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

As parados is sucking his thumb in the corner, may I have a go ?

For one year :
I would add the datum from each thermometer for each second for one year to achieve a total. This Total I would divide by the number of secs in a year and then move the decimal point 3 places to the left. I would do this 100 times.

For 100 years :
I would add the datum from each thermometer for each second for 100 years to achieve a total. This Total I would divide by the number of secs in 100 years and then move the decimal point 3 places to the left.

Note I have avoided trending two other trends which is a silly thing to do.

Matalin claims the Earth is cooling


Skeptics of climate change often say the world has been cooling in the past decade.

Conservative pundit Mary Matalin made that claim on CNN's Situation Room on Oct. 22, 2009. Matalin warned that the Obama administration is pushing too many big legislative initiatives such as a cap-and-trade plan to slow global warming when the administration should be focusing on the deficit.

"If they care about reducing the deficit, which should be their No. 1 priority ... they're not going to be able to do this " all this other nonsense, cap and trade and all the rest of it. Too much, too fast," Matalin said. "Climate change is a fake issue anyway. ... There is not consensus science on what is causing global climate change. There is climate change, but for the last decade the climate has been cooling. There is the science. There is the data on that. They want to do this because they like to have all these programs being controlled by the government."

So, Matalin acknowledges that the Earth's temperature is changing, but she's not so sure that those changes are man-made. We'll save the debate over whether climate change is caused by human activity for another day. For now, we're going to check Matalin's claim that the Earth has been cooling in recent years.

Last spring, we checked a similar claim made by the Cato Institute, a free-market think tank. The group claimed that there has been no net global warming for over a decade; we found that False because the climate scientists we spoke with said that, while temperatures have remained relatively static over the last decade, very little can be learned about climate change in a 10-year window.

Matalin's office sent us a few articles pertaining to the issue, two about a new book by Christopher Booker, a British author and climate change skeptic, who wrote in the Oct. 25 issue of the British newspaper the Telegraph that, "as the world has already been through two of its coldest winters for decades, with all the signs that we may now be entering a third, the scientific case for (carbon dioxide) threatening the world with warming has been crumbling away on an astonishing scale."

Another study, published by Bob Carter, a professor of geology at Australia's James Cook University, in the Jan. 20 issue of the Australian newspaper argued that "global atmospheric temperature reached a peak in 1998, has not warmed since 1995 and, has been cooling since 2002."

Carter is correct that global temperatures hit a high point in 1998. Several entities " including NASA, the Climate Research Unit in the United Kingdom and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States " track temperature changes. Generally speaking, their records show that 1998, a year when a warming pattern called El Nino ruled the weather, is the hottest we've had since scientists started collecting temperature information in the mid 1800s. NASA, on the other hand, pins 2005 as the hottest year on record.

But no matter how you slice the data, temperatures have indisputably fluctuated in the last decade, contrary to Matalin's suggestion that they have cooled. This graph from NASA shows that the temperature increased slightly between 2000 and 2001, dropped in 2002, and rose once again the following year. In this case, the annual mean temperature goes up and down, and the five-year mean is on a steady rise. This graph from NOAA shows a similar trend, with temperatures dipping slightly at the beginning of the decade and peaking once again in 2005.

We asked Richard Heim, a meteorologist at the NOAA National Climatic Data Center Climate Monitoring Branch, what to make of all these ups and downs.

At the most, it shows a plateau, he said. But certainly not a cooling trend.

"With climate change, not every year is going to be warmer," Heim said. "It's two steps up, two steps down " that's not a indication we're on a massive cooling trend."

NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt recently told the Associated Press the same thing:

"The last 10 years are the warmest 10-year period of the modern record," he said. "Even if you analyze the trend during that 10 years, the trend is actually positive, which means warming."

If 1998 is the starting point, a year many climate skeptics tend to cite, everything looks cooler in comparison, said Raymond Bradley, a climate scientist at the University of Massachusetts. He also pointed out that, when evaluating the impact of climate change on temperature, it's misleading to look at only the last 10 years.

A decade is such a small period of time that "it's like saying, 'It was cold here last week. What happened to climate change?'" Bradley said.

It's a point we heard repeatedly from the climate experts we interviewed. They all agreed that, while climate temperatures may dip from year to year, it's shortsighted to say changes within a decade mean that climate change is going away.

"If you just take a one-year comparison " say that it's cooler in 2008 than it was in 2007 " that's an improper use of statistics" to make judgments about climate change, said John Reilly, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "It still remains much warmer than it was in the 1960s. To the extent that there has been some slight cooling, we still remain half-a-degree above what it was then."

Indeed, climate records show that temperatures have been on the rise since the middle of the century, and that fluctuations between recent years are relatively small compared to overall increase. NASA estimates that global temperatures have risen a total of 2.3 degrees since 1895, and that 13 of the warmest years since 1850 have occurred in the last 14 years.

Jim Hurrell, a senior scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., says these natural temperature variations are expected.

"In the same way that El Nino made 1998 warm, in 2007 and 2008, La Nina made global temperatures a bit cooler than they have been running, but still much warmer than the long-term average," Hurrell said referring to El Nino's cooler counterpart.

Citing just the last 10 years "is a classic case of taking the data and letting it tell a very misleading story," he said.

Matalin said, "for the last decade the climate has been cooling." That suggests there has been a distinct reversal of the steady warming that scientists have documented for many years. But a review of the data shows that's not the case. The numbers show that in the past 10 years, global temperatures have not continued their sharp increase. But they have not cooled either. In fact, some years in the last decade have been hotter than the previous years. At most, they could be described as hitting a plateau. But they haven't cooled as Matalin said. We find her claim False.

In dead Vineyard oaks, a warming warning

By Beth Daley, Globe Staff | November 2, 2009

WEST TISBURY - Ever since a vast tract of Martha’s Vineyard forest died two years ago, visitors who stumbled upon the graveyard of gray stalks have called it eerie, bizarre, and sad.

Now scientists are calling it something else: a possible climate change lesson.

The 500 acres of dead oak trees were the epicenter of an islandwide infestation of caterpillars that munched their way through millions of leaves for three consecutive springs ending in 2007. Then a severe summer drought hit the island, finishing off tens of thousands of the weakened trees.

“I have never seen anything like what has happened on Martha’s Vineyard in New England,’’ said David Foster, a Harvard University ecologist. “Usually you walk through forests and see some dead trees, but here, it’s hundreds of acres and almost all of the trees in it are dead.’’

Ordinarily, such catastrophic damage would be chalked up to bad luck. But Foster, who is also director of Harvard Forest, the university’s experimental forest in Petersham, and other researchers recently discovered a vast die-off of Cape Cod coastal oak trees 5,000 years ago during an abrupt warming period. They found evidence of the forest’s demise in sediment samples from under lakes and ponds, and they speculate that the ancient - and far smaller contemporary - episodes may have roots in the same type of one-two climate punch: more-active bugs coupled with an intense drought.

Scientists predict that in a warming world, insects will thrive, and droughts and other extreme weather will become commonplace. With the prospect of more numerous bugs feasting on weakened trees, Foster wonders whether the recent die-off is a harbinger of more catastrophic ones in the future. While the dead trees will certainly be replaced by new ones, what species repopulate forests has ramifications for everything from lichen to leaf-peepers.

“These trees control the foundation of an ecosystem,’’ said Foster, whose group has just been awarded $100,000 from the National Science Foundation to study the Vineyard forest. “What happens when they collapse? We are trying to understand how everything in that forest copes.’’

Nobody foresaw the death of the oaks. In the spring of 2004, an intense caterpillar infestation gripped the trees for two weeks, raining thousands of inch-long green-and-gray caterpillars on the heads of islanders and visitors.

Many thought the bugs were the despised European winter moth that shows up in horror-movie-like numbers off the island, but scientists were able to confirm that most of the bugs were a native fall cankerworm. Not that the news was much better: Cankerworm moth numbers were legendary that winter when they emerged as adults, splattering car windshields so thoroughly that drivers could hardly see.

“The first year, it was a shock’’ that the leaves were disappearing so quickly, said Tim Boland, executive director of the Polly Hill Arboretum in West Tisbury, as he picked his way last week over lichen-covered dead oak branches that littered a narrow Arboretum path.

“Then it was, ‘They came. They went. Let’s hope they don’t come again.’ But they did . . . twice. And so did the drought,’’ he said, pointing to the lifeless trees around him that are part of the epicenter of the destruction. About 17 acres of the Arboretum’s trees were killed off.

The 2007 dry period began in July, with less than 2 inches of rain that month, according to the National Weather Service. Thousands of trees began dying across the island but for some reason, virtually all the trees in the 500-acre swath did. Boland suggests the forest’s location may be partly to blame - elevated and sandy, the ground may not have been able to hold enough water for the weakened trees. Foster isn’t sure that is the answer.

Across the island, communities are struggling to deal with dead trees that pose a safety hazard if they fall on roads or walking paths. In West Tisbury, executive secretary Jennifer Rand said, officials are going after only the “deadest of the dead’’ trees because there is not enough money to remove them all.

Polly Hill and private landowners in the dead-oak epicenter are not cutting the trees, a situation that is allowing Foster to understand how the forest recovers on its own.

The researchers have tantalizing clues to their climate theory. First, by examining long, cylindrical cores of sediment extracted from Cape Cod lakes and Vineyard ponds, they discovered that oak pollen dramatically declined about 5,000 years ago - at the same time as other sediment and vegetation records indicated warmer temperatures and drought conditions.

Second, scientists have known for years that New England’s vast hemlock populations also crashed 5,000 years ago, a situation initially attributed to insects because hemlock pests were found in a peat bog sample from that time.

But it would be unusual to have two enormous populations of trees crash at the same time, suggesting there was an underlying reason at play, such as climate. While just a pest outbreak or a drought may not have killed the trees, the combination - whether it was a drought followed by pests or vice-versa - could have wiped them out.

“Insects are always around with patchy disturbances, but you don’t see them wipe out entire species,’’ said Wyatt Oswald, assistant professor of science at Emerson College and a Harvard Forest research fellow who is studying the phenomenon.

There is another link to today. Just like 5,000 years ago, a pest is wiping out New England’s majestic hemlock trees. The nonnative woolly adelgid is mostly contained in southern New England because scientists believe it’s too cold for the insects to advance northward. But New England winters have warmed around 4 degrees Fahrenheit in the last 40 years, and researchers believe the pest will make inroads into more northern regions as temperatures warm.

“It’s what makes the story interesting,’’ Oswald said. “The same two types of trees are dying at the same time’’ today, just as they did 5,000 years ago.

Today, the researchers are carefully watching what grows on the forest floor now that the sun is no longer blocked by oak leaves. Thorny catbriar and sassafras are filling in the gaps between the dead oak trunks. And beech trees are gaining a stronger foothold. Scientists say the pollen record shows the same thing happened 5,000 years ago, when the coastal oaks gave way to beech.

“Climate change will drive changes in the forest,’’ said Harvard’s Foster. “But they will be more rapid if the forest is also impacted by bugs.’

November 1, 2009
Good Dog, Smart Dog
By SARAH KERSHAW

Life as a Labradoodle may sound free and easy, but if you’re Jet, who lives in New Jersey, there is a lot of work to be done.

He is both a seizure alert dog and a psychiatric service dog whose owner has epilepsy, severe anxiety, depression, various phobias and hypoglycemia. Jet has been trained to anticipate seizures, panic attacks and plunging blood sugar and will alert his owner to these things by staring intently at her until she does something about the problem. He will drop a toy in her lap to snap her out of a dissociative state. If she has a seizure, he will position himself so that his body is under her head to cushion a fall.

Jet seems like a genius, but is he really so smart? In fact, is any of it in his brain, or is it mostly in his sniff?

The matter of what exactly goes on in the mind of a dog is a tricky one, and until recently much of the research on canine intelligence has been met with large doses of skepticism. But over the last several years a growing body of evidence, culled from small scientific studies of dogs’ abilities to do things like detect cancer or seizures, solve complex problems (complex for a dog, anyway), and learn language suggests that they may know more than we thought they did.

Their apparent ability to tune in to the needs of psychiatric patients, turning on lights for trauma victims afraid of the dark, reminding their owners to take medication and interrupting behaviors like suicide attempts and self-mutilation, for example, has lately attracted the attention of researchers.

In September, the Army announced that it would spend $300,000 to study the impact of pairing psychiatric service dogs like Jet with soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder. Both the House and Senate have recently passed bills that would finance the training and placement of these dogs with veterans.

Hungarian researchers reported in a study last year that a guide dog for a blind and epileptic person became anxious before its master suffered a seizure and was taught to bark and lick the owner’s face and upper arm when it detected an onset, three to five minutes before the seizure. It is still somewhat mysterious how exactly dogs detect seizures, whether it’s by picking up on behavioral changes or smelling something awry, but several small studies have shown that a powerful sense of smell can detect lung and other types of cancer, as the dogs sniff out odors emitted by the disease.

Beyond these perceptual abilities, in which trainers can use the dogs’ natural instincts, some research has examined dogs’ actual cognitive ability, and found not just good doggie, but smart doggie.

“I believe that so much research has come out lately suggesting that we may have underestimated certain aspects of the mental ability of dogs that even the most hardened cynic has to think twice before rejecting the possibilities,” said Stanley Coren, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia and an author of several books on dogs.

Dr. Coren’s work on intelligence, along with other research suggesting that the canine brain processes information something like the way people do, has drawn criticism. And there is good reason. For most of the last century the specter of a horse named Clever Hans hung over anyone who tried to prove that dogs were acting in thoughtful ways " not merely mimicking or manipulating people into believing that they in fact grasped human concepts.

Clever Hans was said to be able to count, make change and tell time by tapping his hoof, until investigators in the early 1900s learned that Hans was merely responding to his trainer’s body language, tapping when the trainer nodded his head. This provided an enduring example for those who believed thought was the exclusive domain of humans.

But in 2004, German researchers reported that a border collie named Rico could learn the name of an object in one try, had 200 objects in his repertoire and remembered them all a month later, all very human. Even skeptical animal behavior researchers found the Rico results impressive and sound. Is it possible that Rico turned the tide on the Clever Hans problem, even though there is debate about how we can reliably measure what dogs know?

By giving dogs language learning and other tests devised for infants and toddlers, Dr. Coren has come up with an intelligence ranking of 100 breeds, with border collies at No. 1. He says the most intelligent breeds (poodles, retrievers, Labradors and shepherds) can learn as many as 250 words, signs and signals, while the others can learn 165. The average dog is about as intellectually advanced as a 2- to 2-and-a-half-year-old child, he has concluded, with an ability to understand some abstract concepts. For example, the animal can get “the idea of being a dog” by differentiating photographs with dogs in them from photographs without dogs.

But Clive D. L. Wynne, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Florida who specializes in canine cognition and has himself said he met a border collie who knew 1,500 words, takes issue with efforts to compare human and canine brains.

He argues that it is dogs’ deep sensitivity to the humans around them, their obedience under rigorous training, and their desire to please that can explain most of these capabilities. They may be deft at reading human cues " and teachable " but that doesn’t mean they are thinking like people, he says. A dog’s entire world revolves around its primary owner, and it will respond to that person to get what it wants, usually food, treats or affection.

“I take the view that dogs have their own unique way of thinking,” Dr. Wynne said. “It’s a happy accident that doggie thinking and human thinking overlap enough that we can have these relationships with dogs, but we shouldn’t kid ourselves that dogs are viewing the world the way we do.”

Parados, cut the dodge! I ask how would you do this.

ASSUME:
(1) There are 1,000 electronic thermometers distributed uniformly over the entire surface of the earth, including its lands, oceans, and surface waters;
(2) The temperatures in each thermometer is recorded electronically in a common computerized data base each second of every year;

How would you compute the average annual global temperature for each year within a 100 year period, and for the entire 100 year period?

Ionus, thank you for having "a go" and answering my question.

I notice that parados can frequently criticize what others do without providing evidence that supports his criticisms.

I didnt aim to interfere, but rather leave the most important part still to be answered. It can be inferred from your question that there is a deeper question to be uncovered in it. What would be an adequate period of time to measure climate ? Having found one unit, it then has to be compared with other units. What is a reasonable number of units to have a trend ? This can not be determined by saying "well, we only have 30 years so that will have to do". We can have a flood that occurs once every hundred years or a 10 year long drought and these without changing the climate.

I could do it a multitude of ways. Just like I said you could..

Here are a couple of valid ways...
One way to do it...
X= daily recorded high temperature
Y =daily recorded low temperature
(X1+Y1+X2+Y2+...Xn+Yn)/2n
Of course you would have to factor out null values.



Another way to do it if you want the anomaly

Z=(X1 +Y1 +...X30+Y30)/60
Z = the average daily temperature over a 30 year time period.

(((X1+Y1)/2)-Z1)+(((X2+Y2)/2)-Z2)+ ...(((Xn+Yn)/2)-Zn)





How would you do it? Why do you think there is only one valid way?

And 5,000 years ago, when it hit then ? Global Warming then too ? Or do we tend to find what we are looking for ?

There is nothing in drought or insect swarms that suggests climate change. Except the researches are being funded by climate change money. It is hard to say you have found the end of the matter. It is easier to say more research is required when what is really being said is more money please ! In the best case for Global Warming it is still only a sugestion. Even lots of suggestions are not science.

We wont be checking the claim that it has been warming before that ? Or the claim that is was really warming or plateau-ing when it was cooling ?

The above contrasts rather markedly with the following:

Well, which is it ? If it is hot then 10 years is acceptable. If it is cold then 10 years can be brushed aside.

What the hell is that ?
Another independent finding.

If you were writing a scientific paper, you would have to list the assumptions and why you made those assumptions. You would also have to explain any possible errors and how they were eliminated.

For example :
Assumption 1. That the temperature range of a 24 hr period anywhere on the earth can be approximated by a bell-shaped curve.

Assumption 2. That there is so little variation in the warming and cooling rates in a 24 hr period anywhere on the earth that the mid point of the max and min temp is also the average temp or that there is so little variation as to be neglible.

Possible error 1. Data recorders are not in the best positioning to measure climate change.

Possible error 2. Estimates of the land areas where there are no recorders are inaccurate because these areas are different in the amount of heat they store or release over a 24 hr period.

Possible error 3. Estimating the air temp over oceans from the sea temp is fundamentally flawed.

Possible error 4. Inadequate allowance has been made for weather fluctuations and its effect.

Should I go on ? There is no need for me to write this paper, others have done a better job of it.

Two interesting posts sumac, but I think they demonstrate some bias. It concerns me when I see articles presented as news when they are more advertising than science. The average person doesnt have the background to be critical, especially as Global Warming follows on the heels of the Green movement which has already been in our schools for years unchallenged. But I am still curious, if not Cap and Trade, then what ?

I don't know. I just think that cap and trade will not accomplish much.

And I also believe that the findings above of the Cato Institute are biased and wrong.

I also have no real idea as to what could be done. I have often thought that the planet needs help, we will run out of resources, using oil has been a political disaster causing wars and funding religious fundamentalism and terrorism, and if The Greenies and Global Warming Thuggees can be tempted with something reasonable, then all the better. But I have never been able to come up with anything with a carbon basis of pre-supposed warming. As soon as I change to a poison basis of chemicals causing cancers, then solutions become more obvious.

Senate Panel Approves Climate Legislation

By David A. Fahrenthold
Thursday, November 5, 2009 11:01 AM

MANHATTAN, Kan. -- A curious debate has broken out among American environmental groups, as the U.S. Senate finally, balkily starts to focus on the threat of climate change.Is this really the time to talk about the threat of climate change?

Now, some groups have actually muted their alarms about wildfires, shrinking glaciers, and rising seas. Not because they've stopped caring about them -- but because they're trying to win over people who might care more about a climate bill's non-environmental side benefits, like "green" jobs and reduced oil imports.

Smaller environmental groups, however, say this is the wrong moment to ease up on the scare, since that might send the signal that a weaker bill is acceptable.

At the heart of this intra-green disagreement is a behemoth of an unanswered question. Even after years of apocalyptic warnings about climate change, how much will Americans really sacrifice to fight it?

"It's a lack of faith in the American public," said Kieran Suckling of the Center for Biological Diversity, an Arizona nonprofit, talking about the light-on-climate ads used by bigger groups. "If the scientists, the environmentalists in our country do their jobs, and explain the test of climate change, the public will come along.""Instead of doing that job," Suckling said, "we're running away from it."

The debate about how best to sell climate legislation is flaring now because this could be the culminating moment of a years-long effort to cap U.S. greenhouse gases. And playing down the threat from a warming climate may come with a cost for environmental groups, if it appears to give Senators license to weaken measures aimed at helping the environment, like caps on greenhouse gases. Already, the push for energy "made in America" has given industry an opening to press for things some green groups don't want: more offshore drilling in U.S. waters, and more support for the U.S. coal business.

Lou Hayden, of the American Petroleum Institute, said that his group does not debate environmentalists about climate science. But he said they will fight environmentalists on the jobs question, saying that the climate bill will kill more than it creates.

"Is it easier to respond to the jobs [argument] and to the kind of operational economic questions? Yes," Hayden said.

This summer, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would cap emissions by 2020, using a complex scheme called "cap and trade" that would allow companies to buy and sell allowances to pollute. But a similar bill has bogged down in the Senate, because most Republicans and many Democrats worry it would cause costly jumps in energy prices.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed its bill on Thursday despite a boycott from its seven Republicans. The bill passed 10 to 1, with Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) voting no.

Washington Post-ABC polls this year have shown that a steady but thin majority of Americans, 52 percent, favor a "cap and trade" bill. But a different poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press showed that, even after years of alarms about global warming, American opinions on the topic still seem to be shifting.

That poll found that a majority, 57 percent, of Americans think there is solid evidence of warming -- but that's down from the 71 percent who thought so in April 2008.Now, given the slow progress in the Senate, some green groups say they want to broaden their appeal beyond committed environmentalists, to the skeptical, the agnostic, and the distracted. That means downplaying doomsday predictions, and focusing on positives: a climate bill will create jobs in the renewable-energy industry, and keep money away from oil-state villains.

In 2006, for example, a well-known TV spot from the Environmental Defense Fund and the Ad Council showed a global warming as a speeding locomotive bearing down on a little girl.

This year, however, the train is gone. So is the word "warming." Instead, one spot from the Environmental Defense Fund shows solar panels and windmills, while an announcer talks about jobs and a reduced dependence on foreign oil.

"We need more renewable energy that's made in America and works for America, creating 1.7 million jobs," the narrator says. It doesn't mention the word "climate," but instead talks about cutting "carbon pollution," using a phrase common in recent ads by several groups.

"It's two words that are pretty easily understandable," said Daniel Lashof, of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "I mean, scientists like to talk about 'greenhouse gases.' Nobody knows what that means."On Tuesday night, climate activist Nancy Jackson was speaking to one of the most climate-skeptical audiences in the country: Kansans. She was speaking to college students here in Manhattan -- a town where one religious leader was only able to draw congregants to screenings of "An Inconvenient Truth" by passing out Nerf balls, so they could hurl them at the image of Al Gore.

"Take climate change off the table, OK?" Jackson said, after reciting evidence that the climate really is changing. "You don't have to buy it for everything I'm about to say, because everything we do [to combat climate change] is a good idea for at least three other reasons."

She told the students that Kansas has an abundance of wind, sun and crops like corn and prairie grasses -- all potential sources of renewable power. The message worked, at least on 21 year-old student Matthew Brandt. He said he doesn't believe in climate change, but -- after hearing Jackson's talk -- he was interested in windmills.

"I plan to have a wind turbine on my property," after graduation, Brandt said. "I figure it's a good investment."

One of the groups critical of the good-news approach to climate advocacy, the World Wildlife Fund, is running its own ads underlining fears about what climate change will bring. In Montana, the ads talk about increased wildfires. In Indiana, it's floods. In Maine, stronger storms.

"The reality is, we need to save ourselves," said Carter Roberts, that group's president. "The connection between an intact planet and people's well-being . . . is the part of the equation that's missing."

MY GUESS
We have about 200 years before we stop expanding our discovery and development of additional oil, natural gas, and coal resources within the earth to provide adequate fuel for our expanding dependence on energy production.

Thus, 200 years is how much time we have to find adequate alternatives. So far wind turbines, solar panels, and grown fuels are inadequate substitutes. We better focus on the development of real substitutes for oil, natural gas, and coal. In the meantime, nuclear energy is a temporary substitute until the amount of nuclear waste exceeds our capacity to find adequate safe storage locations for disposing of all of it.

We could use nuclear energy for much longer. A method has been developed whereby radioactive waste can be mixed with a special clay. There are some very reliable rockets that have been used for years. Current technology can make a capsule that is capable of surviving a re-entry. Strap the waste to these highly reliable rockets and point it at the sun. It doesnt matter how long it takes to go there. If there is an accident, the waste will be in one piece for retrieval. This is from 10 times and upward cheaper than storage and it is a permanent solution.

For my part, I am sick of paying for some Arab to add another 50 rooms to his palace. Anything that lessens our dependancy on oil is a good thing, not because of the environment but because of the politics. Except for cars that produce "only water" ...whoever thinks replaceing cars that produce carbon, the least demonstrable of all the green house gases with cars that produce water, the most blatantly obvious of all the green house gases, is a good idea is green beyond intelligence.

I am speechless at how cynical and corrupt you have to be to portray Global Warming like this....forget the science, go straight for the emotional throat. Use terror...

The World Wildlife Fund...now there's a bureaucratic joke for you...how much of your contribution goes to the organisations salaries and"expenses".
Wildfires, floods, storms...this is called the weather. We have been enjoying some of the calmest weather known for the last 10,000 yrs, probably because of the climatic plateau when the last glacial retreat stopped melting. It seems it has started to melt again, and our weather will become more variable. Running around in circles, waving your arms over your head and screaming "CARBON" wont change it. Neither will cutting back on carbon. We will get warmer, and the remnants of the last Glacial Advance will melt and our weather will have more energy because the planet will be warmer.

Aim radioactive waste at our sun? I don't think so. A means must be found to break it down into component parts for safe disposal.

The sun is constantly absorbing stuff from the universe due to its gravity. Much of that stuff is radioactive. Why not let the sun absorb some of our radioactive stuff if we are unable to break down enough of it into component parts for safe disposal on our earth?