Going "Green"

[Boanerges]

The southern polar cap is growing and climate change is historically normal .

From the World Climate Report - The Web’s Longest-Running Climate Change Blog:

“As climate shifts, Antarctic ice sheet is growing” –Los Angeles Times, May 20, 2005
“Scientists link global warming to Antarctic’s ice cap’s growth” –Chicago Tribune, May 20, 2005
“Antarctica ice cap thickens” –Pittsburgh Post Gazette, May 20, 2005
“Warming is blamed for Antarctic’s weight gain” –New York Times, May 20, 2005
“Ice sheet confounds climate theory” – The Telegraph, May 20, 2005
“Antarctica ice cap thickens, slowing rise in sea levels” – Pioneer Press, May 20, 2005


From Worldnews.AU:


Antarctic ice is growing, not melting away

• Ice expanding in much of Antarctica
• Eastern coast getting colder
• Western section remains a concern

ICE is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap.

The results of ice-core drilling and sea ice monitoring indicate there is no large-scale melting of ice over most of Antarctica, although experts are concerned at ice losses on the continent's western coast.
Antarctica has 90 per cent of the Earth's ice and 80 per cent of its fresh water, The Australian reports. Extensive melting of Antarctic ice sheets would be required to raise sea levels substantially, and ice is melting in parts of west Antarctica. The destabilisation of the Wilkins ice shelf generated international headlines this month.
However, the picture is very different in east Antarctica, which includes the territory claimed by Australia.
East Antarctica is four times the size of west Antarctica and parts of it are cooling. The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research report prepared for last week's meeting of Antarctic Treaty nations in Washington noted the South Pole had shown "significant cooling in recent decades".

​

 

[Hekuran]

Here's two pictures of the Arctic ice cap. One from 1 September 1979 the other 1 September of this year. The ice is pink. You can see the change for yourself.

 

[Boanerges]

Right but meanwhile the Antarctic cap is growing at an accelerated pace.

From the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration:

The average June-August 2009 summer temperature for the contiguous United States was below average – the 34th coolest on record, according to a preliminary analysis by NAOA's center in Asheville, N.C. August was also below the long-term average. The analysis is based on records dating back to 1895.

I can remember the 1970's when the "overwhelming scientific data and consensus " was that we were on the brink on an impending doom from an Ice Age.
Climate change is normal. Lack of climate change would be abnormal.

 

[Hekuran]

from the New Scientist

Why Antarctic ice is growing despite global warming

20 April 2009 by Catherine Brahic

It's the southern ozone hole whatdunit. That's why Antarctic sea ice is growing while at the other pole, Arctic ice is shrinking at record rates. It seems CFCs and other ozone-depleting chemicals have given the South Pole respite from global warming.

But only temporarily. According to John Turner of the British Antarctic Survey, the effect will last roughly another decade before Antarctic sea ice starts to decline as well.

Arctic sea ice is decreasing dramatically and reached a record low in 2007. But satellite images studied by Turner and his colleagues show that Antarctic sea ice is increasing in every month of the year expect January. "By the end of the century we expect one third of Antarctic sea ice to disappear," says Turner. "So we're trying to understand why it's increasing now, at a time of global warming."​

And from the atheist Lord May today

Leading scientist calls on religious leaders to tackle climate change

President of the British Science Association, Lord May, says faith groups could lead policing of social behaviour


Religious leaders should play a frontline role in mobilising people to take action against global warming, according to a leading scientist.

Lord May, a former chief scientist to the government, said religious groups could use their influence to motivate believers into reducing the environmental impact of their lives.

The international reach of faith-based organisations and their authoritarian structures give religious groups an almost unrivalled ability to encourage a large proportion of the world's population to go green, he said.

Lord May highlighted the value of religion in uniting communities to tackle environmental challenges ahead of his presidential address to the British Science Association festival at the University of Surrey in Guildford today.

He will use the address to raise what Charles Darwin considered one of the great unsolved problems of his time: the evolution of co-operation. While scientists can explain the emergence of co-operative behaviour in small, related groups of animals, understanding co-operation among distant human societies has been more difficult, he said.

May will argue that the puzzle is as pressing today as it was to Darwin 150 years ago, because of the urgent need for global co-operation to tackle the environmental issues of water shortages, greenhouse gas emissions and unsustainable energy consumption.

The world's population has risen roughly sevenfold since Darwin's day, with a similar increase in the amount of energy each individual uses. That suggests the ecological footprint of humanity upon the planet has increased fiftyfold since Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859.

"In all of this, probably the biggest difficulty is that globally co-operative actions are required. These difficulties are compounded by the fact that not only must nations co-operate, but – given past history – they must do so in equitable proportions," May will say, according to an advance copy of his address.

Experiments using what scientists call "game theory" show that groups of people can achieve their goals if cheats and those who fail to pull their weight are punished.

Speaking before the address, May said religion had historically played a major role in policing social behaviour through the notion of a supernatural "enforcer", a system that could help unify communities to tackle environmental challenges. "How better it is if the punisher is an all-powerful, all-seeing deity," he said.

According to May, humans are causing enough damage to ecosystems that we may have to resort to dramatic engineering projects to replace the roles they play in sustaining the planet, such as stabilising the climate, purifying water and pollinating crops.

"Maybe we could be clever enough artificially to engineer substitutes for these lost ecosystem services, although I fear this could see us living, at best, in the world of the cult movie, Blade Runner, and more likely Mad Max," his address states.
​

 

[Boanerges]

Fox News Report: Evidence of Global Cooling



" a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years"

Cold Reception
Tuesday we told you about several areas around the planet experiencing record cold and snowpack — in the face of all the predictions of global warming.
Now there is word that all four major global temperature tracking outlets have released data showing that temperatures have dropped significantly over the last year. California meteorologist Anthony Watts says the amount of cooling ranges from 65-hundredths of a degree Centigrade to 75-hundreds of a degree.
That is said to be a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years. It is reportedly the single fastest temperature change ever recorded — up or down.
Some scientists contend the cooling is the result of reduced solar activity — which they say is a larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases.
Brit Hume reporting






Global Cooling Chills Summer 2009
Let the cold times roll.

By Deroy Murdock

As cap-and-trade advocates tie their knickers in knots over so-called global http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTlhOTNiOWFlMmMzNmJkOWM3ZTk5NWJkNTU2Nzk5NWI=# Mother Nature refuses to cooperate. Earth’s temperatures continue a chilling trend that began eleven years ago. As global cooling accelerates, global-warmists kick, scream, and push their pet theory — just like little kids who cover their ears and stomp their feet when older children tell them not to bother waiting up for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. Consider how the globe cooled last month:

June in Manhattan averaged 67.5 degrees Fahrenheit, 3.7 degrees below normal — the coldest average since 1958. The National Weather Service statedhttp://forecast.weather.gov/product...KX&product=PNS&format=CI&version=4&glossary=0 on July 1: “The last time that Central Park hit 85 in May . . . but not in June was back in 1903.”

In Pheonixhttp://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/06/19/20090619junelovely0619.html June’s high temperatures were below 100 degrees for 15 days straight, the first such June since 1913. In California’s desert, Yucca Valleyhttp://www.hidesertstar.com/articles/2009/07/04/breaking_news/doc4a4ef8007a1d7546669291.txt’s June average was 83.5, 8.5 degrees below normal. Not far away, downtown Los Angeles averaged 74.5 degrees, five below normal.

 

[Boanerges]

This could go on till the cows come home- LOL!
Have a great day!

 

[Zathrus]

Boanerges, your above posts exemplify why it is not reasonable to infer long term changes on minimal, short term data. Fluctuations happen in climate, Some of these fluctuations (like the hurricane cycle) are predictable and happen in 3 year, 20 year cycles (their are other cycles as well).

Some of these fluctuations happen for seemingly no reason at all. These fluctuations can occur in over the course of a year or in time periods lasting several hundreds of years (like the medieval warming period). There is data from different sources that go back thousands and thousands of years (I believe at least 10,000 years) that have proven this to be true.

There is no evidence to suggest that the data that you have posted is a fluctuation or part of a long term trend, therefore you cannot infer from that data that the planet is indeed cooling.

What you have posted is just junk science that supports the position of the anti-global warningists (yes, this is a new word I just made up). These people don't understand the nature of Climatology nor do they care about it. All they care about is their political agenda.

Now if the data can't reliably infer a long term trend it defiantly cannot infer that the trend is due to human interference, but of course this is obvious so I suppose I shouldn't have mentioned it.

 

[Boanerges]

I respect your right to your opinion my friend.
Many blessings,
brother Larry.

 

[Hekuran]

Frankly I find the responses to this issue worrying.

The damage done to our environment by our wasteful use of its natural resources is one of the big issues of our time, yet we have little more to say than parrot flimsy psuedo-science and try to point the finger at celebrities who speak out in favour of protecting the environment.

Surely as children of God, we ought to be leading the way in respecting our Father's creation rather than bringing up the rear.

If you really don't find the case for global warming convincing, then that's up to you. Even so, you cannot help but notice that rainforests are being destroyed, oceans are being overfished, air and rivers polluted at an unprecedented rate. Something needs to be done.

It will mean a fairly radical overhaul of the contemporary western aspirations, and that will not be easy for many of us. But that is really the only responsible option.

 

[Boanerges]

My guideline is this- people first. When protecting endangered frogs and reptiles, etc becomes more important than the human beings I say people first.
Case in point- where I used to live Lake Pontchartrain was one one side and a large swamp on the other. It took the Corp of Engineers 30 years to start building protective levees because the Enviro-nazi's were worried about insect life.
Case in point- loggers kill by nutjobs spiking trees and causing their chainsaws break their chains.
Extremists such as Al Gore live like emperors but want the rest of us to live like it is 1900. He pushed a "cap in trade" carbon tax . Was this because he was caring or was it the billions he will make selling the software to the government to administer it?
Personally I believe in being a good steward and small changes over a period of time can add up to a big change but asking people to give up their modern lifestyles would cost lives.
Then there was California (the left coast) running out of energy in 2001, no nuclear plant or coal plants for them. Nope they built windmills but turned those off when birds flew into them.
I think it is a good idea to take care of what we have but it needs to be done with slow smart changes.
People first.

 

[Lion_of_Judah]

Question??

What happened to the ice sheet which nearly covered the entire northern hemisphere some 10-15,000 years ago?


With all the talk about we humans causing the earth to go into convulsions of overheating,
there was a sheet of ice, over a mile thick, which covered the northern interior..
where I live.. here in Starbucks land.. Seattle ; )


WHY???.. did the ice not remain here? And HOW was it that such a great mass melted?


NO one can give me a plausible answer.. without ignoring the most sensible answer on the planet.. well, off the planet..


The SUN !


At the time this great mass of ice and snow melted, there was so much less plant/shrub/tree/grass life on the earth.
Just consider how much of Canada's natural ecosystem is still intact today.

While the great glacier was here, there was so much less carbon being produced,
precisely because of the lack of plant/shrub/tree/grass on the earth.
How much more so today it is, that we understand the sun has more affect on the planet than anything we do.

When the claimed reason for the "warming" is from carbon,and yet something from the standpoint of reasoning & common sense is routinely dismissed as just 'uneducated simpletons', I apply the following:

I smell something fishy!

o.k.a.:
Follow the money!


blessings all,
LoJ

 

[Hekuran]

Wow.

Those responses are frightening. I hope they are not representative of the majority.

 

[Boanerges]

Truthfully, most of the folks I talk to feel exactly that way. I applaud a common sense approach over a radical redistribution of resources.

 

[adoptivemommy]

Well, what a great topic for my first posting. My personal opinion... Global warming is real; however, not in the way the extremists are trying to say it is. I do believe there is some climate cycling but I also believe that it does not take a scientist to figure out what all the abuse is doing to this planet.

The holes in the ozone lair for example have nothing to do with cycling but rather have to do with all the burning of fuels that we do. The is part of becoming an industrial people but it is causing damage. The problem is that we are spending too much time and too much money trying to reverse something that can not be reversed.

This planet will die... It's in the Word of God. But, honestly I don't believe that God wanted us to do what we did with this planet. It is the price we pay for progress...

Cutting down acres and acres of forests, planting and replanting when the bible is very clear we should only plant in season for 7 years in a row and let the earth rest for 1 year before we plant again. Those things are real and they are abuses. Someone said something about money... Well, all these things that have been done that shouldn't have been done were also done for profit!

So, I truly believe that it is OK, even responsible behavior to do whatever we can do to help out. Things that were mentioned in the beginning of this thread like driving fuel efficient cars, recycling, stuff like that. Also, I am somewhat of a chef and I cook from scratch with fresh ingredients so I am a big promoter of using natural and organic foods as much as we can afford to for our own good and for better health.

After all doesn't being a good stewart include all of these things I've mentioned?

Laura

 

[Lion_of_Judah]

..responses are frightening.

Frightening? How in the world are these opinions frightening ??


Whats frightening is individuals freedoms being infringed upon by their government.
The natural conclusion of where all these regulations are leading, is more and more of our freedoms erroded away.

For example: GM will produce types of vehicles the government outlines & specifies of how it will make them.
Another: Incandescent light bulbs will no longer be available to the public, as is the case very soon for residents of California.


In the one case:
the government is telling a private company what they can and cannot produce.
In the other:
the government is withholding from an individual, a choice which they once were able to make.

How long will it be before we see GM will no longer produce the Corvette??
How long will it be before we see a mandate in Calif. that a hazmat team must come into your home to
remove/replace the mercury laced cfl's from your dining room fixtures, because your not qualified to do so yourself??


This is the frog in the kettle.. slowly being boiled alive.

 

[Hekuran]

Yes I can see your point. You've put it in perspective for me nicely.

The people of Bangladesh - who are facing the loss of vast swathes of their homeland in an already overpopulated country - need to accept that the loss of their homes is a lesser evil than me losing the right to use an incandescent lightbulb.

Farmers in Malawi already struggling to feed their families and facing the prospect of longer period of drought have little to complain about compared to the disaster that would occur if some of us could no longer buy a corvette.

Likewise families in the highlands of Papua New Guinea that are experiencing malaria for the first time due to changes in climate. And the entire people of Tuvalu considering how to manage the evacuation of their islands due to rising sea levels.

Thanks for setting me straight.

 

[Boanerges]

Such issues would be better addressed in raising their standard of living and not lowering that standard (and thus life expectancy) of others.
Selah.

 

[adoptivemommy]

Actually, you're both (Hekuran and Lion of Judah) right!!

Think about it...

As I said in my response, the planet has been affected by the way humans have been misusing it! And being good stewarts does include taking care of the planet God gave us to inhabit.

There are Christians who's attitudes are complaisant and dismissive, being content to say that the people who are bringing up the issue of global warming are exaggerating for their own gain rather than look for themselves at what id happening and draw the right conclusion!

At the same time, as a people, we should not ever agree to or ever be content with the government dictating what we can and can not do!

This is what America was built on: Freedom from the boot hill of the government. And to allow the government to say what kind of light bulbs we can use and what kind of cars we can drive, that is agreeing to our freedoms being taking away!

It's not about the light bulb or the corvette and these things certainly don't compare with the perils of the people Hekuran mentioned! But, it is about the principle!

In a free, democratic society there are consequences for wrong behavior and ignorance of certain things but it is also the right of every individual to live however they want to live, knowing that those consequences will apply!

No one should attempt to legislate personal choices! When they do, we will no longer live in a free, democratic society but rather in a socialist one. And, trust me, you don't want that! I speak from personal experience!

Laura

 

[Boanerges]

Indeed.:shade:

 

[Lion_of_Judah]

Hekuran, your argument is based on human activity being the fault of the supposed 'warming'.

The people of Bangladesh -

Farmers in Malawi

Likewise families in the highlands of Papua New Guinea

And the entire people of Tuvalu

Now apply your mind and intellect, and formulate an answer to this:

What happened to the ice sheet which nearly covered the entire northern hemisphere some 10-15,000 years ago?

I mean no disrespect.
Your versed on the issue I can see, and so I ask you the question above for your sincere perspective.


LoJ