OT Record cold wave gripping the Earth.

[aluckyguess]

Dawned with Record Cold Gripping the Earth

Our recent cold spell comes at the end of a decade-long trend which has seen global temperatures flatline from their peak in 1998 . or fall.

That's right, the Earth is not warming - and hasn't been for the past twelve years.

But don't take my word for it. In one of the hacked emails constituting the Climategate scandal, Dr. Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, admits privately that he cannot explain the current cooler trends. "The fact is," Trenberth writes, "we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't."

The only "travesty" is that these scientists actually believed their own preposterous ravings, or that they placed such fervent apocalyptic faith in computer models. Did these overeducated ideologues miss the class in Geology 101 where you learn that on countless occasions over the last million millenia, great ice sheets covered much of the globe, only to recede for brief periods of interglacial warming? Did they plug that into their models? Or did they really believe this ancient cycle was discontinued because we started up our SUVs?

There are three reasons why these climate scientists - and their political and media enablers - need to be held to account:

1. They have used this junk science as leverage to pluck billions from the pockets of taxpayers in the United States and throughout the West, to subsidize everything from harebrained "green" technology that no one wants to gigantic wealth transfers to the Third World.

1. They have used their manufactured crisis to justify massive government power grabs at the expense of our liberty, such as the Environmental Protection Agency recently classifying CO2 emissions - literally our very breath - as a pollutant, and therefore under their purview of control.

2. They have dangerously distracted people from the real climate danger: the return of the ice.

[David Hare-Scott]

This is just propaganda. Nothing will be achieved by going round another 10 times other than wasting much bandwidth on a subject that is off topic. Why don't you take this up on alt.global.warming or some political NG.

David

[Wildbilly]

Oh, I know, Michael Crighton said it wasn't true. Oh, my god, how could all those fact based, elitist scientists get it so wrong? The figures given to the IPCC were wrong but, it doesn't change the overall picture of global warming. Maybe they move the decimal point. CO2 is easy to measure and, it is going up. It's going up by 2ppm per year.

's not going down. What do you think will happen with more and more CO2 in the atmosphere, nothing?

The increasing Arctic temperatures are releasing methane from the once frozen arctic tundra. On a molecule-for-molecule basis, methane is about eight times stronger as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Ibid.

Read: warmer, faster.

Pre-industrial, we were at 280 ppm CO2. At 450 ppm, the surface temperature of the planet will rise 3C and, you can say good-bye to most of Florida, and Galveston. We are at 387 ppm now and, if leaders sit up and pay attention, we may be able to stop CO2 at 550ppm. But for anything like normal, we need to get the CO2 down to 350 ppm.

if global warming is a dud, we will look silly for fighting it. If we do nothing and, it is as bad as predicted, a billion or more people may die from famine and disease. If you had to bet, what would you rather lose, your credibility or, your life? could lead to another mass extinction, including us. wrong with doubting but, be prudent.

'Nuff said.

[Bill who putters]

Not to worry. Hell it was 6 F. last week and TWO BIG storms are due shortly. Colder then it has been for awhile. Still the ocean heat sink has been diluted due to melting so solar does not hold light energy and we get extremes. Tis nothing read "The long Emergency" to scare the bugaboos out us? Seems all that excess man made CO2 may be short lived. Meanwhile infrastructure about is on hold for the last 30 years.

Bill

Snowed in blizzard reading below.

[Frank]

drive and walk this weekend ;)

[Frank]

Silly, no - stupid yes.

We're already driving industry off shore. Here in little Delaware we've lost 2 auto plants, a steel mill, DuPont's nylon plant and our only refinery, in large part because Delaware, as an EPA friend quotes, is a California Mini-me.

Go peddle your pap to the Indians and Chinese who are destined to be the worlds biggest polluters. Forcing industry to go there is just accelerating what you do not like. No question, it is cleaner in the US.

[Wildbilly]

And your proof is?

[aluckyguess]

IN the pudding. I don't need to proof anything it's the other way around. I want to know what were going to do with all those green batteries.

[Frank]

If any greenie volunteers will shovel all the global warming I'm getting this weekend they are welcome. They won't get paid but I will not have to pollute with my gas guzzling snow thrower ;)

[phorbin]

I really think you need to understand that emoticons don't change the underlying tone of an insult and that the people you derogate are probably a lot smarter than you think they are.

[Frank]

and you don't know me either ;)

[phorbin]

Cute response.

I don't have to know *you* to recognize that you are laying out bait. If you think you aren't and you think you aren't being insulting I suggest you step into others' shoes for a moment and read what you've written.

I answered the embedded issue for two reasons. It was bugging me and because you seem smart enough to do something reasonable and constructive with a lart.

Practically speaking, on USENET we are our words. There is no personality that exists outside our words. --Our language and presentation convey it all and there's a permanent record of that portrayal. What we know of each other and what we get to know of each other are the words.

Now let me ask you a question.

If you, through some global warming inspired program were offered the opportunity to insulate your home better, buy an energy star fridge, freezer and stove and set up your home to use less energy and save more money, would you take it and would the reason for the program matter much to you?

... I am, btw, a mostly coherent high wattage 510 nm green. It's a less expensive way to live once you get onto it.

[Frank]

Of course I do these things. Saving the environment is coincidental, saving money is paramount. My preference is for the free market to drive this issue. We all want a clean environment and conservation but a lot of us don't want it shoved down our throats.

[Wildbilly]

"Saving the environment is coincidental,saving money is paramount."

- Frank

You're a true ideologue, Frank.

My preference is for the free market to drive this issue.

- Frank

WASHINGTON ? For years, a Congressional hearing with Alan Greenspan was a marquee event. Lawmakers doted on him as an economic sage. Markets jumped up or down depending on what he said. Politicians in both parties wanted the maestro on their side. But on Thursday, almost three years after stepping down as chairman of the Federal Reserve, a humbled Mr. Greenspan admitted that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending.

you want to do for the environment, what the neo-liberals have done to the banking industry. You're insane, Frank.

------

Meanwhile, north of La-La Land, back in the garden, rhubarb has broken the surface of the soil, and some errant, unharvested potatoes, and garlic are spreading out leaves.

Buckle up, and tape up a roll or two of dimes, here comes another season :O) The buckwheat and the rye have sprouted in the gardening beds

[Frank]

[David Hare-Scott]

The trouble with that approach is that by the time the free market is hurting enough to do something very significant changes will have taken place which will be hugely expensive to fix (if it is possible at all) and they will cause immense human suffering along the way.

The free market corporation aims to maximise profit within the law (except for a minority who disregard the law part). In this country they are compelled to act that way by law, it is improper conduct for Directors to not seek to maximise profit if the action is lawful.

As an example of this tension between profit and environment under the law consider the way the free market has dealt with the environmental effects of the mining industry. It has very often taken the view that it is fine to protect the shareholders' profits by taking the short term view and if that craps all over the landscape well that is unfortunate. Government regulation and public opinion have been the factors that have made miners begin to take care of the environment and to take the longer view because if you are taking the short view protecting the environment cuts into profits. In the case of weak goverments that are too beholden to corporate power to legislate against their interests this situation is able to produce environmental disasters, and has done so.

I am not saying that corporations are any more greedy and likely to take the short view inappropriatley than the individual. We are all capable of thinking that way, of taking the personal profit against the common good. The corporation is an accurate and powerful proxy for these faults in the individuals who own shares, buy products and run the boardrooms, that is all of us.

The timing and the consequences simply do not permit the free market approach in the case of climate change. Therefore regulation is essential.

David

[aluckyguess]

What kind of immense suffering are you talking about.

[David Hare-Scott]

It depends on the degree of the problem and how fast it happens which depends on what action we take and when.

It could be low islands and some coastal areas being flooded, increased crop failures in marginal areas and minor changes of range of insect and microbial pests.

It could be wholesale flooding of occupied land, rapid desertification, continuous famine, mass displacement and wars following from these and population depletion bringing about economic collapse.

David

[phorbin]

And in some places it's already happening.

For instance, there's no "could be" to the people of Tuvalu.

[Frank]

Not that I don't believe in some regulation, e.g. you should not be able to build in a 100 year flood plain. It's a regulation in our northern county in Delaware but not in southern county along the beach. One of these days a class one (smallest) hurricane will hit them causing billions of dollars worth of damage to buildings that were not there 50 years ago. State meteorologist (censured by the Dem. governor) said we should not fight mother nature but get out of her way.