More evidence about "global warming"

Gentlemen,
If you haven't already seen this, you will find it enlightening.
Gerry

Being Older

I came across this article on the net and would like to share it with you guys.

Frank

Being Older

The other day a young person asked me how I felt about being old. I was taken aback, for I do not think of myself as old. Upon seeing my reaction, he was immediately embarrassed, but I explained that it was an interesting question, and I would ponder it, and let him know.

Growing Older, I decided, is a gift.

I am now, probably for the first time in my life, the person I have always wanted to be. Oh, not my body! I sometime despair over my body ... the wrinkles, the baggy eyes, and the cellulite. And often I am taken aback by that old person that lives in my mirror, but I don't agonize over those things for long.

I would never trade my amazing friends, my wonderful life, my loving family for less gray hair or a flatter belly. As I've aged, I've become more kind to myself, and less critical of myself. I've become my own friend. I don't chide myself for eating that extra cookie, or for not making my bed, or for buying that silly cement gecko that I didn't need, but looks so avant garde on my patio. I am entitled to be messy, to be extravagant, to smell the flowers.

I have seen too many dear friends leave this world too soon; before they understood the great freedom that comes with aging.

Whose business is it if I choose to read or play on the computer until 4 a.m. and then sleep till noon ?

I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes of the 50's & 60's, (and for some of us the 70's & 80's) and if I, at the same time, wish to weep over a lost love, I will.

I will walk the beach in a swim suit that is stretched over a bulging body, and will dive into the waves with abandon if I choose to, despite the pitying glances from the bikini set. They, too, will get old (if they're lucky).

I know I am sometimes forgetful. But then again, some of life is just as well forgotten and I eventually remember the important things.

Sure, over the years my heart has been broken. How can your heart not break when you lose a loved one, or when a child suffers, or even when a beloved pet gets hit by a car? But broken hearts are what give us strength and understanding and compassion. A heart never broken is pristine and sterile and will never know the joy of being imperfect.

I am so blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turn gray, and to have my youthful laughs be forever etched into deep grooves on my face. So many have never laughed, and so many have died before their hair could turn silver. I can say "no," and mean it. I can say "yes" and mean it.

As you get older, it is easier to be positive. You care less about what other people think. I don't question myself anymore. I've even earned the right to be wrong.

So , to answer your question, I like being older. It has set me free. I like the person I have become. I am not going to live forever, but while I am still here, I will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying about what will be. And I shall eat dessert every single day...(if I want).

Today, I wish you a day of ordinary miracles.
Love simply.
Love generously.
Care deeply.
Speak kindly.

LIVE WELL - LAUGH OFTEN - LOVE MUCH

OK, a couple of weeks ago I said I couldn't resist another posting on global warming. Here's another, also from the Opinion Page of the Wall Street Journal. Is it possible that the Journal is the only publication with courage enough to publish alternate views?

I very recently added a post in which I suggested we move on to another subject. But I can't resist adding just one more item, an article from the WSJ Opinion page of a few days ago.

I see that no one has done a post in the past two weeks, so perhaps we have exhausted our interest in global warming and should move on to another subject.

I have not made a post in quite some while, but this is not a reflection of disinterest. My wife, Mary, has been in hospital since Sep 4th, 23 of those days in intensive care. She had been extremely ill and will probably remain in the hospital for another 2 - 3 weeks followed by weeks in a rehab facility. So, my focus has been elsewhere.

Anyone want to kick off another topic?

The impacts of global warming

After I posted a article on this subject some time ago, Gerry fronted me a question whether global warming was a bad thing? I think he was implying that even if the earth was warming up for whatever reasons, it might not have a devastating impact on us. Although deep down in my mind I felt such phenomenon would not only have a long term imact on the environment, but also eventually jeopardise the existence of human race, however, I did not respond for lack of knowledge and substantial argument. Recently I came across the following article from WWF and I think it provides an appropriate response to Gerry's question, and I would like to share it with you guys:

Nature at risk
- the impacts of Global Warming

Climate change puts fish at risk

Animals and plants are under increasing threat from climate change. Human-induced climate change has already sounded the death knell for its first victims. The golden toad (Bufo periglenes) and the harlequin frog (Atelopus varius) of Costa Rica have disappeared as a direct result of global warming. Species are under threat in more than one way.

Irreversible changes to ecosystems and animals

As climate change wreaks its havoc across the globe, ecosystems could disappear altogether, or they may undergo serious and irreversible changes, such as those happening to coral reefs.

Warming affects cold seas and polar communities as well: Polar bears in the Hudson Bay area of Canada are losing weight and getting less fit because the ice breaks up 2 weeks earlier in spring, robbing them of 2 weeks’ hunting. Fish stocks that used to stay in Cornwall in south England have moved as far north as the Shetland Islands.

As average temperature increases, optimum habitat for many species will move higher up mountains or further towards the Poles. Where there is no higher ground or where changes are taking place too quickly for ecosystems and species to adjust, local losses or even global extinctions will occur.

Glaciers

Some of the most intense climate change-related habitat alterations are those that affect glaciers and ice-fields. Glaciers are retreating at an unprecedented rate, changing the entire ecology of mountain habitats. Conservation managers are powerless to prevent this loss and have to stand by as the ecology transforms before their eyes.

Seasons are changing

Rapid temperature changes affect the seasons, causing variations in season length. Changes such as shorter winters can lead to mismatches between key elements in an ecosystem, such as feeding periods for young birds and availability of worms or insects for food. It also impacts on farmers’ growing seasons.

Climatic records put together with long-term records of flowering and nesting times show clear warming trends. In Britain flowering time and leaf-break records date back to 1736, thus providing solid evidence of climate-related changes.

Long-term trends towards earlier bird breeding, earlier spring migrant arrival and later autumn departure dates have been observed in North America, along with changes in migratory patterns in Europe.

Here is an article about an academic's contrarian view of global warming published in the Ottawa Citizen on September 16th, 2007. It is a bit long but worth the time. Carleton University is one of the two universities in Ottawa.

The End is Not Near
Tim Patterson is one of few scientists who doesn't believe humans are warming the climate. 'I could be wrong,' he says, 'but I don't think so.' The Carleton professor talks about solar changes, cosmic rays and heated debate

Tom Spears
The Ottawa Citizen
Sunday, September 16, 2007
CREDIT: Bruno schlumberger, the ottawa citizen
'There's lots of people who think as I do and lots of people who think differently,' says Carleton geology professor Tim Patterson. 'It's the way science works. You go to any meeting, there's probably 10 scientists and 10 different opinions.'
"If I hadn't opened my big mouth a couple of times," says Tim Patterson. He doesn't finish the sentence, though it's pretty clear where the front half of it was heading. If he hadn't mounted a very public critique on the common view that fossil fuels are heating up our climate, then people wouldn't have called him names, wouldn't have accused him of being a mouthpiece for the oil industry, wouldn't have put him on the CBC.
He would have led an ordinary professor's life: teaching classes at Carleton University (among them, 500 students studying climate), attending conferences, raising three kids, writing research papers.
He has published some 120 papers.
It would have been a comfortable, low-profile life in a home near the Rideau River where he tries, most years, to jump-start his tomato plants in early spring with frost insulation.
But he did open his mouth.
Patterson has a solid reputation as a geologist who uncovers secrets of past eras buried in layers of sediment off Canada's Pacific coast.
His regular work shows how changing climatic conditions affect fish populations. When the balance between high- and low-pressure systems changes, the ocean responds. It either causes "upwelling," a rise in nutrient-rich water from the deep ocean, or prevents upwelling. Fish stocks boom or bust -- "often for several human lifetimes, and then it switches again." These biological changes leave evidence in layers on the ocean floor, his hunting ground.
"I see fish doing things, I see microfossils doing things, I see sedimentology doing things," he says. "And they're all responding to solar cycles." Remember those solar cycles for a minute. They are the key to the fuss, taking his study from the realm of fish stocks to the more emotional topic of whether humans are changing Earth's climate.
When he's not studying fish, he's talking -- often publicly -- about how humans are not really warming up the climate very much at all.
Here's the quick summary of his beliefs. Yes, greenhouses gases (largely carbon dioxide) can indeed turn up the heat in our climate -- but not by very much. At most, he believes, doubling the amount of carbon dioxide might add barely one Celsius degree to our climate.
More influential, he believes, are natural ups and down caused by solar cycles, changes in Earth's orbit, and cosmic rays that affect the formation of clouds, which in turn shade the Earth's surface.
Patterson is a geologist, not a scientist who studies the atmosphere directly. But he and many geologists have taken on the climate job by measuring what they call the paleo-record: As Earth's past ages swung through hot and cold cycles, they left different records in layers of ocean sediments, rocks, and even ice near the poles.
The main "drivers" of climate change, he believes, is a combination of solar changes (well-known cycles of the sun's intensity) as well as cosmic rays. These combine to make clouds, and he believes the resulting sunny or cloudy periods warm or cool the climate.
His views make him one of a minority of scientists who don't believe humans are heating up the climate -- a tiny minority, among pure climate scientists, though a more robust minority in the geology world.
And in the climate business, tolerance is sometimes in short supply.
Most science debate is vigorous but fairly polite. It's normal and healthy for scientists to take public shots at each other's work -- a way of testing new ideas rigorously, and forcing people to justify theories with evidence. And they're careful, usually, to avoid personal attacks on each other's character. You can write that Dr. Smith has messed up the evidence on quantum fishing lures (that catch and release at the same time). You can't write that Smith is a jerk.
Yet here's Nature, one of the world's top science journals, in an editorial in March: "... the high-jinks of the climate change skeptics already seem outdated, and many in their own party are starting to ignore them with the serene expression seen on the faces of parents when their children throw a temper tantrum in public. This is the duty of all sensible politicians as they move forward on climate change policy. The naysayers should be indulged no longer." Children? Temper tantrums? And the sharpest cut: "indulged?" Nature is saying their views deserve no place in scientific discussion.
Professors with minority opinions on such emotional topics can run into trouble at work.
During the 1990s, angry demonstrators demanded that Philippe Rushton be fired from the University of Western Ontario during the 1990s after he rated the relative intelligence of different races.
Last spring, Iowa State University turned down an astronomer for tenure. Guillermo Gonzalez has a stellar record of discovering planets outside our solar system -- but he believes in intelligent design, a form of creationism. Faculty members closed ranks: 131 signed a petition disavowing his beliefs, though not mentioning his name. Gonzalez thinks this blocked his tenure application, even though he had kept his intelligent-design beliefs out of the classroom and out of his research papers. His appeal -- rejected by the university's president -- alleged he was forced out by religious intolerance.
In Ottawa, Patterson acknowledges that consensus on climate change is a long way from his views, but says life is really not that uncomfortable. He debates opponents, but invites them to his cottage afterward. The university, he says, has never tried to push him around.
For instance, he says, he has respect from John Smol at Queen's University, who also studies layers of old lakes to see what the climate was doing. (Smol says these layers show man-made climate change. Patterson says they don't.) "I don't know Tim that well, but when I meet him I say Hi," Smol confirms. "I've acted as external (independent reviewer) for one of his students. And I cite his papers (in Smol's own research)." Most Patterson papers, Smol notes, aren't directly on climate change. "They're on things like pollution. ... I just accepted a paper of his for publication." Smol is editor of two science journals, the Journal of Paleolimnology and Environmental Reviews.
"We still totally disagree," he says. "My view is that science is self-correcting. My view" -- he starts to laugh here -- "is that it has corrected quite a bit (on climate change) but I'm sure he has a different view.
"It's not personal." Would he ever debate Patterson? Sure, he answers. "Then we'd go and have a drink and talk about the hockey game." Still, many journals that publish on climate change don't want to hear from any so-called skeptics, not ever. The giants Nature and Science are among them. This bugs Patterson a lot.
"The literature on this is quite large, and I would find it quite annoying if some editorial guy at Nature would say: Ignore anybody's scientific research that is against whatever he (Nature's editor) thinks the science is. That's a ridiculous thing to say." He continues research with support from the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (a federal funding agency) and the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Science. Both fund mainstream climate research.
The latter group gave him $598,000 over three years for a project called High Resolution Holocene Paleoclimatic and Paleoceanographic Records from Anoxic Basins Along the British Columbia Coast. NSERC gives him about $32,000 a year.
"That's the results that came out of it. What am I supposed to do? Say 'Oh, I didn't get the result that some editorial guy or the IPCC likes. I'd better not publish?' What a crazy thing to say.
"As scientists, all we can do is go where the research results take us. And where I am now, it's unfortunate that it's very unpopular. ... And it's not like it's a big payday or ... anything. I've never got a nickel of any non-government research money. So it has probably hurt me in some big grants, but I still am pretty well funded." "Anyway, there's lots of people" who agree with him, he says.
Which may well be true, says one who should know. "He's certainly not alone in geology. It's quite remarkable," said David Piper, who works for the Geological Survey of Canada at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Dartmouth.
Piper is editor of a journal called Marine Geology, and served last year as president of the Geological Association of Canada.
A large proportion of geologists tend to oppose the theory of man-made climate change, he notes.
"My impression in the earth sciences ... is that most geologists in Calgary, most geologists who work closely with the oil industry, a lot of geologists in the mining industry are highly skeptical of anthropogenic climate change." He did an informal survey during his term as president of the geological association, "and I got the impression that perhaps 40 per cent of the geological community was highly skeptical. This comes up at pretty much every geological meeting we have." He says these views are often "ill-informed," as geologists tend to be too far removed from the main elements in climate -- gases in the atmosphere, ocean currents, exchange of gases between oceans and atmosphere, and so on. But the skeptical views still exist, sometimes deeply.
Jim Turk, president of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, is happy to see situations like Patterson's: The Carleton geologist, he says, is taking a position that's unpopular with most university scientists, but no one is forcing him to conform or back off.
"And who knows? Somewhere down the road he may be vindicated. The odds are overwhelmingly that he won't. It's rare to have this kind of scientific consensus in a field, especially in a field that's this politicized," Turk said.
"That said, we want to protect the right of people who disagree to have their disagreement heard, and for them to criticize others and for others to criticize them." Universities must still draw a line somewhere, he notes. If the Flat Earth Society demands the right to teach geography, the university has to say No. But where and when it draws the line can be contentious. Last year there were calls to fire political scientist Shiraz Dossa, who attended a conference in Iran that was widely seen as a Holocaust-denying propaganda effort. Turk and his association defended the professor's right to go, and said calls to fire Dossa were McCarthyesque.
Back to Patterson: The basis of his view is that climate bounces up and down all the time naturally. Geologists are better at understanding this than scientists who study the atmosphere, he claims, because geologists are used to looking at long records -- many millions of years -- while atmospheric measurements focus on a few decades.
"The 1930s were quite mild in the Arctic, about a degree warmer than today," and then the temperature fell from the 1940s through the 1970s.
"Let's look at the polar bear examples. There are what, 11 populations? And most of them are really expanding. If I was a reporter here's the question I would ask: How did the polar bears make it through the 1920s and 1930s (a warm time with less ice)? Then I'd go back. How did they make it through the medieval warm period, a period of several centuries when it was still quite a bit warmer?" Then there was the Holocene Hypsithermal, a warm period of 2,000 to 3,000 years soon after the last ice age ended. The polar bears survived that, too.
Earth is not warming, he says. "We're squiggling our way back down to the next ice age. Over the last million years ... the cycle is about 100,000 years of ice age, and 10 or 13 or 14 thousand years of interglacial" -- the warm time between ice ages.
"It's just ratcheting down to the next ice age, no matter what. Anthropogenic warming or not. It's just Milankovitch cycles" -- cyclical changes in Earth's tilt and orbit that cause ice ages.
"Long about the late teens, or 2020, solar cycle 25 is going to be the weakest since the early part of the 19th century, and it's coinciding with several of these orbital changes and sunspot cycles all happening at the same time. That's going to be a prelude to a significant interval of very cold conditions, as cold as the coolest parts of the Little Ice Age." (That's the period from the 16th to mid-19th centuries when mean temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere fell sharply, with the biggest drops in winter. Frozen rivers in southern England and the Netherlands were common then, though almost unknown now.) Under such conditions, he warns, western Canada's growing season would be too short to grow wheat.
The point is that a weak solar cycle creates less solar wind, allowing more cosmic rays from deep space to hit Earth's atmosphere and create clouds. We get less sunshine and less heat.
"There's lots of people who think as I do and lots of people who think differently. It's the way science works. You go to any meeting, there's probably 10 scientists and 10 different opinions." That goes for government scientists too, he says -- only they're not free to say so in public."It would probably be a lot easier for me to get money (i.e. research grants) if I were gung-ho that the world is going to blow up tomorrow." He has served as adviser to Friends of Science, a small but assertive group of Canadian professors who argue against climate change theory.
There have been cheap shots. One came from an activist being interviewed on CBC Radio "What about Dr. Patterson saying all this?" the interviewer asked. "And then (the activist) said: 'Oh, he's just in the pocket of Big Oil.' And that was the end of it." The professor says he has never taken support from industry or other private sources.
His views "could be wrong, but I don't think so," Patterson adds. "And the people on the other side will say the same thing: 'I could be wrong, but I don't think so.' And then over time as evidence comes in, we have to change our ideas if better ideas come along." In the meantime, he'll continue to jumpstart his tomatoes in early spring, while there's still time. A dozen years from now, they may get frozen out by a chilling Earth.
- - -
A quick summary of Tim Patterson's beliefs: Yes, greenhouses gases can turn up the heat in our climate -- but not by very much. More influential, he believes, are natural ups and down caused by solar cycles, changes in Earth's orbit and cosmic rays that affect the formation of clouds
© The Ottawa Citizen 2007

Global warming in China

Finally I hope to contribute to the RX Forum.
That mankinds influences the global changes is clear to me and after watching the movie of Al Gore "An Inconvenient Truth" I am convinced that something needs to be done. We don't need to wait till the scientist have proven everything 100%. Then we are too late!!
The scientists know the major causes of the greenhouse effect and we have all the technologies in house to reduce them, but we are lacking the political will to take tough measures. Instead we are pointing at other countries to take the first steps and are blaming developing countries like China and India for giving the economy a higher priority.
Currently the awareness of environment and the infuence of human being on climate changes starts to grow in China, but not enough. The economy is still most important and they like to impress everybody with their fast development.
The waste of energy is still enormous when you see for example Shanghai and the Suzhou Development Zone by night where every big building and almost every individual tree is illuminated in the evening.
However when China starts to discover that environment protection is also good for their economy as well they will be very quick in taking measures to introduce the new technologies and will even start to export them.
I know that China is late in taking steps but I am convinced that they will do that it will be 10 times faster than the Netherlands and most of the other countries.

I must say again that I am a believer in global warming caused by greenhouse gases. There are clearly two camps on the subject - those who deny it and those who support it. Each side seems to be able to assemble a significant number of convincing arguments to support its point of view and to attack the arguments of the other. Many of the voices seem very shrill as they try to score points against their opponent. The reality is probably somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. The last thing I have read is that while nothing has been absolutely proven, the areas of doubt about the causes of global warming are getting smaller and smaller as more scientific work is done and the results compiled. The concerns for global warming have spawned a great many efforts to attempt to mitigate the phenomena. As David points out this has resulted in many things being initiated which will mean that mankind will use the earth's resources more carefully and efficiently. This has got to be a good thing - even though it remains to be seen if these efforts alter the course or velocity of global warming. A strategy that attempts to loook into the future for a hundred years is better than no strategy at all. Mankind should be able to make mid-course corrections as new information becomes available. If President Teddy Roosevelt had not had the vision and the drive to initiate the US National Parks system over 100 years ago we, the public, would not be able today to enjoy the likes of Yellowstone National Park in its mostly natural state. I have confidence that our world's politicians and scientists will "mudddle through" this most complex and difficult issue and eventually get it "right". Of course most of us, or maybe none of us, will be around to look back on this tumultuous time and be able to assess in an historical sense how on track our current efforts are.

After a miserable couple of months Global warming as reached the UK again - so I have spent much time on the computer recently.

Despite any counter arguments as to what is causing the climate changes, surely the situation is such that if reducing Carbon emissions is the only thing we can do - however little, then at least we should be moving in that direction. After all it might just be the full solution.
If the by product is that we conserve some of the finite natural resources of the Earth, then that can be no bad thing either.
In the end excess consumption of anything is not resolved by politicans but by universal peer pressure and therefore I am less worried by the science being overstated than of cynicism creating inertia.
We are already seeing significant demand driven changes in Europe and it appears that the directional momentum will achieve a lot more than national or notional target reductions.
So it could be that Al Gore's approach is right and that purely by repeating the story enough peer pressure is created that behaviour patterns are changed and the technological solution are then activated
I would have thought that 2-3 % GNP investment in looking for solutions to a possible catastrophy, is definitely a bet worth taking.

David Parkinson