caption - Hot, hot hot.

[unk]

This Global warming crap has got to stop.

[marked]

unk said:

This Global warming crap has got to stop.

Amen, we need to reduce greenhouse emissions before it's too late.

[marked]

Bush has said previously that he recognizes the serious environmental problems created by such emissions and other so-called greenhouse gases.

[marked]

www.transbuddha.com/mediaHolder.php?id=1147

[horribilis]

I know how fashionable it is to blame everything on Bush, but I'm blaming the sun.

[marked]

The Earth is absorbing more energy from the Sun than it is giving back into space, according to a new study by climate scientists in the US.

They base their findings on computer models of climate, and on measurements of temperature in the oceans.

The group describes its results as "the smoking gun that we were looking for", removing any doubt that human activities are warming the planet.

The results are published in the journal Science this week.

The study attempts to calculate the Earth's "energy imbalance" - the difference between the amount of energy received at the top of the atmosphere from solar radiation, and the amount that is given back into space.

Rather than measuring the imbalance directly, the researchers draw on data from the oceans, in particular from the growing global flotilla of scientific buoys and floats, now numbered in the thousands, which monitor sea temperature.

Slow changes

"Measuring the imbalance directly is extremely difficult, because you are looking for a very small number on a background of very large numbers," Gavin Schmidt, one of the research team from the US space agency's (Nasa) Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, told BBC News.


What we are doing now is we are changing that imbalance at a rate which appears to be unprecedented over at least a thousand years
Gavin Schmidt, Nasa
"But we know how much energy is going into the oceans - that has been measured and over the last 10 years confirmed by satellites and in-situ measurements - and from our understanding of atmospheric physics, that has to be equal to the imbalance at the top of the atmosphere."

So data gathered from the oceans is plugged into a computer model representing the Earth's complex climate, including the atmosphere, oceans, winds, currents, greenhouse gases and other "pollutants". What emerges is that at the top of the atmosphere, our planet is absorbing 0.85 watts more energy per metre squared than it is emitting into space.

The reason the extra energy is trapped, the researchers say, is the human-produced greenhouse effect - elevated levels of gases such as carbon dioxide that absorb radiation from the Earth's surface which would otherwise disappear into space.


Animated guide to climate change (BBC)

Animated guide: Climate change
"This is almost unprecedented," said Gavin Schmidt. "The normal state of the atmosphere is that pretty much the same amount of energy that comes in leaves; and only when there are very large changes is that going to change.

"Historically, those changes have happened very slowly; but what we are doing now is we are changing that imbalance at a rate which appears to be unprecedented over at least a thousand years and possibly longer."

However, there is a time-lag between the absorption of energy at the top of the atmosphere and resultant heating of the oceans. The extra energy already trapped, according to the Nasa team, means that a global temperature rise of a further half a degree Celsius is inevitable, even if human production of greenhouse gases could be turned off tomorrow

[marked]

[unk]

Yah marked, I am beginning to lose a lot of sleep over this global warming fiasco.

Actually, I don't give a didlle dam about all this glpbal warming crap. You liberal nuts have got your brains washed again by Al Gore and his cronies. Warming and cooling of the earth has been going on since GOD created it. HE ain't done creating yet either. You guys need to take a couple of Tylenol, go to bed and get some rest. I for one ain't worried about this bullshlt one dam minute.

[marked]

unk said:

Yah marked, I am beginning to lose a lot of sleep over this global warming fiasco.

Actually, I don't give a didlle dam about all this glpbal warming crap. You liberal nuts have got your brains washed again by Al Gore and his cronies. Warming and cooling of the earth has been going on since GOD created it. HE ain't done creating yet either. You guys need to take a couple of Tylenol, go to bed and get some rest. I for one ain't worried about this bullshlt one dam minute.

That's because you won't be around for the results.

[marked]

unk said:

Yah marked, I am beginning to lose a lot of sleep over this global warming fiasco.

Actually, I don't give a didlle dam about all this glpbal warming crap. You liberal nuts have got your brains washed again by Al Gore and his cronies. Warming and cooling of the earth has been going on since GOD created it. HE ain't done creating yet either. You guys need to take a couple of Tylenol, go to bed and get some rest. I for one ain't worried about this bullshlt one dam minute.

NASA scientists or Unk? Hmmm, who should I believe? The downside of believing Unk is if he's wrong, the planet will cease to exist. The downside of believing NASA scientists if they're wrong, we just get a cleaner planet. And our fossil fuels will last longer.

[unk]

The Cooling World
Newsweek, April 28, 1975

www.denisdutton.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Here is the text of Newsweek’s 1975 story on the trend toward global cooling. It may look foolish today, but in fact world temperatures had been falling since about 1940. It was around 1979 that they reversed direction and resumed the general rise that had begun in the 1880s, bringing us today back to around 1940 levels. A PDF of the original is available here.

A fine short history of warming and cooling scares has recently been produced. It is available here. — D.D.



There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”

A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.

To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras – and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age” conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 – years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.

Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. “Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,” concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. “Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.”

Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases – all of which have a direct impact on food supplies.

“The world’s food-producing system,” warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA’s Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, “is much more sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago.” Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.

[end]