@Walter Hinteler,
I guess because it was the 20th year, and because the wall being up was such an important world event.
@Walter Hinteler,
Quote:For me, this day - November 9 - is more the day to remember the November Progrome (downplayed and trivialising called "Kristallnacht/Night of Broken Glass").
I felt a pang of guilt - I had forgotten yet it is one piece of history I hope is never forgotten or overshadowed by happier events.
@ican711nm,
Keep em coming ican, I thoroughly enjoy everyone of them.
Pity about your graph, though, it seems Global Warming Thuggees cant determine it is getting colder for the last 10 years, they see it as "negative warming".
@ican711nm,
I look forward to those posts, ican. Keep them coming.
Here is a little tidbit of history.
November 18, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
Ben Franklin on Global Warming
By BEN GELBER
Columbus, Ohio
FEW would argue that the debate on global warming engenders a lot of emotion. What else are we to make of comments that “within the last 40 or 50 years there has been a very great observable change of climate,” that “a change in our climate ... is taking place very sensibly” and that “men are led into numberless errors by drawing general conclusions from particular facts”?
That these comments were actually tossed around back in the late 18th century by the Pennsylvania doctor Hugh Williamson, Thomas Jefferson and Noah Webster reminds us that history has a tendency to repeat itself. (One can imagine what television talk shows would have been like then. Would Jefferson have promoted “An Inconvenient Treatise” only to be acrimoniously contradicted by Webster on “Hard Quoits,” assuming either could get a word in amid the jabbering of the host?)
In the 1780s, Thomas Jefferson opined in his “Notes on Virginia” that “both heats and colds are become much more moderate within the memory even of the middle-aged,” expressing views articulated as early as 1721 by Cotton Mather: “Our cold is much moderated since the opening and clearing of our woods, and the winds do not blow roughly as in the days of our fathers, when water, cast up into the air, would commonly be turned into ice before it came to the ground.”
The weather historian James R. Fleming has noted that the vexing scientific challenge in the climate debate has always been “the response of a large, complex, potentially chaotic system to small changes in forcing factors.” Benjamin Franklin understood climatic forcing factors better than anyone, surmising in a 1763 letter to Ezra Stiles that “cleared land absorbs more heat and melts snow quicker.” Franklin, our meteorologist emeritus for his seminal work on everything from lightning to northeasters, later surmised (correctly) that a prevailing haze over parts of North America and northern Europe was associated with the eruption of the Laki volcano in Iceland in June 1783, and was possibly the source for the exceptional chill experienced in the winter of 1783-84 in the colonies.
On the other side of the developing weather controversy in the late 18th century, Webster quarreled with Jefferson, insisting that he relied too heavily on the memories of “elderly and middle-aged people” for his observation that the climate had moderated. While Webster conceded an anthropogenic influence might still be at work, he argued that it caused something less than climate change: “All the alterations in a country, in consequence of clearing and cultivation, result only in making a different distribution of heat and cold, moisture and dry weather, among the several seasons.”
Hugh Williamson, astute in his understanding of the hydrological cycle, a key component in any climate change debate, wrote, “The vapors that arise from the forests are soon converted into rain, and that rain becomes the subject of future evaporation, by which the earth is further cooled.” A century and a half later, land-use studies would confirm quantifiable relationships between clearing trees for extensive farmland and changes in soil temperature, moisture distribution and local and regional climate responses, as well as the urban heat-island effect. In our time, we have learned that tropical deforestation is linked to as much as 15 percent of the world’s global warming pollution, largely due to the release of carbon dioxide, one of several “greenhouse gases” that trap and re-radiate terrestrial heat.
But the primary goal of Jefferson and other colonials in the national climate discussion was to scuttle the European notion that the New World’s climate was too harsh and deleterious for settlement. From Mather to Williamson and Jefferson and many others, the debate was a reaction to European attitudes regarding the presumed rigorous and unhealthful climate of North America.
Instead, early American writers painted a far more favorable picture of the American climate and fauna. The notion took hold that manmade climate change, specifically clearing untamed land for cultivation, would prove beneficial, ameliorating health problems by draining standing water and wetlands thought to breed disease and lethargy.
Not until the middle of the 19th century would the debate on North American climate change finally be put to rest by early climatologists who had cranked out numbers by hand from sparse and slowly accumulating weather observations and phenological data.
The clearing and cultivation climate-change debate of Jefferson’s era was driven by literary and anecdotal evidence in the absence of solid data. Now we have satellites monitoring high-latitude snow cover, thinning sea ice and deep-layered atmospheric temperature increases, coupled with ground observations revealing the disappearing snows of Kilimanjaro (85 percent ice loss since 1912) and many other glaciers.
The wealth of data now at our disposal, enhanced by high-resolution computer models that pioneer climatologists would have craved, has, curiously, not turned down the thermostat on the centuries-old global climate change debate, quite likely because the stakes are so much higher.
November 18, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
What They Really Believe
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
If you follow the debate around the energy/climate bills working through Congress you will notice that the drill-baby-drill opponents of this legislation are now making two claims. One is that the globe has been cooling lately, not warming, and the other is that America simply can’t afford any kind of cap-and-trade/carbon tax.
But here is what they also surely believe, but are not saying: They believe the world is going to face a mass plague, like the Black Death, that will wipe out 2.5 billion people sometime between now and 2050. They believe it is much better for America that the world be dependent on oil for energy " a commodity largely controlled by countries that hate us and can only go up in price as demand increases " rather than on clean power technologies that are controlled by us and only go down in price as demand increases. And, finally, they believe that people in the developing world are very happy being poor " just give them a little running water and electricity and they’ll be fine. They’ll never want to live like us.
Yes, the opponents of any tax on carbon to stimulate alternatives to oil must believe all these things because that is the only way their arguments make any sense. Let me explain why by first explaining how I look at this issue.
I am a clean-energy hawk. Green for me is not just about recycling garbage but about renewing America. That is why I have been saying “green is the new red, white and blue.”
My argument is simple: I think climate change is real. You don’t? That’s your business. But there are two other huge trends barreling down on us with energy implications that you simply can’t deny. And the way to renew America is for us to take the lead and invent the technologies to address these problems.
The first is that the world is getting crowded. According to the 2006 U.N. population report, “The world population will likely increase by 2.5 billion ... passing from the current 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion in 2050. This increase is equivalent to the total size of the world population in 1950, and it will be absorbed mostly by the less developed regions, whose population is projected to rise from 5.4 billion in 2007 to 7.9 billion in 2050.”
The energy, climate, water and pollution implications of adding another 2.5 billion mouths to feed, clothe, house and transport will be staggering. And this is coming, unless, as the deniers apparently believe, a global pandemic or a mass outbreak of abstinence will freeze world population " forever.
Now, add one more thing. The world keeps getting flatter " more and more people can now see how we live, aspire to our lifestyle and even take our jobs so they can live how we live. So not only are we adding 2.5 billion people by 2050, but many more will live like “Americans” " with American-size homes, American-size cars, eating American-size Big Macs.
“What happens when developing nations with soaring vehicle populations get tens of millions of petroleum-powered cars at the same time as the global economy recovers and there’s no large global oil supply overhang?” asks Felix Kramer, the electric car expert who advocates electrifying the U.S. auto fleet and increasingly powering it with renewable energy sources. What happens, of course, is that the price of oil goes through the roof " unless we develop alternatives. The petro-dictators in Iran, Venezuela and Russia hope we don’t. They would only get richer.
So either the opponents of a serious energy/climate bill with a price on carbon don’t care about our being addicted to oil and dependent on petro-dictators forever or they really believe that we will not be adding 2.5 billion more people who want to live like us, so the price of oil won’t go up very far and, therefore, we shouldn’t raise taxes to stimulate clean, renewable alternatives and energy efficiency.
Green hawks believe otherwise. We believe that in a world getting warmer and more crowded with more “Americans,” the next great global industry is going to be E.T., or energy technology based on clean power and energy efficiency. It has to be. And we believe that the country that invents and deploys the most E.T. will enjoy the most economic security, energy security, national security, innovative companies and global respect. And we believe that country must be America. If not, our children will never enjoy the standard of living we did. And we believe the best way to launch E.T. is to set a fixed, long-term price on carbon " combine it with the Obama team’s impressive stimulus for green-tech " and then let the free market and innovation do the rest.
So, as I said, you don’t believe in global warming? You’re wrong, but I’ll let you enjoy it until your beach house gets washed away. But if you also don’t believe the world is getting more crowded with more aspiring Americans " and that ignoring that will play to the strength of our worst enemies, while responding to it with clean energy will play to the strength of our best technologies " then you’re willfully blind, and you’re hurting America’s future to boot.
@sumac,
sumac wrote:So, as I said, you don’t believe in global warming? You’re wrong, but I’ll let you enjoy it until your beach house gets washed away. But if you also don’t believe the world is getting more crowded with more aspiring Americans " and that ignoring that will play to the strength of our worst enemies, while responding to it with clean energy will play to the strength of our best technologies " then you’re willfully blind, and you’re hurting America’s future to boot.
Clean energy is good!
CO2 emissions do not dirty our atmosphere and are not bad on that account.
The climate is changing for better or for worse, but there is no real scientific evidence that human caused CO2 emissions contribute significantly to that.
We even lack scientific evidence of what percentage of the CO2 in the atmosphere is caused by humans and what percentage is caused by ocean evaporation.
We lack scientific evidence of what percentage of average annual global temperature changes are caused by increases in CO2 in the atmosphere.
@sumac,
Quote:the world is getting crowded
Correct.
Quote:The world keeps getting flatter "
Correct.
But what in the above justifies lies ? If you want to address a problem, tell people what it is and focus on it. All these Global Warming Thuggees run the risk of our efforts becoming diluted if we do not specify what the problem is and tackle it. It can not be proven by science that Climate Change of any description is man made. As more people realise they have been lied to, we will have scientists in the "boy who cried wolf" syndrome. What authority do we use to point out real problems ?
Quote:But here is what they also surely believe, but are not saying: They believe the world is going to face a mass plague, like the Black Death, that will wipe out 2.5 billion people sometime between now and 2050. They believe it is much better for America that the world be dependent on oil for energy " a commodity largely controlled by countries that hate us and can only go up in price as demand increases " rather than on clean power technologies that are controlled by us and only go down in price as demand increases. And, finally, they believe that people in the developing world are very happy being poor " just give them a little running water and electricity and they’ll be fine. They’ll never want to live like us.
Boy, he earned his share of the money this dribble will bring in. Why doesnt he let people say for themselves what they believe ? Would their real arguments be too hard to deal with ?
@parados,
I just heard on the radio returning home from the coffee shop that CO2 emissions dropped this past year by the equivalent of one year's emissions because of the world recession. They claimed it's only a drop in the bucket, because when the economy picks up again, the increase in emissions will more than make up for this "loss."
Hadley hacked: warmist conspiracy exposed?
Quote:1079 emails and 72 documents seem indeed evidence of a scandal involving most of the most prominent scientists pushing the man-made warming theory - a scandal that is one of the greatest in modern science.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/hadley_hacked#63657
@parados,
Quote:Seas Grow Less Effective at Absorbing Emissions
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/science/earth/19oceans.html
The slowdown in the rise of the absorption rate resulted from a gradual change in the oceans’ chemistry, the study found. “The more carbon dioxide the ocean absorbs, the more acidic it becomes and the less carbon dioxide it can absorb,” said the study’s lead author, Samar Khatiwala, a research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
“It’s a small change in absolute terms,” Dr. Khatiwala said. “What I think is fairly clear and important in the long term is the trend toward lower values, which implies that more of the emissions will remain in the atmosphere.”
Quote:Ocean Less Effective At Absorbing Carbon Dioxide Emitted By Human Activity
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090216092937.htm
ScienceDaily (Feb. 23, 2009) " In the Southern Indian Ocean, climate change is leading to stronger winds, which mix waters, bringing CO2 up from the ocean depths to the surface. This is the conclusion of researchers who have studied the latest field measurements carried out by CNRS's INSU, IPEV and IPSL. As a result, the Southern Ocean can no longer absorb as much atmospheric CO2 as before. Its role as a 'carbon sink' has been weakened, and it may now be ten times less efficient than previously estimated. The same trend can be observed at high latitudes in the North Atlantic.
Consequently, as ocean water evaporates into the atmosphere, more CO2 will be emitted into the atmosphere and will stay there if the globe continues to warm. If the globe were to continue to cool as it has over the last 10 years because of continuing sunspot density reductions or other causes, atmospheric CO2 density may begin to decrease.
@Adanac,
If this is confirmed, this is a huge story. And it would be no surprise to me to be true.
Hackers broke into the servers at a prominent British climate research center and leaked years worth of e-mail messages onto the Web, including one with a mysterious reference to a plan to "hide the decline" in data about temperatures.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,576009,00.html
@cicerone imposter,
cicerone imposter wrote:I just heard on the radio returning home from the coffee shop that CO2 emissions dropped this past year by the equivalent of one year's emissions because of the world recession. They claimed it's only a drop in the bucket, because when the economy picks up again, the increase in emissions will more than make up for this "loss."
Global cooling including ocean cooling, provides another explanation besides "the world recession" for the current CO2 atmospheric density decrease.
A one year's reduction in CO2 atmospheric density equal to what has previously been the amount of a one year's increase, is a huge reduction. If the CO2 atmospheric density had merely remained the same, then perhaps its principal cause could be logically attributed to "the world recession." However, the actual magnitude of reduction cannot logically be explained merely by "the world recession." Something far more significant is obviously the primary cause of that CO2 atmospheric density reduction.
It would be nice if you for once got your facts straight, ican. It is NOT a decrease in CO2 in the atmosphere, which continues to increase. It is a DROP IN THE RATE OF INCREASE. In 2007, CO2 in the atmosphere increased by 3.3%
<damned keyboard froze and I had to reboot> To continue, whereas in 2008, CO2 only increased 1.7%. A drop in the rate of increase is not a drop in the total amount--it merely means that, for a time, it's increasing more slowly. It's still going up. Your "explanation" is, as usual, specious.
You are similarly wrong, and for the same reason, in your interpretation of the articles you cited about CO2 absorption in the oceans. They talk about the rate of absorption declining. That means the oceans are still ABSORBING CO2, they're just able to take up less. You are familiar with the concept of a carbon sink, aren't you, ican. The oceans have always been carbon sinks. they sequester CO2 and continue to do so, just more slowly. That is NOT the same as releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. If you will remember tge discussion here a year or so ago, As water heats up, CO2 within it is released, IF AND ONLY IF THE WATER IS AT SATURATION, THAT IS, IF IIT IS HOLDING THE MAXIMUM AMOUNT OF CO2 iIT CAN HOLD AT THAT TEMPERATURE. If it is not as saturation, it is not forced to give up any CO2. The release of CO2 at saturation is logrithmic. At a somewhat less than one dgree increase in temperature, which is where we are at now, the amount of CO2 it would give up IF THE OCEANS WERE AT SATURATION,, WHICH THEY ARE NOT, is miniscule, somewhere between one and two percent. At the same time, for the same time period, the amount of CO2 the oceans can hold has increased by about a third, since that is detrmined by the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere, which has increased by slightly more than a third (due to the anthropogenic release of CO2, which has seen a rise from about 280ppm to the current 384ppm). THE AMOUNT OF CO2 IN THE OCEANS IS RISING, AS WE SEE, SINCE THEY ARE GETTING MORE ACIDIC, DUE TO INCREASING CO2 WHICH REACTS WITH SEA WATER TO PRODUCE A WEAK SOLUTION OF CARBONIC ACID. That's a very simplified discussion, since there are a numbner of other processes at work too, which increase the ocean uptake of CO2. It is NOT being released, it is being ABSORBED. The CO2 increase in the atmosphere is NOT due to release from seawater.
