--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Rick Archer" <r...@...> wrote: > > Hopefully to counterbalance some of the crap with which you choose to fill > your head:
Ask yourself, Rick, why you have chosen GOOD news to be crap and horrible, holocaustic news to be the truth. Even if the good news had only an ounce of probability to it, why treat it as "crap"? You should be hoping and praying that it's true and doing everything within your power to investigate whether there is value to it. It is irrational to take the "them and us" attitude vis a vis global warming. YOu should be happy that so many people now demonstrate the non-viability of the alarmist view. > ------------ > > CLIMATE-CHANGE CALCULUS > WHY IT'S EVEN WORSE THAN WE FEARED > By Sharon Begley > Newsweek > August 3rd Issue, 2009 > > http://www.newsweek.com/id/208164 > > Among the phrases you really, really do not want to hear from climate > scientists are: "that really shocked us," "we had no idea how bad it was," > and "reality is well ahead of the climate models." Yet in speaking to > researchers who focus on the Arctic, you hear comments like these so > regularly they begin to sound like the thumping refrain from Jaws: annoying > harbingers of something that you really, really wish would go away. > > Let me deconstruct the phrases above. The "shock" came when the > International Polar Year, a global consortium studying the Arctic, froze a > small vessel into the sea ice off eastern Siberia in September 2006. > Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen had done the same thing a century before, > and his Fram, carried by the drifting ice, emerged off eastern Greenland 34 > months later. IPY scientists thought their Tara would take 24 to 36 months. > But it reached Greenland in just 14 months, stark evidence that the sea ice > found a more open, ice-free, and thus faster path westward thanks to Arctic > melting. > > The loss of Arctic sea ice "is well ahead of" what the Intergovernmental > Panel on Climate Change forecast, largely because emissions of carbon > dioxide have topped what the panel -- which foolishly expected nations to > care enough about global warming to do something about it -- projected. "The > models just aren't keeping up" with the reality of CO2 emissions, says the > IPY's David Carlson. Although policymakers hoped climate models would prove > to be alarmist, the opposite is true, particularly in the Arctic. > > The IPCC may also have been too cautious on Greenland, assuming that the > melting of its glaciers would contribute little to sea-level rise. Some > studies found that Greenland's glacial streams were surging and surface ice > was morphing into liquid lakes, but others made a strong case that those > surges and melts were aberrations, not long-term trends. It seemed to be a > standoff. More reliable data, however, such as satellite measurements of > Greenland's mass, show that it is losing about 52 cubic miles per year and > that the melting is accelerating. So while the IPCC projected that sea level > would rise 16 inches this century, "now a more likely figure is one meter > [39 inches] at the least," says Carlson. "Chest high instead of knee high, > with half to two thirds of that due to Greenland." Hence the "no idea how > bad it was." > > The frozen north had another surprise in store. Scientists have long known > that permafrost, if it melted, would release carbon, exacerbating global > warming, which would melt more permafrost, which would add more to global > warming, on and on in a feedback loop. But estimates of how much carbon is > locked into Arctic permafrost were, it turns out, woefully off. "It's about > three times as much as was thought, about 1.6 trillion metric tons, which > has surprised a lot of people," says Edward Schuur of the University of > Florida. "It means the potential for positive feedbacks is greatly > increased." That 1.6 trillion tons is about twice the amount now in the > atmosphere. And Schuur's measurements of how quickly CO2 can come out of > permafrost, reported in May, were also a surprise: 1 billion to 2 billion > tons per year. Cars and light trucks in the U.S. emit about 300 million tons > per year. > > In an insightful observation in The Guardian this month, Jim Watson of the > University of Sussex wrote that "a new breed of climate sceptic is becoming > more common": someone who doubts not the science but the policy response. > Given the pathetic (non)action on global warming at the G8 summit, and the > fact that the energy/climate bill passed by the House of Representatives is > so full of holes and escape hatches that it has barely a prayer of averting > dangerous climate change, skepticism that the world will get its act > together seems appropriate. For instance, the G8, led by Europe, has vowed > to take steps to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius by reducing CO2 > emissions. We're now at 0.8 degree. But the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere > is already enough to raise the mercury 2 degrees. The only reason it hasn't > is that the atmosphere is full of crap (dust and aerosols that contribute to > asthma, emphysema, and other diseases) that acts as a global coolant. As > that pollution is reduced for health reasons, we're going to blast right > through 2 degrees, which is enough to ex-acerbate droughts and storms, wreak > havoc on agriculture, and produce a planet warmer than it's been in millions > of years. The 2-degree promise is a mirage. > > The test of whether the nations of the world care enough to act will come in > December, when 192 countries meet in Copenhagen to hammer out a climate > treaty. Carlson vows that IPY will finish its Arctic assessment in time for > the meeting, and one conclusion is already clear. "A consensus has developed > during IPY that the Greenland ice sheet will disappear," he says. Cue the > Jaws music. > > ............ > > NHNE's Climate Change Resource Page: > http://www.nhne.org/tabid/490/Default.aspx > > NHNE's 1000 Most Recent Climate Change Articles: > http://www.nhne.org/tabid/1050/Default.aspx > > ------------ > > NHNE Wavemaker News List: > > Send Some Green Love To NHNE: > http://www.nhne.org/DONATE/tabid/398/Default.aspx > > To subscribe, send a message to: > nhnenews-subscr...@yahoogroups.com > <mailto:nhnenews-subscribe%40yahoogroups.com> > > To unsubscribe, send a message to: > nhnenews-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com > <mailto:nhnenews-unsubscribe%40yahoogroups.com> > > To review current posts: > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/messages > http://www.nhne.org/tabid/1044/Default.aspx > > Visit NHNE's Mother Ship: > http://www.nhne.org/ > > Visit NHNE's Online Community: > http://nhnecommunity.ning.com/ > > Visit Integral NHNE: > http://integralnhne.ning.com/ > > Sunfellow & NHNE on Twitter: > http://twitter.com/sunfellow > > Published by David Sunfellow > NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE) > eMail: n...@... <mailto:nhne%40nhne.org> > Phone: (928) 257-3200 > Fax: (815) 642-0117 > > P.O. 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