Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

maporsche wrote:

I'll assume that this is the report that Fox news is referring to.

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/quikscat-20071001.html

I don't see NASA saying anything about CO2 or other greenhouse gases.

So if Fox News reports the sun came up this morning, they are wrong, but if somebody else says it did, it is worthwhile. Great reasoning, maporsche.

okie wrote:

Who do you want to fund it, the Chicoms, or George Soros? Sheesh! It is getting weirder and weirder here on these threads.

You know, okie, given the changes in chinese society encouraged by western capitalist business interests, you could call them Chicaps and it would make just as much sense.

So if Fox News reports the sun came up this morning, they are wrong, but if somebody else says it did, it is worthwhile. Great reasoning, maporsche.

okie wrote:

maporsche wrote:

I'll assume that this is the report that Fox news is referring to.

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/quikscat-20071001.html

I don't see NASA saying anything about CO2 or other greenhouse gases.

So if Fox News reports the sun came up this morning, they are wrong, but if somebody else says it did, it is worthwhile. Great reasoning, maporsche.

In fact, they would be wrong. The Sun doesn't 'come up,' the Earth rotates.



Cycloptichorn

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So my feeble brain says yes, as the so-called greenhouse effect increases in proportion to the makeup of the atmosphere, which is obviously due to alot more than CO2, probably more due to water vapor, the temperature swings from daytime high to nighttime lows should become less, so the highs during the day should be lower and the lows at night should be higher. This of course takes the entire globe as an average and ignores all the regional variational changes. I don't know if you agree with that,

I cannot provide evidence to support or refute your theory. However, I would guess that if you replaced your phrase temperature swings with the phrase percentage temperature swings you would more probably be correct.

but my question is this, and maybe it has been obvious to everybody else, but based on CO2 alone, what increase in greenhouse or atmosphereic quality factor, expressed as a small fraction of a percent, is there and has this been calculated? And of course if it has been calculated, how is it meaningful if the same has not been done or can be done for water vapor, methane, and all the rest?

As a sign of the deepening urgency surrounding the climate change issue, the report, which was being printed Friday night, will be officially released by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Saturday.

U.N. says new report must spur climate change action

Sat Nov 17, 2007 8:58 AM EST

By Joe Ortiz
VALENCIA, Spain (Reuters) - Governments must do more to fight global warming, spurred by a new U.N. scientific report and damage to nature that is already as frightening as science fiction, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Saturday.

"This report will be formally presented to the (U.N. Climate Change) Conference in Bali," Ban told delegates from more than 130 nations in Valencia and praised them for agreeing an authoritative guide to the risks of climate change on Friday.

"Already, it has set the stage for a real breakthrough -- an agreement to launch negotiations for a comprehensive climate change deal that all nations can embrace," he said.

Ban singled out the United States and China, the world's top two emitters of greenhouse gases, which have no binding goals for curbs, as key countries in the process. He welcomed initiatives by both and urged them to do more.

"I look forward to seeing the U.S. and China playing a more constructive role starting from the Bali conference," Ban told a news conference. "Both countries can lead in their own way."

Ban said he had just been to see ice shelves breaking up in Antarctica and the melting Torres del Paine glaciers in Chile. He also visited the Amazon rainforest, which he said was being "suffocated" by global warming.

"I come to you humbled after seeing some of the most precious treasures of our planet -- treasures that are being threatened by humanity's own hand," he said.

"These scenes are as frightening as a science fiction movie," Ban said. "But they are even more terrifying, because they are real."

Delegates at U.N. climate change talks reached agreement on the 26-page document about the risks of warming, blamed mainly on human burning of fossil fuels, after several days of talks.

The document, which summarizes the latest scientific knowledge on the causes and effects of climate change, will be put before environment ministers in Bali, Indonesia, next month -- a meeting likely to agree a two-year strategy to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol whose first period ends in 2012.

The summary says human activity is causing rising temperatures and that deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, are needed quickly to avert more heat waves, melting glaciers and rising sea levels.

BALI MEETING

Scientists and government officials from the 130-state Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have boiled down the findings of three reports of more than 3,000 pages issued this year on the risks of warming.

Delegates from the environmental movement appeared relatively happy the synthesis had not watered down the message from the scientific advisers, as they had feared it might.

"The strong message of the IPCC can't be watered down - the science is crystal clear. The hard fact is we have caused climate change, and it's also clear that we hold the solution ... in our hands," said Hans Verolme, Director of environmental group WWF's Global Climate Change Program.

Delegates said the U.S. delegation had been at the centre of some of the fiercest debate this week.

Sources close to the discussions said the U.S. had tried to change or even remove a key section of the report which lists five main reasons for concern about the effects of warming.

"This has been a very tough week and we've had to debate and defend everything we wanted but the draft report that we submitted has remained intact and has even had additions made in terms of emphasis and even facts that have come to light," IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri told Reuters.

"When you're on strong scientific ground, you don't yield any ground. We have to make sure that scientific truth is not suppressed."

The Kyoto treaty obliges 36 industrial nations to cut emissions by at least 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. A new deal would aim to involve outsiders led by the United States and China, which have no Kyoto goals.

(Additional reporting by Alister Doyle in Oslo; editing by Tim Pearce)

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.

"Already, it has set the stage for a real breakthrough -- an agreement to launch negotiations for a comprehensive climate change deal that all nations can embrace," he said.

Sheesh!! How can you not laugh.

Quote:

Scientists Fault Climate Exhibit Changes
Smithsonian Head Denies Politics Altered Arctic Show Message

By James V. Grimaldi and Jacqueline Trescott
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, November 16, 2007; Page A01

Some government scientists have complained that officials at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History took steps to downplay global warming in a 2006 exhibit on the Arctic to avoid a political backlash, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

The museum's director, Cristián Samper, ordered last-minute changes to the exhibit's script to add "scientific uncertainty" about climate change, according to internal documents and correspondence.

Scientists at other agencies collaborating on the project expressed in e-mails their belief that Smithsonian officials acted to avoid criticism from congressional appropriators and global-warming skeptics in the Bush administration. But Samper said in an interview last week that "there was no political pressure -- not from me, not from anyone."

and further down the page...

Quote:

Samper, a candidate to become the 12th secretary of the Smithsonian following the ouster of Lawrence Small earlier this year, is scheduled to meet with the Board of Regents on Monday as they prepare to discuss another controversy: a $5 million donation from the American Petroleum Institute to fund the Natural History Museum's Ocean Initiative exhibit hall and Web site.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/15/AR2007111502550.html?nav=hcmodule

The American Petroleum Institute yesterday rescinded its offer to give the Smithsonian $5 million for a major exhibit hall and Web site on the world's oceans, ending a controversy destined for the institution's Board of Regents meeting on Monday.

...
I liked the article linked by McGentrix a couple pages back on the cosmic effects.
...

This is why scientists have been investigating mechanisms which could amplify the changes in solar output, scaling up the 0.1% variation into an effect that could explain the temperature rise of almost half a degree Celsius that we have seen at the Earth's surface in just the last few decades.

One is Joanna Haigh from Imperial College, London, UK. She realised that although the Sun's overall energy output changes by 0.1%, it changes much more in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum.

"The changes in the UV are much larger, between 1% and 10%," she says.

"And that primarily has an impact in the stratosphere (the upper atmosphere) - UV is absorbed by ozone in the stratosphere and also produces ozone, and this warms the air."

The theory makes some intuitive sense because over the last century the Sun has been unusually active - which means fewer cosmic rays, and a warmer climate on Earth.

"We reconstructed solar activity going back 11,000 years," relates Sami Solanki.

The Sky experiment showed ions could influence aerosol formation
"And across this period, the level of activity we are seeing now is very high - we coined the term 'grand maximum' to describe it. We still have the 11-year modulation on top of the long-term trend, but on average the Sun has been brighter and the cosmic ray flux lower."

Dr Svensmark agrees it would be wrong for anyone to claim the case has been proved.

"If anyone said that there is proof that the Sun or greenhouse gases alone are responsible for the present-day warming, then that would be a wrong statement because we don't really have proofs as such in the natural sciences," he says.