BLACKENED GLACIERS: Soot might be to blame for some of the warming climate in the Himalaya Mountain regin.
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SAN FRANCISCO—The Himalaya Mountain region is warming up three to five times faster than the global trends—or about half a degree Celsius per decade—and many of its glaciers are rapidly losing mass. Greenhouse gases alone cannot explain this warming, however, and several new studies are pointing to an old form of pollution: soot.
A thick cloud of soot covers most of India, produced in part by millions of small cooking stoves, which typically burn wood. Soot, also known as black carbon, is made of particles less than a micron wide resulting from incomplete, inefficient combustion. (A micron is one millionth of a meter.) Globally, soot from sources such as forest fires and power stations is considered a major contributor to climate. The particles linger in the air, where they absorb sunlight and contribute to warming the atmosphere; they may also affect cloud formation and precipitation. But soot also eventually falls to the ground. When it lands on snow it can significantly darken it, so that glaciers absorb more sunlight and are warmed.
Using data from an international atmospheric observatory in Nepal,Teppei Yasunari of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and his colleagues estimated the amount of soot that falls on a typical Himalayan glacier. The team’s computer simulations suggested that the soot can cause a decrease of between 1.6 and 4.1 percent in the glacier's albedo—a measure of its sunlight-reflecting "whiteness"—and that the resulting heating can cause up to a 24 percent increase in the annual snowmelt, Yasunari reported here Monday at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). The team made conservative assumptions when estimating the albedo reduction, Yasunari said, neglecting other potentially important factors. "Dust deposition, snow algae, wind and turbulence could bring further reductions," he said.
Also at the AGU meeting, Yasunari's co-author and Goddard colleague William Lau presented the results of a separate study today suggesting that soot heating the atmosphere over India could accelerate the glacier-melting effects of the warm currents that rise up to the Himalayan chain, in a "heat pump" effect.
Soot has already been implicated in the melting of the polar ice caps, and heating of the atmosphere over India was directly measured in 2007 by Veerabhadran Ramanathan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, and his colleagues. In that study the researchers also used a climate simulation to show that the soot could help melt the mountain range's glaciers. Ramanathan, who also spoke at the meeting Monday, says that the study by Yasunari and colleagues included a more detailed, local model of an actual glacier. "It's all looking at different pieces of the puzzle," he said.
Whereas the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere will contribute to warming the planet for many decades to come, Ramanathan says, the good news about warming agents such as black carbon is that they don't linger in the atmosphere for more than a few weeks. Mitigation efforts could show quick results. In fact, Ramanathan is leading a pilot project to introduce low-cost, low-pollution cooking stoves to rural Indian villages. The project is testing three approaches: wood-burning stoves that are more efficient and thus leave less black-carbon residue; stoves that burn natural gas produced from waste; and solar cookers. In addition to mitigating climate change, the new stoves could also make homes safer: In his talk, Ramanathan said that indoor cooking causes two million deaths per year in India alone.
Jeffrey Kargel of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said in a press conference Monday that the role of soot "adds a new wrinkle" to the story of glacier melting, but that in the big picture of climate change the main villains are still gases such as CO2. "I do want to make sure we keep our eyes on the 800-pound gorilla in the room, and that's greenhouse gases," he said.
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52 Comments
Add CommentIndia needs to manage her population.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe WORLD needs to manage its population, AND its greenhouse gases, AND AND AND
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood information on soot on ice, but remember that global dimming decreases the temperature around 1C. It takes a dirty coal power plant around 2 decades to start warming the world because initially the sun dimming pollution it emits counteracts the greenhouse gas it emits. By the way, the program to let people get subsidized solar ovens sure cuts down on soot emission.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisET TU, SCIAM?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd yet you scratch your head, and cross your over eyes, finger to your temple, wondering why skeptics are winning, and general populations are unmoved -- wondering why general public trust in science is on a steady decline, one that is becoming increasingly harder to hide, regardless of tricks employed?
WHY NO MENTION OF RK RAINA'S STUDY? Why the unabashed intellectual dishonesty? Is it really that important, and do you really think that it's going to help, if you keep one-sidedly PILING IT ON? It's not.
According to V.K. Raina, the Saichen glacier has not shown any remarkable retreat in the last 50 years. In fact, it is growing. Richard Armstrong, Senior Research Scientist at the University of Colorado (the same scientist who briefed Al Gore on glaciers), concluded, using satellite-gathered data, that there was no major melting in Himalayan glaciers above 5,400 meters. Little snout retreat, if any on any of the glaciers studied, and NO discernible pattern to glacier melt rates.
Sorry, SciAm, but you're starting to sound like Al Gore lately, and that's not a good thing at all.
Are you questioning the all powerful and mighty co2?!?! When did this recognition occur about co2 gases not being able to be responsible for all "the warming climate in the Himalayas". Must be awkward to have to backtrack from your absolutists' BELIEFS every time something contradicts them. But don't worry, just like when a woman's slip is showing we'll be polite enough not to say anything.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrom the abstract of said paper by V. K. Raina - "Siachen glacier of Karakoram Mountains, Ladakh its secular retreat":
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Abstract: The Siachen glacier is the second largest glacier known outside the polar and sub-polar regions and the largest in the Karakoram Himalaya. The glacier with a length of 74 km is an example of the nature and size of the glaciers that must have once existed in the Himalaya towards the end of the last Ice Age. This glacier, primarily, because of its size has remained an important topic of glacier study and survey. Observation of the glacier front from 1862AD till date has revealed that there may have been a rapid advance of 700 m or so between 1862 and 1909, which was subsequently neutralised by relatively faster retreat between 1929AD and 1958AD. The glacier along its snout front has since been in rest mode, a term used in glaciology to depict glaciers with very low or practically nil retreat."
So where do you get the idea that the glacier is growing?
And wouldn't it make sense that glacier melting would affect those at _lower_ elevations first, given that the temperatures there are already close to freezing? In that context, why should we _expect_ glacier melting above 5,400 meters, given that these are the highest and coldest areas of the Himalayas?
Sorry, but your arguments are not very convincing.
sdlawrence:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe abstract to Raina's paper is the following:
"The Siachen glacier is the second largest glacier known outside the polar and sub-polar regions and the largest in the Karakoram Himalaya. The glacier with a length of 74 km is an example of the nature and size of the glaciers that must have once existed in the Himalaya towards the end of the last Ice Age. This glacier, primarily, because of its size has remained an important topic of glacier study and survey. Observation of the glacier front from 1862AD till date has revealed that there may have been a rapid advance of 700 m or so between 1862 and 1909, which was subsequently neutralised by relatively faster retreat between 1929AD and 1958AD. The glacier along its snout front has since been in rest mode, a term used in glaciology to depict glaciers with very low or practically nil retreat."
So where do you get the idea that it is growing?
And why should we expect global warming to affect glaciers above 5,400 meters at the moment, given that these are the very highest and coldest elevations of the Himalayas? Shouldn't we expect rising temperatures to affect lower-lying glaciers first, given that temperatures rise above freezing more often in these parts?
Sorry, but your claims are not very convincing.
Glaciers are created by temperature alone. They need moisture and global precipitation patterns are the result of complex interactions among several realms in nature, one of which might be the effect of greenhouse gases, but it's hardly the biggest nor is it the driver; if it were we'd have seen even greater swings in climate over the last few thousand years that would correlate with it, and we don't. Milankovich cycles, and other long period variations about which we know only a little, are likely. Continue the research, but lets not try to solve a problem about which we know only a little as of now. Insist that some small but significant percentage of federal research funds be dedicated to science aimed at falsification of predominant theories before we invest trillions in fixes that may not even be relevant to the real conditions we are attempting to modify.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGlacier formation is a far more complex affair than glaciers melting away. The former generally takes place over the course of many millenia, but the latter can result rapidly simply from increasing local temperatures - which can arise from global warming, but also - as the article points out in the case of the Himalayas - from soot particles.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd yeah, we need more research funding - we need to know how bad things are likely going to get. But that things _will_ become pretty bad is by now firmly established. Recent news about methane emerging from the rapidly thawing Arctic permafrost and the oceans loosing their capacity to act as CO2 sinks only make this clearer.
And most of these investments would still be worthwhile even if Global Warming wasn't happening - oil and energy prices will likely continue to rise, and the sooner our economies shift to more energy-efficient patterns, the better for both our economies and ourselves.
Perhaps the approach taken on a single topic (global warming) is the major reason so many feel skeptical on the data and scientists.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe discussions should be on man's affluence on our environment, which can easily be demonstrated and illustrated to the populous. The models and the mathematics are much too difficult for most to understand - including me.
Is there a way to clearly show the ill effects man has had on this earth since the industrial revolution?
Forget the models and the math, and simply show our earth and what we have done to it.
Species that have become distinct; Oceans that are more acidic and thus destroying eco-systems; Glaciers retreating and the polar cap descreasing (since 1980, 20%); Dirty air; Dead zones along the oceans; Polution; etc.
The list goes on and on.
It is evident that more data is needed for a total consensus of the occurring factors involved with glacier melting a big part of it would include LMF wind charges and how they fluctuate within a certain region, due to several factors not yet known entirely.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes to soot from India as a major glacier-melter. Also in the Bering Sea and around the Arctic circle the soot from China causes the major part of the summer Arctic ice meltback. Dirty snow and ice melt much faster than the pristine white variety.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven Robert Hanson at NASA this week admits this with his own new study. Too bad that he can't admit that his other candidate for manmade-evil, CO2, is looking more and more like an innocent bystander picked out of the line-up because of inappropriate police prompting of the witness.
In criminal justice we say, torture statistics enough and they will confess to anything. Same goes for computer climate models.
Thanks for writing our recent results from our presentation on this Monday.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd like to add some on our results.
Our estimate of " lower limit" snow albedo reductions due to BC was over Himalayan glaciers, but the estimate on increasing snow melt runoff was not over a Himalayan glacier but a typical Tibetan glacier.
Some essence from the results on runoff increasing will be applicable for Himalayan glaciers.
Anyway, our estimation is considered to be minimal values.
In actual, much snow albedo reductions and the snow melt runoff increasing due to its albedo reductions are expected.
Much more direct observations on BC in Himalayan and Tibetan regions with modeling studies including snow albedo feedback are important for quantitative discussions.
People have been talking about the soot issue for several years, so I don't think that it is "new".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thissdlawrence:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Richard Armstrong, Senior Research Scientist at the University of Colorado..."
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..........says that most worldwide glaciers have a negative mass balance, which means the yearly snowfall is less than the yearly melt. Richard Armstrong says that most glaciers have been receding since 1850, and this has only accelerated during the past few decades. Here's an interview:
http://learnmoreaboutclimate.colorado.edu/full-scientist-interviews-and-links/scientist-interviews/video/richard-armstrong
Colorado’s rivers and streams could reach their peak runoff 20 to 30 days earlier than average this year because of the dust that coated the mountains, according to Andy Barrett, a hydrologist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder. The dirt was deposited in 12 dust storms between mid-December and early April.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this“This year appears to be a very heavy dust year,” he said.
http://www.postindependent.com/article/20090519/VALLEYNEWS/905189976/1074
-----------------
This same exact thing, except it was brown southwestern dust that coated our Colorado mountains this past winter, that caused a month-early snowmelt.
The local ski resorts have claimed a 3-week shorter ski season due to a warming climate over the past few decades, and the scientists at both the CIRES and NSIDC predict a hotter and drier Colorado in the future:
http://learnmoreaboutclimate.colorado.edu/full-scientist-interviews-and-links/a-hotter-drier-colorado
Dust storms speed snowmelt in Colorado
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAn unusually high number of the storms leaves a film of dust on the Rocky Mountain snowpack, causing it to melt earlier and forcing farmers to adjust. This could be the new normal, scientists say.
May 24, 2009|Nicholas Riccardi
DENVER — A series of unusual spring dust storms has left the snowcapped mountains of western Colorado stained brown and red, even a bit pink. The dust is speeding up the runoff to rivers that supply millions of people with water and raising fears of an increasingly arid West.
Twelve dust storms barreled into the southern Rockies from the deserts of Arizona, Utah and New Mexico so far this year. In contrast, four storms hit the mountains all year long in 2003. Eight occurred in each of the last three years.
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/may/24/nation/na-pink-snow24
Golly, I thought that "soot" was heavier then air, clung to the lowest areas of earth while Mt. Everest, and the Himalayan mountain range, are pretty tall! Too bad these climate "scientists" haven't found out about volcanoes! These things apparently spew out ash (soot) and chemicals miles and miles up in the sky, possibly as high as Everest! But, then, volcanoes don't give awards and don't have any money...Can't even sue 'em! Poor little pop-climatologists...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@Micheal Cook,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Even Robert Hanson at NASA this week admits this with his own new study."
Dr. Hansen has been publishing on Black Carbon for many years. So unless your perception of time is like that of Tolkein's Ents you are either ignorant of Dr. Hansen's previous works over more than a decade or you have an interests in spreading disinformation? Which is it?
2001
Trends of Measured Climate Forcing Agents
http://www.pnas.org/content/98/26/14778.full
Black Carbon (BC).
BC aerosols (soot), formed by incomplete combustion, cause a positive climate forcing by absorbing sunlight and heating the lower atmosphere (12). IPCC (3) estimates the BC forcing as +0.25 W/m2, but it is very uncertain. Jacobson (13) calculates a BC forcing of ≈0.5 W/m2, including enhanced absorption that occurs with internal mixing of aerosols.
2002
Climate Effects of Black Carbon Aerosols in China and India
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;297/5590/2250
Abstract:
"We found precipitation and temperature changes in the model that were comparable to those observed if the aerosols included a large proportion of absorbing black carbon ("soot"), similar to observed amounts."
2004
Soot Climate Corcing via Snow and Ice Albedos
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts
/2004/Hansen_Nazarenko.html
"Plausible estimates for the effect of soot on snow and ice albedos (1.5% in the Arctic and 3% in Northern Hemisphere land areas) yield a climate forcing of +0.3 W/m2 in the Northern Hemisphere. The "efficacy" of this forcing is ~2, i.e., for a given forcing it is twice as effective as CO2 in altering global surface air temperature."
That is just a random sample.
"Too bad that he can't admit that his other candidate for manmade-evil, CO2, is looking more and more like an innocent bystander picked out of the line-up because of inappropriate police prompting of the witness."
False Dichotomy: CO2 and Black Carbon are both forcings. It does not have to be one or the other. If you insist that is the case you have to explain why this decade is the hottest on the temperature record, the North American jet stream continues to inch northward, flora blooms earlier, animals and flora in the Northern Hemisphere are moving North, the Hardiness Zone is moving North, and the stratosphere is cooling.
@Spiff,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease lay off the doobage, OK? It is clearly having a deleterious effect on your cognition.
NonsenseThe Indian people have been lived in the Himalaya Mountain and cooked their dinner for thousands of years, and why the Himalayan glaciers begins to warm up and melt faster in this lately 200 or 100 years? You so-called scientists have long forgotten your destinationto tell the truth, to enlighten people and to benefit people. How can you pseudo scientists be so cruel to let cars, chimneys and arsenals to pollute and heat our globe unscrupulously but blame the innocent inhabitants in the Himalayan area? Have you had a moments thought that your false figures may mislead people and governments and let slip the last chance for human beings to take right actions to curb the globe warming? If you do not have a love heart for humans, you are machines and paws of the greedy politics and capitalists.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNonsense！The Indian people have been lived in the Himalaya Mountain and cooked their dinner for thousands of years, and why the Himalayan glaciers begins to warm up and melt faster in this lately 200 or 100 years? You so-called scientists have long forgotten your destination—to tell the truth, to enlighten people and to benefit people. How can you pseudo scientists be so cruel to let cars, chimneys and arsenals to pollute and heat our globe unscrupulously but blame the innocent inhabitants in the Himalayan area? Have you had a moments’ thought that your false figures may mislead people and governments and let slip the last chance for human beings to take right actions to curb the globe warming? If you do not have a love heart for humans, you are machines and paws of the greedy politics and capitalists.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@Mother Earth,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"NonsenseThe Indian people have been lived in the Himalaya Mountain and cooked their dinner for thousands of years, and why the Himalayan glaciers begins to warm up and melt faster in this lately 200 or 100 years?"
You are making a fundamental mistake that other have made. The flaw here is that you have made the error of the False Dichotomy, where the cause for glacier melting can only being one factor, that is false.
Ask yourself this: How many people where alive at one time on the Subcontinent 2,000, 1,000, 500 even 200 years ago? What where the rates of deforestation at those times?
CO2 emission are a real and serious threat and unlike Black Carbon it will not settle out of the atmosphere in just a few years. Yet none of that should stop us from recognizing other pieces of this phenomena.
In my balloon inside balloon theory and theory of gravitoethertons ,I mentioned that our universe with outer antimatter universe is in unstable equilibrium and rate of production of gravitoethertons at the common spherical boundary is slowly increasing and as a result heat at centre of earth due to focus of gravitoethertons increasing , causing more sea temperature and as a result global warming . Carbon emission is a minor cause but not the only cause. Reduction in carbon emission may not help much unless scientist look into my theory and accept it to tap heat from center of earth for production of electricity .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisObviously, atmospheric dirtying of snow and ice surfaces has a complex effect on the accumulation of water into a glacier. When less solar energy is reflected away, there is less solar energy to either warm the local layers of air in valleys and such, and even less to reflect back to a high enough altitude to experience the greenhouse effect and be reversed once more.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe net result could be that we have a glacier decreasing in thickness because soot has forced melting during the summer, but because atmospheric temperatures could actually be getting colder and cold air is drier than warm air, it may well happen that less replacement snow will be falling on the glacier in the winter.
The poor glaciers may get a double-whammy. They will melt even during a relatively cool summer because of their increasingly dirty, light-absorbing surfaces, but they will not get the snow to replace their ice. They will be like the interior of Antarctica, where very little snow falls but a lot blows around.
The fact that both global cooling and global warming could cause local droughts, water shortages, and even glacial recession doesn't often get explained in the popular media, but it seems to be the case around Mt.Kilamanjaro.
You should read a little deeper than the words on the paper. If you want to solve a problem (such as the globe warming), you should grip the main point and not let all the trifle aspects detract your attention and effort. Only by such doing can you solve the problem successfully. Now all the people around the world are praying a consensus being reached among the world politics and the Copenhagen meeting is facing an abortive fate, you nonsense guys are raising trifle things to dust the eyes of the politics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet me tell you this: the mother earth can bear even 6 billion people without getting any warming if you American forsake your over-lux and villainous living styles. Not only do not the American feel shamed for their resources-costing style but also they air it. To afford one American, the mother earth burns up 80% of her body-the resources.
People at many places have been facing water shortage, but American built out of desert a city- Las Vegas. You American make your homeland a garden but burn war fire around other people’s homeland. Can you name a war in recent history without the involvement or shadow of American? You built your country into a heaven but reduce other countries into markets of cheap raw material, cheap raw labor and refuse dump. Have you American ever thought that if all your neighbors are in war, chaos, poverty, and denuded of trees and fresh air and clean water, how can you American survive alone? The world is a family. You believe in God, but have you ever thought that all the peoples in the world are brothers with different skin-colors. So I say that you American have never been trusting God because what you did and do totally disobeys the God. You live in wealth consuming more than 80% of the world’s resource and NOW YOU blame the other countries have too much population. The God never has been such selfish as you do that only hopes you American live in wealth.
Now in Copenhagen, all the people around the world are trying hard to reach a consensus to curb the global warming, but you American are busy dodging your responsibilities and keep blaming others and making fuss. Have thought that if the world is flooded how can you American escape the doom?
So stop distracting the attention of the world’s governments and people with your nonsense figures and reports, and stop kicking dust to blind the world’s eyes. Please!
You should read a little deeper than the words on the paper. If you want to solve a problem (such as the globe warming), you should grip the main point and not let all the trifle aspects detract your attention and effort. Only by such doing can you solve the problem successfully. Now all the people around the world are praying a consensus being reached among the world politics and the Copenhagen meeting is facing an abortive fate, you nonsense guys are raising trifle things to dust the eyes of the politics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet me tell you this: the mother earth can bear even 6 billion people without getting any warming if you American forsake your over-lux and villainous living styles. Not only do not the American feel shamed for their resources-costing style but also they air it. To afford one American, the mother earth burns up 80% of her body-the resources.
People at many places have been facing water shortage, but American built out of desert a city- Las Vegas. You American make your homeland a garden but burn war fire around other people’s homeland. Can you name a war in recent history without the involvement or shadow of American? You built your country into a heaven but reduce other countries into markets of cheap raw material, cheap raw labor and refuse dump. Have you American ever thought that if all your neighbors are in war, chaos, poverty, and denuded of trees and fresh air and clean water, how can you American survive alone? The world is a family. You believe in God, but have you ever thought that all the peoples in the world are brothers with different skin-colors. So I say that you American have never been trusting God because what you did and do totally disobeys the God. You live in wealth consuming more than 80% of the world’s resource and NOW YOU blame the other countries have too much population. The God never has been such selfish as you do that only hopes you American live in wealth.
Now in Copenhagen, all the people around the world are trying hard to reach a consensus to curb the global warming, but you American are busy dodging your responsibilities and keep blaming others and making fuss. Have thought that if the world is flooded how can you American escape the doom?
So stop distracting the attention of the world’s governments and people with your nonsense figures and reports, and stop kicking dust to blind the world’s eyes. Please!
You should read a little deeper than the words on the paper. If you want to solve a problem (such as the globe warming), you should grip the main point and not let all the trifle aspects detract your attention and effort. Only by such doing can you solve the problem successfully. Now all the people around the world are praying a consensus being reached among the world politics and the Copenhagen meeting is facing an abortive fate, you nonsense guys are raising trifle things to dust the eyes of the politics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet me tell you this: the mother earth can bear even 6 billion people without getting any warming if you American forsake your over-lux and villainous living styles. Not only do not the American feel shamed for their resources-costing style but also they air it. To afford one America, the mother earth burns up 80% of her body-the resources.
People at many places have been facing water shortage, but American built out of desert a city- Las Vegas. You American make your homeland a garden but burn war fire around other people’s homeland. Can you name a war in recent history without the involvement or shadow of American? You built your country into a heaven but reduce other countries into markets of cheap raw material, cheap raw labor and refuse dump. Have you American ever thought that if all your neighbors are in war, chaos, poverty, and denuded of trees and fresh air and clean water, how can you American survive alone? The world is a family. You believe in God, but have you ever thought that all the peoples in the world are brothers with different skin-colors. So I say that you American have never been trusting God because what you did and do totally disobeys the God. You live in prosperity consuming more than 80% of the world’s wealth and NOW YOU blame the other countries have too much population. The God never has been such selfish as you do that only hopes you American live in wealth.
Now in Copenhagen, all the people around the world are trying hard to reach a consensus to curb the global warming, but you American are busy dodging your responsibilities and keep blaming others and making fuss. Have you ever thought that if the world is flooded how can you American escape the doom?
So stop distracting the attention of the world’s governments and people with your nonsense figures and reports, and stop kicking dust to blind the world’s eyes. Please!
@Mother,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisParagraphs. I do not read walls of words. Perhaps you could try again for a fourth time.
Dear tearful mother earth. You seem to be under the impression that the USA became rich by making the third world poorer. You seem to be under the impression that when the USA goes to war somewhere in the world it is never on the side of people who rightfully deserve to be defended, and never in opposition to movements that completely deserve in the eyes of heaven to be blown up or hanged, as Mr. Saddam Hussein was to great applause by many people in Iraq.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou also seem to be under the impression that the U.S.A. even though in bankruptcy is going to transfer a great deal of wealth to poor countries as a kind of reparations payment for the use of fossil fuels or other resources, most of which we could mine or drill for ourselves, but we have been kind enough to buy from nations who freely offer such resources for sale on the open market.
By the way, you may notice that China is actually becoming the biggest importer of such resources and will soon force the U.S.A. into a policy of domestic import replacement for everything. This is a good thing. We have many workers who should be producing our own socks, shoes, electrical appliciances, and electronic devices. We have plenty of coal and natural gas which can relatively inexpensively convert to gasoline. The Chinese are building their own HumVees now and really like them.
All of your complaints about the U.S.A. actually qualify you to be appointed a czar or at least a high staff person in the Obama administration, which yesterday promised to pay all the poor nations of the world perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars in carbon reparations.
Don't believe that you will actually see much of this money. Starting in November of 2010 the volatile democracy of America will begin to repudiate the Obama administration and the Democrat party. Betcha we don't honor any of their wild promises.
But don't worry about the boy in the Maldives actually drowning, or any polar bears drowning either. In the last century it was alleged that the sea level rose about 5 cm but many of us American don't believe that it rose at all. In the 21st century the oceans may rise another 5 cm, or more accurate measuring may put the level down again to where it was when Napoleon invaded Russia during an extremely cold winter, perhaps a lingering trace of volcanic activity around the world. Devilish tricky business, measuring sea level.
If you want to get rich and prosperous, study nations which have done so with almost no natural resources, such as South Korea, Taiwan, Israel, Singapore, etc.
"the Obama administration, which yesterday promised to pay all the poor nations of the world perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars in carbon reparations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDon't believe that you will actually see much of this money. Starting in November of 2010 the volatile democracy of America will begin to repudiate the Obama administration and the Democrat party. Betcha we don't honor any of their wild promises."
Now you show youself in your true colors. And also attest to what I said.
@Whatsup,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe in reality land encourage you to write more coherent messages. Thank You.
To all AGW supporters:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'VE READ YOU'RE EMAILS!
Game over. You lose.
@Quiin,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease reproduce what you think is the most damaging E-mail in FULL text with the accompanying text number and then I want you to cite the specific database and papers that you think are fraud.
Every time I ask the above question I never ever get a denier to comply in full. Most of the time you clowns never answer, when you do try to answer you reproduce snippets and you never link it to a specific paper or database. This is how I know you lot are dupes. You simply repeat talking points endlessly and mistake rhetoric for logic and facts.
Disagree? Then show me the money. Can you reproduce the "offending" E-mail in full with the accompanying text number? Yes or no?
Can you link the E-mail with a specific paper and database? Which parts of the paper or database? Yes or no?
Come on boys prove to me that you are not willing victims of a propaganda and disinformation program. Show me that you are not the lemmings that you give every appearance of being.
You reading this:
Michael Cook?
Shoshin?
Contrarian Bob?
Phil Jordan?
PGuptrace?
Woosh?
Eskimo Quinn?
Your silence and failure to answer the questions are quite telling. Dupes.
Wow!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI made Trent1492's list of the Most Despised.
I must be doing something right.
What's next? Greenpeace puts my mugshot on a deck of cards and issues a "Shoot on sight" edict? Cool....
Trent1492:
Again you are nothing but a vacuous mouthorgan for IPCC talking points.
Your perversion of science and utter lack of mental discipline serves as a warning to us all.
I know that living in your Mom's basement is a lot of stress, but it's OK... she won't kick you out into the mean, bad, hard world of reality...
@Shoshin,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou rate nothing more than a mention in a list of stooges. I expend little energy in despising people. I am actually having fun and would not do it otherwise. Now onto to the rest of your blathering.... Oh, wait not once did you attempt to answer the question. I wish I could relate to you how much I am not surprised.
"What's next? Greenpeace puts my mugshot on a deck of cards and issues a "Shoot on sight" edict? Cool...."
Your paranoia is rather comical. I can only giggle at you fears. I like how you translate a demand of evidence as the equivalent being a wanted criminal. You had better start taking those little pill again or the men in the white suits and big butterfly nets will come and get you again.
I can now mark Shoshin in that predictable list on non-answers. What about the rest of you? Michael Cook? Can you meet that level of evidence? Quinn? Anybody?
Actually, I find most of the kind of thing you call evidence at worldclimatereport.com which on the right hand side has a very extensive index of the articles that form my opinions. For the most part all of the index addresses peer-reviewed studies in prestigious publications, but what the guy who hosts worldclimatereport does is give each paper a more hostile peer review than they got the first time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd a lot of the time he simply points out data in the studies themselves which contra-indicate what the headline of the study claimed. There seems to be a lot of bias and spin going into the writing of global warming headlines anymore.
However, to me the most interesting info is now coming out of Russia where you may notice that today a group is claiming that IPCC misrepresented and cherry-picked data from Russian climate stations in order to reach the global warming conclusion. Since Russia compromises a huge amount of the Northern Hemisphere land area, this is tantamount to saying that IPCC has probably jiggered their whole global result.
Now it may be that the Russians are becoming hostile to the manmade global warming dogma for all the wrong reasons, but they sure seem to be able to score points when they go on the attack.
At the least I think all of IPCC's remaining historical data base has to be questioned and probably the best thing to do is for everyone involved to go home, do all their own data collecting and analysis, and all meet again in 2030 or so and we can talk about whether ANYTHING predicted by ANY pro-
AGW climate model has actually come true, especially any sea level rise or the Arctic ice cap totally disappears in the summer, which it hasn't done in a few hundred million years.
In fact Copenhagen wraps up (still in a Danish snowstorm) not saying much accept let's come back next year and try again. Repeat that decision anually 20 more times and we will have the beginning of wisdom.
@Michael Cook,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo you think that no one fails to notice that you have not answered my questions and have instead moved onto a new set of talking points?
You keep on referencing Climate World Report yet I can not see for the life for me why anyone would be persuaded by it. The only thing I can see that leads you to like it is that has conclusions you like. Why is Nature, Science or the National Academy of Sciences insufficient? Is it because it contains real research that disabuses you of your fantasies? I suspect so.
You then move onto newest Manufactured Controversy of the Day by informing us that the entire nation of Russia has accused HadCru of Fraud. When in actuality it is a small right-wing think tank run by a former member of the CATO Institute.
Tim Lambert at Deltoid does a nice take down of that piece of trash:
Russian Analysis Confirms 20th Century CRU Temperatures
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/russian_analysis_confirms_20th.php
Aren't we still climbing up out of the most recent Ice Age? Sea Levels increased by 140 meters since then, then retreated back by 10 meters to the present level. That Ice Age turned the cusp 18,000 years ago, and the retreat was only around 2000+ years ago. There are only 4 things REQUIRED for life.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1) Warmth and Light of the Sun.
2) Oxygen in the atmosphere.
3) Water.
4) Carbon Dioxide. No CO2, NO LIFE.
It's been MUCH hotter and MUCH colders before humans believed they, all 11 of them per square mile of Earth Surface, started to believe they can control Global Nature. And YES, tribal spiritual leaders who were throwing virgins into volcanoes truly thought they knew all the answers, too.
"Aren't we still climbing up out of the most recent Ice Age?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo. Climate does not work like a pendulum. The Law of Conservation remember?
"Sea Levels increased by 140 meters since then, then retreated back by 10 meters to the present level. That Ice Age turned the cusp 18,000 years ago, and the retreat was only around 2000+ years ago. "
That is an absolutely fascinating account you have there. To bad it does not resemble the reality of what the science actually says:
http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:0br3-05_zQMJ:www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter6.pdf+ipcc+2007+chpater+6&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
"4) Carbon Dioxide. No CO2, NO LIFE."
I was not aware of that scientist where advocating getting all the CO2 out of the atmosphere. Care to cite body that is?
I find it odd that people are using this to debate the fact that CO2 is a GHG. Those of you (tears of mother earth and spiff) who think this is some sort of attack on the poor people in India, think about it: there are over a billion people in India, many of whom are using soot-producing stoves to cook and warm their houses. It is a well-known fact that dark things heat up in the sunlight faster than light things, and it is also well-known that soot is dark and glaciers are light (if you don't know these simple facts then it is surprising that you managed to place a comment in the first place). So, all this soot floats up into the air (carried up by wind and updrafts) and is carried to the Himalayas, where it lands on the glaciers and makes them darker. Darker glaciers are going to heat up faster because they are darker, assuming that incoming light-intensity doesn't drop. No one is blaming this on India's poor residents, but technically speaking a large part of the glacier recession is their fault. We can fix that problem by providing them with cheap stoves that don't produce soot. As far as CO2 being a GHG, it has been known for 150 years that CO2 traps infrared radiation, and we have increased atmospheric levels of it by almost 50% in the last 200 years, therefore it makes sense that global temperatures should be rising. The data shows that temperature has in fact been going up. On that note, regarding the one e-mail that suggests not including all the data for some upcoming IPCC report: it turns out that, although one or two scientists suggested leaving out the data, the data made it into the report anyway, they didn't actually exclude the data when the time came.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis: Care to cite body that is?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisShould read: Care to cite who that is?
"Actually, I find most of the kind of thing you call evidence at worldclimatereport.com..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLOL!
Why is it that the nut jobs always bring up this blog site and act like it is a reputable source of information when it is anything but.
Exactly how thick in the skull does one have to be to think they are getting accurate climate information from a site owned by the Western Fuels Association?
Michael Cook, why do you even post here any ways? Everything you post from climate change to evolution is so ass backwards you clearly have no scientific education to speak of.
Trent,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do not believe in repeating current euphasims. We I want to know, I go look.
Like here, for instance: http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2002/01/meetings2.html
I think many people respect the US Geological Society.....
Here's a nice report from USGS.
http://deltas.usgs.gov/presentations/Burkett,%20Virginia.pdf (page 11 – timing) (page 13 sea levels)
On page 11, get an idea of the time before the CO2 peak that the temperatures peak (and valleys too). CO2 level is an indication of temperature, with a bit of delay. So, human CO2 is confusing the measurement, of using CO2 as a thermometer. Humm. Sounds really serious.
Perhaps you could look at page 13. Noone needs to believe any of this, but.....consider the source.
Regarding CO2 and life......consider this: More CO2, More Life.
50% more plant growth with doubling of CO2. Indoor plant growing folks use 1,100 ppm CO2. Sort of like three times the level in our average atmosphere.....
Natedog, good of you to question the validity of data.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou seem computer savvy, why not get the most recent 20 years of data from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, here:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/temp/jonescru/global.dat, plot it with Excel, and apply a 2nd order polynomial trend line on it.
To make sure the temperature drop of the most recent 5 or 6 years wasn't due to a drop in CO2, you can check that here, at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. I trust them more than the IPCC, anyway.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/iadv/index.php
I like Trent's enthusiasm. Once he learns the truth, he'll not get all down, but will be a force for good!
One last comment for now........
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt would be an interesting study to plot the rate of human sacrifices over time in the Mayan and other ancient societies. We could plot out the Climate Changes (droughts, etc.) over the same time period, and probably find an increase in the number of sacrifices during times of bad Climate......Or was the the number of sacrifices that caused the bad Climate? Timing is everything. Yes, the Chicken came before the egg.
Actually reading the studies at worldclimatereport.com, I find that the site mainly makes its living by debunking the spin put on major studies by headline writers. For instance, their most recent featured study deals with Greenland. The study clearly shows a recent gradual rise in temps over Greenland, which in mainstream media circles will become the headline, end of story.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat worldclimatereport.com does is fill in the back story, which in this case includes an interesting graph of Greenland temps over the last century or so, including not just instrument data but flora response, ice cores, etc.
What this graph indicates is that in 1930 Greenland was as warm as it is today, further, the ascent to that peak was steeper than today's more gradual ascent. If the graph is correct in suggesting that this is a well-mannered local oscillation, then we can expect that Greenland is already cooling, which should show up in the data rather soon.
I believe that the association of worldclimatereport with fossil fuel interests was distant in the past and rather indirect at that. It doesn't bother me in the least if that is not the case, for I believe that fossil fuel interests support many good researchers and these experts are as intellectually honest as the typical radicalized AGW zealot whose whole career pathway revolves around finding newer and ever more obscure proofs of manmade global warming in order to please highly political grantmasters and politically correct academics.
In short, I believe that fossil fuel interests have every right to defend their investors, their industry, and the future of intellectual honesty in the world generally against the runaway self-serving bandwagon of green zealotry as it presents itself in mob rule by mobs brainwashed by decades of misleading headlines and calculated misinformation.
But most of all, I believe that the world already is embarked on a great cooling trend, which reality would be emerging more quickly except that it is being lied about by entrenched government and quasi-governmental (tax payer supported) bureaucrats and careerists whose careers are solely justified by man-made warming being a fact (as opposed to being the biggest scientific blunder of the last 500 years!)
@Mensa Prof,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Like here, for instance: http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2002/01/meetings2.html"
You did not read your own link did you? From the link you gave I find the following:
"This worldwide, eustatic sea-level rise results from such factors as melting of continental glaciers and ice sheets and expansion of ocean waters heated by global warming."
Later on we find this one too:
"In addition, there is scientific consensus that sea level will continue to rise into the next century and its rise is likely to accelerate. Models suggest various rates of rise over the next 100 years, but the "best midrange estimate" based on the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is a sea-level rise of approximately 50 cm over the next century."
"I think many people respect the US Geological Society....."
Yes, and since the link you gave takes it as a given that climate change is real....
"Here's a nice report from USGS.
http://deltas.usgs.gov/presentations/Burkett,%20Virginia.pdf (page 11 timing) (page 13 sea levels)"
You do not know what you are talking about. You did not even read the report did you? You would have understood why they graph looks like that if you had. Can you please point out to us who says in the past CO2 woul lead temps at the beginning? You do not and you seem to be unaware that this a prediction made by scientist a long time ago. The Milankovitch cycles initiate warming but can not explain all of the warming.
Please read what you are citing.
Trent,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for your in-depth reading of the links cited in my message. I make my own decisions on the data.
I'm afraid that you think I have said that Global Climate Change is not real. It is VERY real. It plagues the flora and fauna of this planet, both destroying and creating opportunities for them over millions of years, all without a hint of an effect from humans. Climate Change will continue to happen, whether humans are here or not. Climate Change, just like volcanic activity, plate tectonics, and asteroid impacts are GOD's work, not the work of man.
Soot from a billion smokey cooking fires well could cause a glacier to melt. The soot particles probably also cause more clouds. The melt water would go into the ocean, and cool it down a bit. Think of all of the dust blowing from the deserts of the world.....that must certainly have some sort of effect as well, as do volcanic eruptions, asteroid impacts, etc.
Of course melting of land-grounded ice increases sea levels. Of course an increase in freezing and glaciation reduces sea levels.
Sea Levels over the most recent 2000 years have been un-usually stable, averaging a change of only a few mm/yr. Sea levels have been 200+ meters higher than today, and 140+ meters lower than today, all without the help of man.
My reference to the Burkett report, page 11, is to show that Temperate goes up (from whatever NATURAL forcing) , and after a delay of decades to centuries, causes an increase in atmospheric CO2. Al Gore separated these graphs in his movie, and claimed that it showed CO2 causes temperature increase, and that is WRONG. Warmer ocean can't hold as much CO2. Open 2 soft drinks, leave one in the fridge, let one sit on a table and warm up.
So with increases in Global Temp, the ocean warms up, and gives off CO2. Hotter, dryer conditions allow many more forest fires. Compare Greenland to S California.
So, before man's combustion of fossil fuels, literally recycling stored sunlight, CO2 was a good rough measure of Global Temperature.
So, maybe Venus, with a 95% CO2 atmosphere has "run-away Global Warming". It's closer to the Sun, also. With a higher atmospheric pressure (90x) as Earth, it has roughly 200,000 times as much CO2 as Earth's Atmosphere. Mars, farther away from the sun, also with 95% CO2, and a lower atmospheric pressure (0.05xEarth) is a very cold place, and it has roughly 120 times as much CO2 as Earth. CO2 in Earth's atmosphere is only 0.04%(387 ppm). Let's talk again when our CO2 is 0.5%.
@Mensa,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Climate Change will continue to happen, whether humans are here or not. Climate Change, just like volcanic activity, plate tectonics, and asteroid impacts are GOD's work, not the work of man."
This is an example of the Genetic Fallacy reasoning. Just because something has happened in the for one reason does not mean that the same thing is happening now. This is like saying that since lung cancer has occurred in the past long before cigarettes existed than smoking can not cause cancer now. It is fallacious reasoning.
"Soot from a billion smokey cooking fires well could cause a glacier to melt. The soot particles probably also cause more clouds. The melt water would go into the ocean, and cool it down a bit. Think of all of the dust blowing from the deserts of the world.....that must certainly have some sort of effect as well, as do volcanic eruptions, asteroid impacts, etc."
You do not think these things are considered? Really?
"Sea Levels over the most recent 2000 years have been un-usually stable, averaging a change of only a few mm/yr. Sea levels have been 200+ meters higher than today, and 140+ meters lower than today, all without the help of man."
Genetic Fallacy of Reasoning see above for a fuller explanation.
"My reference to the Burkett report, page 11, is to show that Temperate goes up (from whatever NATURAL forcing) , and after a delay of decades to centuries, causes an increase in atmospheric CO2."
What would you expect to see in the natural phenomena otherwise? No one has ever proposed that CO2 just starts to increase. Perhaps it is time you learned about Milankovitch Cycles and learn that those cycles only initiate a glacial or interglacial and can not explain the other 90% of the cycle.
This is a phenomena predicted and observed in the record.
Lorius et al., 1990
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/2003Q4/211/articles_required/Lorius90_ice-core.pdf
The fact is that CO2 captures IR and reradiates the energy. That is fact known since the mid-19th century. You seem to be of the school that thinks that pumping billions of tons of the stuff in the atmosphere can have no effect. That is perfectly irrational and without a hint of evidence.
"So, maybe Venus, with a 95% CO2 atmosphere has "run-away Global Warming". It's closer to the Sun, also."
Please compare and contrasts the temperature regime of Mercury (closer to the Sun) and Venus ( farther away). Take into account the inverse-square law. Go to it.
Trent,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince I tend to be technically oriented with an IQ 10+ points higher than Pres. Obama, and you tend to be very passionately oriented, perhaps against those who are singularly responsible for the wealth of America, the industrialists, I offer the following final link.....
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/greenhouse_warming_what_greenhouse_warming_.html
And please, the next "environmentalist" movie you see of a modern American factory, please realize all the white stuff you see coming out of the "stacks" is water vapor fog. If it's an old movie of an industrial factory of the 1940's, when we were busy liberating Europe from Hitler's 'hope and change', then yes, it was a lot of toxic pollution. We've come a long way. Today's cars emit 95% less pollution than those built as recently as 30 years ago. Have a nice life.
@ Mensa,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Since I tend to be technically oriented ..."
If this is true why do you fail to explain the difference in the temperature regime between Mercury and Venus? One is almost twice the difference between the sun than the other and yet the further one has twice the temp of the other.
You give this link:
"http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/greenhouse_warming_what_greenhouse_warming_.html"
Why is it you favor a journalist and professional opinion maker over the findings of the scientific community? But Ok, you gave the link now tell me what YOU THINK the best argument is.
"And please, the next "environmentalist" movie you see of a modern American factory, please realize all the white stuff you see coming out of the "stacks" is water vapor fog. If it's an old movie of an industrial factory of the 1940's, when we were busy liberating Europe from Hitler's 'hope and change', then yes, it was a lot of toxic pollution. We've come a long way. Today's cars emit 95% less pollution than those built as recently as 30 years ago. Have a nice life."
Irrelevant. The fact is that out CO2 levels are climbing humans are responsible for it and we have no practical way of economically capturing it.
Now when are you going to answer my questions, Mr. Mensa?