:

Scientists monitoring sea ice around the high Arctic and glaciers on the world's highest mountains are detecting ominous new changes linked to the warming global climate, they reported Tuesday.

The Arctic's thin and salty seasonal sea ice that freezes and thaws in the far north every year actually spread more widely this past winter, but the team of NASA scientists keeping watch over the ice by satellite said the much thicker perennial ice that normally remains throughout the Arctic summer has grown much thinner and some is already melting and drifting southward as winter ends.

In a related development, scientists at the World Glacier Monitoring Service, based at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, reported that some 30 major glaciers around the world are shrinking fast, threatening to increase floods in some regions and to decrease precious water supplies in others.

The extent of total sea ice - both thick and thin - around the North Pole reached an all-time low last year - nearly 25 percent less than the record low set two years earlier. This winter, the area of short-lived thin seasonal ice increased due to an episode of somewhat colder-than-average sea surface temperatures, but the thicker perennial ice that stays year after year declined substantially, the NASA scientists told reporters during a press briefing on the team's latest findings.

Perennial ice that lasts six years or more once covered as much as 60 percent of the oceans of the Arctic region, according to Walter Meier of the national Snow and Ice Center at the University of Colorado, but by last month, the same type of older sea ice had decreased to only 6 percent coverage, he said.

"That really old, thick ice is tough as nails," Meier said, "But it's growing thinner and thinner and much more susceptible to melting. You definitely have a situation now where the perennial ice is rushing out of the Arctic and into the Atlantic."

From the air, the ice appears to be covering most of the Arctic, Meier said, but it's all the thin stuff, and it melts every summer. "It's a facade, like a Hollywood set," he said. "There's no building behind it."

Meier and his colleagues, Josefino Comiso and Seelye Martin of NASA's Cryospheric Sciences Program, gather their data regularly from a satellite named IceSat that has been orbiting the poles since 2003 and measuring the declining extent of the ice as well as its thickness.

Meanwhile, Swiss scientists have been tracking the world's glaciers for more than a century, and the current team is now linked to the U.N. Environment Program.

Data from 30 glaciers in nine mountain ranges from Alaska, the Andes, Antarctica, the Alps and the Himalayas showed that between 2004 and 2006 the average rate of melting and thinning more than doubled, the team reported.

"The latest figures are part of what appears to be an accelerating trend with no apparent end in sight," said Wilfrid Haeberli, director of the Swiss-based glacier monitoring service.

The glaciers in the survey were melting at an average rate of about a foot a year between 1980 and 1999, Haeberli said. But since "the turn of the millennium," he said, the loss rate has increased to nearly 20 inches a year.

The rapid melting of glaciers in every mountain region poses serious dangers, from drinking water shortages to flash floods to decreases in available irrigation water, said Peter Gleick, president of the Oakland-based Pacific Institute, which is recognized as a major authority on water issues.

"This is more bad news from the real world," Gleick said Tuesday in a phone interview. "It's more evidence of climate change and it's pretty compelling.

"With so many glaciers melting faster, in the long run that means severely diminished water supplies for many parts of the world that need it badly."

[Zipperfish]

Gore uses videoconferencing to make point on global warming

From ComputerWorld (Matt Hamblen)

$1:

Global climate change was the topic of discussion via a live videoconference today between Nobel laureate Al Gore and Cisco Systems Inc. CEO John Chambers, both speaking from separate cities to an audience in Orlando.

Cisco's TelePresence system, the collaboration technology used in the hour-long session, became the focus of the discussion on ways to reduce pollution by lowering the need for workers to travel.

The high-quality videoconferencing network connected Chambers in San Jose and Gore in Nashville with Cisco Chief Marketing Officer Susan Bostrom onstage in Orlando in front of 2,500 attendees of VoiceCon 2008 and with a crowd in an office in a London suburb.

Gore praised the quality of the video transmission as an effective means of improving collaboration between groups around the globe, being careful to state that he is not a Cisco shareholder and wasn't paid to endorse the system. "I'm here because I'm close to home and it's easy to use," he said.

He said that efficient and high-quality videoconferencing "is one clear option that will play a role" in reducing pollution, which he linked to global climate change. "I think a lot of businesses will find this attractive," Gore said. "This is just spectacular. I just came a couple of blocks and can reach four different locations."

Gore spent most of his time talking about his mission of raising awareness of pollution and global climate change, topics that led to his winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

"The good news is that we're seeing movement [on climate-change issues] but not nearly enough," the former U.S. vice president said. "Today, as the Earth turns, we human beings will put 70 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere as if it were an open sewer." A chief pollutant is carbon dioxide, which is "invisible, odorless, tasteless, with no price tag, and is invisible to markets," he added. Gore called for governments to consider imposing CO2 emissions taxes on businesses and employees.

[kenmore]

Its all bullshit... just ask ridenrain and aging redneck.. westendguy its a liberal plot to give people a warm feeling

[sasquatch2]

My take is that this new ice/old ice is just new BS to explain away cooler temps where warmer were p[redicted by these hacks. ICE IS ICE.

Their own science/model indicated that the poles would warm more than the temperate or tropical areas.
They also predicted a faster rise in temperature in the lower troposphere---which is not detected by radiosond baallons or satellite----despite desperate adjustment of the satellite data.
Now it seems the world oceans have failed to reveal a warming in the worlds oceans, despite a global array of 3000 robot probes----infact a slight cooling was detected.

Conclusion: WHAT WARMING?

BTW: Recent glacial withdrawls have partially exposed Roman roads under glaciers and earlier "amber roads"....which indicates the recent retreats are not unprecedented.
High altitude medieval gold mines whose entrances have been blocked by glacial ice have reappeared.

It's been a bad year for the alarmists.
IT IS HIGH TIME WE STONED THE FALSE PROPHETS!!!!!!

[PluggyRug]

Two charts/graphs showing exactly what I was attemting to convey in an earlier post, that a reference is given to denote the "0" line.

The graph posted earlier does not give the relevent information as to the median given as "0".

[romanP]

ridenrain ridenrain:

romanP romanP:

ridenrain ridenrain:

Considering China is now #1 in the production of greenhouse gasses and is recognised as a far larger polluter than the US, why are they still a developing country?

That's a political issue, not an environmental one.

Well here's a news flash. This whole thing is a political issue.

Well, yes, it is, but not in the cynical way you're thinking of. A country doesn't get upgraded from developing to progressive just because they have the ability to put a lot of shit in the air. Most of that pollution comes from people burning coal and the fact that the number of people driving cars probably equals the population of the United States. On top of that, they don't have the pollution controls we do, which just helps to add to the problem.

$1:

If you demand all western countries shut down industry and give money to a hand picked group of other countries, that's political.

Who is demanding that?

[romanP]

sasquatch2 sasquatch2:

My take is that this new ice/old ice is just new BS to explain away cooler temps where warmer were p[redicted by these hacks. ICE IS ICE.

And rocks is rocks. I guess paleontologists and geologists should give up studying fossils and layers of rock, because rocks have no age, they're just rocks. Also, Noah's flood made the Grand Canyon.

$1:

Their own science/model indicated that the poles would warm more than the temperate or tropical areas.
They also predicted a faster rise in temperature in the lower troposphere---which is not detected by radiosond baallons or satellite----despite desperate adjustment of the satellite data.
Now it seems the world oceans have failed to reveal a warming in the worlds oceans, despite a global array of 3000 robot probes----infact a slight cooling was detected.

Or maybe your knowledge of how air mass affects water is severely flawed, or non-existant.

[Blue_Nose]

PluggyRug PluggyRug:

Two charts/graphs showing exactly what I was attemting to convey in an earlier post, that a reference is given to denote the "0" line.

The graph posted earlier does not give the relevent information as to the median given as "0".

There you go - if that's the same case with the graph I'd been mentioning (and from the appearance, it does), then I was wrong.

I'm not sure how that affects anything though - I guess without knowing the actual magnitude of the global temperature its harder to assess the relative change, but nevertheless, the trend in the data is still apparent.

That being said, the benefit would be that different sets of analysis from different researchers would have a common method of standardizing their data for comparison - I suspect that's the purpose of doing so.

[PluggyRug]

Blue_Nose Blue_Nose:

I'm not sure how that affects anything though - I guess without knowing the actual magnitude of the global temperature its harder to assess the relative change, but nevertheless, the trend in the data is still apparent.

Yes I agree.

Am still trying to find any temperature data from much earlier periods to add to the current information. Then to plot the median using the new data.

[BartSimpson]

romanP romanP:

ridenrain ridenrain:

If you demand all western countries shut down industry and give money to a hand picked group of other countries, that's political.

Who is demanding that?

That's a summary description of the Kyoto Treaty.

[sandorski]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

romanP romanP:

ridenrain ridenrain:

If you demand all western countries shut down industry and give money to a hand picked group of other countries, that's political.

Who is demanding that?

That's a summary description of the Kyoto Treaty.

Uh, no. That's merely one sides spin on Kyoto.

[Blue_Nose]

PluggyRug PluggyRug:

Blue_Nose Blue_Nose:

I'm not sure how that affects anything though - I guess without knowing the actual magnitude of the global temperature its harder to assess the relative change, but nevertheless, the trend in the data is still apparent.

Yes I agree.

Am still trying to find any temperature data from much earlier periods to add to the current information. Then to plot the median using the new data.

The data set from the GISS is available HERE.

and it gives the method of obtaining the values on an absolute scale (ie, the actual temperature): you add 14C to the values in the graph.

[PluggyRug]

Blue_Nose Blue_Nose:

PluggyRug PluggyRug:

Blue_Nose Blue_Nose:

I'm not sure how that affects anything though - I guess without knowing the actual magnitude of the global temperature its harder to assess the relative change, but nevertheless, the trend in the data is still apparent.

Yes I agree.

Am still trying to find any temperature data from much earlier periods to add to the current information. Then to plot the median using the new data.

The data set from the GISS is available HERE.

and it gives the method of obtaining the values on an absolute scale (ie, the actual temperature): you add 14C to the values in the graph.

Thanks.

[BartSimpson]

As to Global Warming being political...

$1:

“…we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination…. So we have to offer up scary scenarios,
make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts…. Each of us has to decide what the right balance
is between being effective and being honest.“

- Stephen Schneider,
Stanford Professor of Climatology
lead Author of many IPCC reports

***************************

“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.“

- Timothy Wirth,
fmr US Under Sec of State,
current Head of the UN Foundation

*****************************


“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”

- Christine Stewart,
fmr Canadian Minister of the Environment

******************************

“The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.”

- emeritus professor Daniel Botkin

******************************

“The concept of national sovereignty has been immutable, indeed a sacred principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation.”

- UN Commission for Global Governance report (1999)

*********************************

“A New World Order is required to deal with the Climate Change crisis.”

- Gordon Brown, British Prime Minister

**********************************

“Adopting a central organizing principle… means embarking on an all-out effort to use every policy and program, every law and institution… to halt the destruction of the environment.“

- Al Gore, from Earth in the Balance

***********************************

“Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound
reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world
has ever experienced a major shift in the priorities of both
governments and individuals and an unprecedented
redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift
will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences
of every human action be integrated into individual and
collective decision-making at every level.“

- excerpt, UN Agenda 21

************************************

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the
industrialized civilizations collapse?
Isn’t it our responsiblity to bring that about?”

- Maurice Strong, former Secretary General of UNEP


****************************************