Rainy Days and Mondays
Monday, March 12, 2007NOWCAST - The expected heavy rains did not develop over the weekend locally but sure did in northern Washington and along the coast. We did enjoy very mild temperatures over the weekend with highs around 70d degrees. This coming week looks a bit cloudy Tuesday and Wednesday then fair weather the rest of the week with balmy temperatures in the 60's and maybe 70 again. All in all, a quiet weather week. Enjoy. Click side panel for latest forecasts.
OUTCAST - If you haven't watched the new documentary yet, The Great Global Warming Swindle, make a point to do so by clicking on the title and you can view it via Google.
Unlike Gores film, The Inconvenient Truth, where he mainly lectures with a PowerPoint presentation and shows graphs and data, this film is base almost entirely with interviews of well recognized experts. Climatologists, oceanographers, meteorologists, and other scientists present their views on just what is going on with the planet. The film also explains how the political aspect of global warming began in 1984. It also gives a hint to the incompleteness of the IPCC report on global warming.
I would highly suggest to those of you that want perhaps to know just what is going on from both sides of the argument to watch Gores film and then watch this other documentary. Then compare what you have just viewed and decide for yourself why the global warming debate is such a hot potato.
I am currently working on a short thesis of sorts with my thoughts on global warming and will post that soon on my blog. I have said for years that global climate change goes in cycles due to natural causes. I still believe that from every scientific fact that I have come across.
In the new documentary the scientists give good explanations about the CO2 issue and imply that the sun is the main culprit in our climate change cycles. They also show that man causes a very minute amount of CO2 gases compared with oceans, volcanoes, forests, plants and animals. Referring to Gores film they state that he was correct with the deposits of CO2 in ice core samples but what he did not say is that the high amounts of CO2 occurred decades after a warming period, not before. And the melting glacier ice used as an example in his film in Greenland have stopped flowing into the sea and was actually building up ice once again in 2006.
And not having examined every aspect of the new films statement, I am sure there is some exaggerations or omissions in information as would be the case in most documentaries that I have watched before. One must be careful not to overstate the facts. There is some middle ground to stand on and perhaps as things get sorted out, we will be standing upon it. Politics just needs to take a back seat.
Down Under - Appears Australians want to help save the planet but then again, there are priorities!
Gloom and Doom- The IPCC report which by the way is still undergoing review implies some pretty serious stuff to ponder. Extreme alarmism in my humble opinion. A few go like this:
Hundreds of millions of Africans and tens of millions of Latin Americans who now have water will be short of it in less than 20 years. By 2050, more than 1 billion people in Asia could face water shortages. By 2080, water shortages could threaten 1.1 billion to 3.2 billion people, depending on the level of greenhouse gases that cars and industry spew into the air.
Death rates for the world's poor from global warming-related illnesses, such as malnutrition and diarrhea, will rise by 2030. Malaria and dengue fever, as well as illnesses from eating contaminated shellfish, are likely to grow.
Europe's small glaciers will disappear with many of the continent's large glaciers shrinking dramatically by 2050. And half of Europe's plant species could be vulnerable, endangered or extinct by 2100.
By 2080, between 200 million and 600 million people could be hungry because of global warming's effects.
About 100 million people each year could be flooded by 2080 by rising seas.
Smog in U.S. cities will worsen and "ozone-related deaths from climate (will) increase by approximately 4.5 percent for the mid-2050s, compared with 1990s levels," turning a small health risk into a substantial one.
Polar bears in the wild and other animals will be pushed to extinction.
-- posted by Pat Timm @ 3:22 PM,
3 Comments:
- At 9:49 AM, said...
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While I can appreciate your determination to encourage public debate and awareness about the issue of climate change, it is my view that you misrepresent both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the general scientific consensus on climate change. While we may say whatever we wish about politicians and celebrities such as Al Gore, and his theatrical biopic which won the Academy Award, the fact is that the IPCC science that he presented represents the consensus of the best climate scientists in the world. There will always be dissent on every scientific issue, but to depict the scientific community as split evenly, or to say that the CO2 / climate change link is not the consensus view of reputable climate scientists is flat out wrong.
In the interest of'Truth' and dialogue I have included the following link to RealClimate.org which is a popular blog within the climate science community and addresses both the science of "The Great Global Warming Swindle," and the way it misrepresented a scientist featured in it:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/
Best,
Tamaso Johnson
Seattle - At 12:51 PM, said...
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Carbon Dioxide is an inferior radiator of IR energy both in spectral absorptive power and concentration with respect to water vapor. Climate models can only reach their predictions off of false positive resonant radiative absorption owing water vapor.
The fact that the modelers and scientists surrounding and inventing those models don't admit or call BS on the results says something very disturbing to me about relationships where money is exchanged for the data by politicians and special interests without these qualifiers. In this scenario, money now makes truth and fact relative with respect to science. - At 6:23 PM, said...
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Well, anonymous, scientists do recognize that CO2 is not as strong an absorber of infrared radiation as is water vapor and also recognize that CO2 in the atmosphere is at a lower concentration than water vapor. (For that matter, they also know that clouds shade the earth, that it is generally warmer during the day than at night, that it is generally warmer in summer than in winter. You may not put forward an objection based on the false claim that scientists ignore these things but others do.)
Putting all their knowledge together a huge number of scientists conclude and concur that CO2 can and does cause global warming (that is, makes the earth's temperature higher than it would be without the CO2) and that the constant and accelerating addition of CO2 to the atmosphere that results from the combustion of fossil fuels will cause and continue to cause warming.
Check this:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
