Comments on: Rating Al Gore's tech cred

Pol who invented the Internet and scares the world about global warming wants to be taken seriously? Why not, says CNET News.com's Charles Cooper.

[solrosenberg]

Bombing for Peace

No mention at all of the irony of a guy who bombed at least five sovereign countries getting the peace prize? I guess for Cooper bombs=peace? In any case, *** does any of this have to do with tech news, the purported purview of this rag?

[Steve Lingis]

How about a historical perspective for somebody over 55?

Look, many of you techie Gen-x'ers and Millennials do not have the historical perspective behind this Global Warming thing. CNN, PBS, NBC, ABC, CBS, BBC, NewsCorp, Yahoo!, Google, MSN, et al need a crisis-de-jour to sell all that annoying advertising.

In the 60's, before any of you were born, we had the Cuban Missile Crisis.
In the 70's, we had the government meltdown caused by Nixon, Agnew & Co.
By the 80's, the Cold War was in the forefront, motivating Ronnie to instruct Gorbie to 'tear down that wall'.

During all these bonified crises, the last thing we needed was to construct a new crisis.

Note then after the old war, there was a vacuum looking for that next 'crisis'. I specifically recall Global Warming getting legs in the late 80's after the Russian threat had diminished (just as much as I recall the Global Cooling frenzy during the 70's but I won't go there now). Basically, Bush 41 had nothing to do until Sadam invaded Kuwait and then they got smoked by our Finest.

So during the late 80's and into the 90's, a crisis vacuum was created by 12 years of good times, starting in 89 and ending with the tech meltdown of 2000. But Global Warming came to the rescue, filling the vacuum, and establishing itself during the 90's. Global Warming helped sell a lot of those annoying pop-up ads before pop-up blockers were developed in the late 90's. Back in those days, Netscape flourished, often times headlining with a Global Warming 'news' item. Yahoo!, MSN, and their ilk continue the same today, sucking many of us saps into a pseudo-science septic tank of consensus, when the educated among us understand that 'consensus' and 'science' do not ever belong in the same sentence.

btw, I am still waiting for a reputable scientist to show the math calculations demonstrating how a few hundred thousand cubic yards of ice melting in Greenland would even negligibly raise the level of the many quadrillion cubic yards of the massive global ocean. It cannot be the same scientists who, in 2005, recommended dumping some boatloads of ice-cubes into the Caribbean to cool it down...

[tkilljoy]

Are You Serious?

I won't even bother blowing off on Gore, I do that often enough, and his bandwagoning the same people that bellied up on the coming ice age in the 70s-80s comes off that he isn't just a populist, but not well researched.

the real aim of my ire at this moment is the fact you brought up the IPCC report, check your facts; a number of the climatologists who worked on that have now laid claim that they were forced to falsify data; that this is the same scam that was pulled over in the (supreme court dismissed) second-hand smoke studies that got everyone in to a ruckus. the ipcc was run by politicos, not scientists, and they went in with an agenda and demanded the results they got because, they simply refused any other results.

stopping at the surface of these topics is ridiculous, lose the scam study.

[tkilljoy]

great idea....

maybe we ought to read more then the paper prints (i use paper as a global term for anything with an advertiser, be it magazine, journal, website or whatnot.) and try filtering the agendas and bias of the sources.

maybe then, not only will we get our priorities in a row, but we'll figure out who's the goose amongst the ducks.

[ggrs34]

A Convenient Cause

Let me see, a politician jumping on a popular bandwagon...hmmmmm

[Al57]

Gore is a huckster capitalizing on a natural phenomena...

Just spend some time poking around for the opposing views of Global Warming and you'll see the whole thing falls apart. There are plenty of scientists - real climate scientists - who think it's a joke. Why write a story of Gore's "tech cred"?

And for those that still want to attack global warming even with plenty of evidence that the idea that humans cause it is false, I say you are wrong. Why? Because, it makes no sense to turn the world to spending so much time and money on a ghost when there are so many other issues. Millions die every year from malaria. Look at Africa. Many Africans are irriated that we're wasting time on Global Warming when so many of them are dying!

The reason why these people keep pushing it un on is because the leaders are Socialists. The whole scam is designed around the idea of shifting wealth around. It's a Big Lie. One of the EU's Environmental Ministers said a few years ago that Kyoto wasn't just about the environment, but that it was for "leveling the playing field." Europe is falling further and further behind and they can't catch up to us, so the idea is to slow us down.

One last thing: if the Global Warming idiots really cared about the environment, then they would have jumped on the news that cows and other animals spew out more and more potent greenhouse gases than all forms of transportation. They ignore news like this because then they couldn't blame humans. It's not about the environment, it's about ruining people's lives through Socialism.

[My-Self]

It really is ... an inconenient truth

All these attacks, motivated by a deepening political divide and the usual denial before facing any situation seriously and the level of anger (not to mention hatred) surrounding the man only show the title of his "broadly accurate" documentary was as rightfully chosen as it's subject.

Honestly, it's quite funny to see the obvious posts from those heavily politically motivated people as they pontificate as if they were experts in climate science when they obviously don't know more on the subject than what they heard on the latest weather forecast.

BTW, when citing the "unforgivably lazy media" then created this "Gore pretends he invented the internet" piece of political hackery, the author forgot to mention it was Declan McCullagh who invented that spin, here on c-net.

[plstudt]

(really)Big Al is the new ugly INSANE American

Al is a propagandist for an ideology, not science. His true
significance is as an indictment of what passes for higher education
in America. Who says this current weather is optimum? Better
weather may be when wheat fields flurish once more on
GREENLAND. The island was called that for a reason. When Al
follows his mouth with personal lifestyle actions he will at least
appear sincere. Al is really a high priest wannabe for the worship of
MOTHER EARTH.

[Al57]

Sorry buddy...

Gore is grifter. Just do a little Socratic thinking after reading more of the science and you'll see that Gore and the others are wrong. It doesn't take long.

...time passes...

Just a little Googling turned up this series:
http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=156df7e6-d490-41c9-8b1f-106fef8763c6&k=0

There are plenty more.

So, in fact, it's the liberals/socialists who cling to ideology and ignore the science. Even a kindergartener would admit there is some opposition; you guys can't tolerate any and therefore you and your ilk have no credibility.

[DennisA]

Rating-Al-Gore's-tech-cred

The nine errors don't matter then, even when they are deliberately used to mislead. OK, he lied, but it doesn't matter. The Judge was not deliberating on the IPCC, he was asked to rule on whether the "documentary" was true, the defence being the UK government's own fully signed up global warming scientists who had to admit the Gore errors. If you knew how the IPCC worked then you might take a different view. It is run by governments for governments and the Summary for Policy Makers is written and agreed by government representatives. The Scientific report is put out several months later to agree with the political summary. The IPCC do not do research, they review scientific papers. They are in charge of the process and get to choose the papers they review. Very often the conclusions drawn differ from the intentions of the original contributor. As an example of how this process works, take the recent hype from the World Cancer group, they say they reviewed 500,000 papers and selected 7000 that were "relevant". In other words only 1.4% contained the sort of information they wanted in order to try and prove their case.

With climate, all the claims are on the basis of exteremely complex and unaudited models which are tweaked to produce the required results. They don't even use correct real time data, eg, they have always used annual CO2 increments of 1% when it has been little more than half that. They don't even know the global temperature to any degree of accuracy.

So back to big Al: "nine errors over the course of a 100-minute documentary. I'll leave you to make the call".

Check out how much "science" was left after taking out the footage of the nine errors, here:

http://www.junkscience.com/ByTheJunkman/20071019.html

[emjaysea]

Sorry Fella

You are not a scientist, just another person who hates Al Gore. Speaking of scientists, there's more consensus among them on the subject of global warming than almost any other subject, a position that is usually reserved for scientific concepts such as those describing the laws of physics. So rant and rave about some government report all you'd like, you're just side-stepping the issue that 90% of the scientists studying the subject believe global warming, caused by man, is happening right now. Talk about having one's head in the sand!

[emjaysea]

Response to the Gore Haters

You are not scientists, just a bunch of people who hate Al Gore (exactly why you do, I'm not sure). Speaking of scientists, there's more consensus among them on the subject of global warming than almost any other subject, a position that is usually reserved for scientific concepts such as those describing the laws of physics. So rant and rave about some government report all you'd like, you're just side-stepping the issue that 90% of the scientists studying the subject believe global warming, caused by man, is happening right now. Talk about having one's head in the sand!

[limbofrog]

Let's say your right...

Let's say your right... or rather the graph you present is right.

(1) I was showing that not all data agrees. Who do you listen too? Why chose one graph or set of data over another? If the science data does not agree, it's not conclusive and you can't say for sure it is true or not. It's simply data.

(2) Even if we are causing a dramatic increase in Carbon and other such emissions... and they are going to damage the environment, what is your fix or your idea or their idea to fix it?

Tell me what we are going to do in reality to solve this problem?

Let's be honest - turning your lights off a little more, or running your A/C or heat 30% less or putting your dishwasher on low water or taking sponge bathes or driving electric cars or any and all of the solutions I have heard are not real fixes. They will not reduce the carbon levels anywhere near to the levels needed to achieve previous carbon levels.

The whole earth's people are growing rapidly. The rate of growth will out-strip the decrease in use. This problem will become exponentially worse once the billion + people, 3rd world nations step into the industrial age. As I said before, if you think the U.S. and Europe burn lots of fuel, just wait, it's going to be amazing to see how much power these other nations can burn once they get up to speed. This will also put a huge drainage on the fuel/oil market and probably drive up demand and cost a great amount.

Energy will become even more expensive... unless we find some other source of energy generation. As I said earlier There are only 3 or 4 type of ways to get energy out of our world/environment.

(1)Solar (sun)
(2)Chemical (natural gas, oil, wood, geothermal?)
(3)Mechanical Generation (from hydro or wind)
(4)Nuclear (fission or fusion)

Let's break it down:

Solar - is more inefficient than chemical and very expensive. Not to mention you have to manufacture the panels. Well, they have to be produced in factories that make pollution via the plastics, and other processes to build the panels. Not to mention these plants burn energy. From where? Energy comes from power plants that mostly burn coal and some that burn natural gas to drive large mega watt+ turbine generators. So you?re going to burn fossil fuels to make solar? You might feel warm and fuzzy, but it's still the same thing as we are going now. When the panels break, we make new ones and repeat the process. Solar is out unless we can find a really good way to make them cheaply and efficiently and they produce more energy per panel than currently possible.

Chemical ? this is where were now. This is what allegedly is causing the problem. Power plants, Cars, Lawn Mowers, Appliances, Water heaters, Air Conditioners all burn fossil fuels or burn energy made in power plants that burn fossil fuels. So by the data you think is accurate, this is the problem the type of burning we need to cut way back on, which I still don?t see being effective given population increase and increasing demand for energy. If Geothermal could be considered chemical or mechanical, it?s in the same boat as solar, not to mention it has a detrimental effect on the land. So let?s move into Mechanical Generation.

Hydro and Wind power ? These, like solar give much less yield per equipment than chemical. You still have to manufacture the equipment which makes pollution and requires energy. In the end the yield is such you spend more energy than you get back given the life of the equipment than just burning the fossil fuels.

Nuclear fission ? Nuclear fission is nasty dirty. Compared too chemical burning though, maybe it?s not too bad. There is the added risk of a meltdown and we all know that would be bad. Newer technology could provide for safer operations and fission could be a viable source of energy if we can all agree on somewhere to dump the waste.

Nuclear fusion ? This is a relatively new technology in the whole scheme of things and I don?t know if anyone has yet built a fusion power plant that works. I should read more. I think they are either building one or working on the idea of building one in France. Not sure, but it seems that once perfected it would be cleaner than fission and give way more yield than any other process including fission. It may still produce waste but I imagine it would be way less than chemical. I read about H3 on the moon could be a very high yield power source. That?s a ways into the future though.

So what is the answer?

You say we must cut back on chemical burning? but what do you propose as a replacement for power? It?s easy to rip on stuff, but come up with something better and I will welcome it with open arms. Basically, if you carry your logic to conclusion, we must all cut back on energy use by huge amounts. Again, is the rest of the world going to follow along or are they more concerned with growing their own nations and having cheap chemical power? If the whole world does not cooperate, it?s all pointless. In addition such decrease in energy use has a huge impact on the whole world economy. We would slow growth tremendously and the standard of living would go way down for all of us. Are you willing to live like that? Is the rest of the world?

So what is your real solution?

[Al57]

Ahh, this is easy....

You are assuming there is a problem. As we all know, the Earth has been through major climatic changes over the years. There have been quite a few ice ages that can be counted and there are all sorts of cycles and sub-cyles of climate change that have been recorded.

Basically, the Global Warming crowd is calling a natural phenomena a problem and blaming humans for it despite common sense and plenty of other avenues to include in the analysis.

This "be green" hysteria masks many greater problems. So Gore and his hype are taking all of our time and energy away from REAL issues.

I'm thinking the hysteria will run it's course in the next few years.

Just look at this from Canada.com:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/environment/story.html?id=c6a32614-f906-4597-993d-f181196a6d71&k=0

[InsideLines]

About That British Judge...

For anybody interested, here's the full ruling:
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2007/2288.html

And for those of you who don't want to read the whole thing, here's the part that I found the most interesting, from paragraph 28:
"In scenes 8 and 9, Mr Gore shows two graphs relating to a period of 650,000 years, one showing rise in CO2 and one showing rise in temperature, and asserts (by ridiculing the opposite view) that they show an exact fit. Although there is general scientific agreement that there is a connection, the two graphs do not establish what Mr Gore asserts."

The two graphs don't establish what Gore's asserting? But aren't these two graphs the basis for the entire film? Anyone who believes Al Gore is right about global warming needs to stop relying on the media, and start doing your own research.

[ivanvarg]

Nobel Prize?

If any other scientist presented a thesis with that many holes, it would have been laughed out. What financial and researchers think about this? Waterfront property prices are sky rocketting. All banks are financing development. Average payback 25 years. ?????? I hear no financial alarmist screaming "head for the hills"

[cturkin21]

The #1 reason why people don't believe in Global Warming

Because they are afraid to compromise anything in their cosy lifestyles. It's simply easier to pretend that the problem doesn't exist.

Fortunately Al has woken a few people up, and has mobilized some of the more socially conscious people into action. Go Al!!

http://www.talkclimatechange.com

[blueyes123]

Global warming??

If documentation substantiates the earth is warming---that's fine. It has warmed and cooled before---way before the industrial revolution according to these same, SO-CALLED scientists. Hard to believe APPARENT scientists who proclaim we are responsible and we should just SHUT DOWN. Little factual for you AlBore apologists to present to claim we are the problem and not the earth and solar system itself.

Funny too that hypocrite AlBugger uses more energy resources per capita than any other American. That's what a less than nobel, liberal award recognizes:

HYPOCRISY!.

[Arjuna02]

Gore "invented/created" the internet, it means the same; and he didn't!

Why even talk of this, what he said exactly was... he claimed to have had a part in "creating" the internet when he was in the congress. The internet existed decades before he was in the Congress. He may have supported legislation that made it more broadly accessable to non-governmental users like us, but that is not creating the internet; and let us remember at least half the memebers of the congress and the President, had to support that legislation for it to become law, so, a lot of peope had a hand in whatever Al Gore thinks he did for the internet.

[Earth16]

Nobel "Peace" Prize

As it relates to Mr. Gore: the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded "by a committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storting," i.e., politicians, in accordance with Nobel's will. The remaining (real) prizes were directed to be awarded by committees selected by the Swedish Academy. There was a not-so-cordial "Union" between Sweden and Norway in 1895 when Nobel's will was written, which ended in 1905.

My point, which everyone can take as they will, is that the "Peace" prize more accurately represents the political leanings of the current members, and is definitely not a recognition of scientific prowess. They are perfectly free to award their prize to whomever they like. If they happen to dislike our current president, they can even enshrine Jimmy Carter and Al Gore, placing them on even footing with the terrorist Arafat. It does not lend any credibility to the recipients' positions, but the merit of the award has been steadily eroded.

[keepingmediahonest]

"The debate is over" ???

1. Classic, classic quote: "We're past the point of debating the science." Spoken like an absolute amateur who knows nothing about science.

2. "The latest report to examine the causes and potential effects of climate change was the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change study. Check it out in your spare time. It makes for sober reading."

The latest? That's virtually the ONLY report on the subject. The 2000 and (late to be released) 2005 report were both produced by committee dictator James E. Hansen, over the objections, indeed resignations, of members of the committee with as much or more scientific prestige as Hansen.

The tragedy of the Nobel "Peace" Prize is that they honored both Hansen's committee and Al Gore for nothing having to do with peace and a great deal to do with plain old left-wing politics.

I've followed the climate change discussions since I received my PhD in earth sciences 30+ years ago and I have YET to see evidence, other than some of Hansen's phony data, that climate change is happening outside the historical parameters of variability over millennia, much less any solid evidence that CO2 increase is causing abnormal change.

Reading the report of the IPCC is not enough. If you haven't the credentials to question it, read the comments of those who do. And finally, ask why Hansen is so politically driven that he cannot respond in a scientific manner to questions about the errors in his reports or even to obvious questions like "If CO2 increase CAUSES temperature increase, why does the geologic record show that CO2 increase has TRAILED temperature increase by tens to hundreds of years?"

[Arjuna02]

Global warming ..the TRUTH as best as science can now tell.

First the basics:

Earth's weather is complex, not simple. It is also not completely understood yet! The Earth's temperature at any given time seems to be dependant upon the sun and our distance from it, as well as the sun's current radiant, and solar wind output, which as we know changes from high solar peaks to low solar troughs. What state the sun is in, a high or low, is indicated by the amount of sun spot activity that occurs in the surface of the sun. More sun spot activity indicating greater activity (output), few sun spots indicating a less activity from the sun. Normally, the sun's sun spot activity cycles in eleven year cycles. However that is the suns micro-cycle, similar to the El Nino weather effect on the west coast, or the North Atlantic Multi-decal Oscillation which controls the frequency and strength of storms i the north Atlantic. The sun also has mega cycles that cycle over thousands of years similar to the earths Ice Ages, which also directly affect the temperature of the earth that I will be discussing further. This news should come as no surprise to you because ever since 4th grade, your teachers have told you that the Sun drives the Earth's weather. However, we've learned some things since then, and the Sun is even more important than once believed, not just for its light, but for its protection. The Sun's solar winds protect us from cosmic radiation coming at us from the rest of the universe which recently has be shown to have serious effect upon our temperature too.


IN THE BEGINNING...

The first climate warnings by scientist actually go back to the early 1970's. As best as I can tell, the first significant article warning of man made changes to the Earth's temperature occur in the science journal SCIENCE in 1972. The article was co-authored by Stanford University Climatologist Stephen Schneider. By 1976, just about every science periodical had jumped aboard the band wagon when the National Geographic magazine made it unanimous buy publishing their own article warning everyone about the very real possibility of a world-wide... man-made... cooling trend that was creating a MAN MADE ICE AGE!

That's right, they were all warning us that human kind was COOLING the earth and that we'd create a new Ice Age if we didn't stop.

The Hypothesis was that man made pollutants and aerosols in the upper atmosphere were blocking out and reflecting back into space the Sun's warming rays by increasing the stratospheric cloud cover, like the asteroid impact did 65 million years ago killing off the dinosaurs.

Are you surprised by this bit-o-news? The question you should be asking here is, WHY they were saying that man was cooling the Earth's temperature in the 70's?. Something had to happen to make peole think it was happening, so WHAT were these scientists reacting to?

The Cyclic nature of Earth weather.

You were told by your Science teacher in grade school that all natural systems on the Earth are cyclic right? They go from periods of high activity to periods of low activity. Like for example, the seasons, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, spring etc. Or Rain, lots in the spring less in the summer. "April showers bring May flowers." In high school you learned that the Sun's solar activity occurs in 11 year cycles. The El Ninio weather pattern comes every 7 years; and of course, Halley's Comet comes around every76 years. Your heart contracts, and then relaxes. Your lungs breathe out, then in. Everything is cyclic in nature! Keep this in mind.


THE LITTLE ICE AGE

Since the end of the Little Ice Age (by the way it ended in 1853), the Earth has been back on its regular temperature pattern. Starting in 1860, the Earth has been cyclically shifting its temperature pattern in 40 year cycles. From 1860 to 1900, the average temperature of the Earth declined every year until 1901. In 1901 the Earth's average temperature started to rise, and it did so every year till 1940, in 1941 the Earth's temperature started to fall again. Now count forwards 40 years from 1941, and answer me this question.

What decade was the last full decade of this cyclic 40 year drop in the Earth's temperature?

Did you say the 1970's, the same decade they were writing all the Global Cooling articles?

In 1981, global temperatures started to rise again, and they will continue to do so till 2020. In 2021 global temperatures will start to fall again and will continue to do so until 2060, in 2061 temperature change will reverse again and up temps will go, again!

In 1972, when SCIENCE magazine printed Climatologist Stephen Schneider's paper, the Earth was nearing the end of a 40 year cooling cycle, man wasn't doing it nature was! But Schneider was stupid, so before writing his paper, he didn't go over the historical temperature data, he decided he was God's gift and was SO smart he didn't need to do any research first. If we had been significantly adding to the cooling effect in the 1970's, then the cooling cycle probably would have been longer and more severe than the past cooling cycles, but it wasn't. It ended in 40 years like it was supposed to. The Earth now is in a warming cycle, but there is no scientific evidence that the Earth is warming more rapidly than it is supposed to now too. For all intense and purposes, the temperature change is going along normally. If the warming trend continues past 2020 then that might signal that possibly we are having a warming effect upon the earth. Of course, it could also be a normal variation, we'd have to wait it out and see. The Little Ice Age was a normal variation that lasted centuries, so, sometimes variations in the normal climate pattern of Earth take a long time to play out.


The Mechanics of warming;
Ice Ages, and Inter Glacial Ages.

45,000 years back, when the Earth started to warm up again, there was a lot of ice and snow on the ground reflecting the Suns rays back out into space. Cold as you recall from High School, is the absence of Heat. Heat moves into a cold region and warms it up. At first as the Earth starts to warm up, there is a lot of cold, and so a lot of cold needed to be warmed up, so temperature rise was very slow at the start. As the Snow melted, less and less of the Earth's surface was covered by snow, that meant, that area of land was not covered by white snow which reflected the Sun's rays back into space, instead, now it absorbed that light helping to warm the Earth. As more and more surface area became warm, the percentage of warm to cold areas increased, thus the Earth gets warmer faster, as there is less and less ice and snow to absorb the heat. The Earth should be warming faster now than in the past. As people have been pointing out, glaziers are melting revealing millions of square miles of Earth to the Sun's rays for the first time in tens of thousands of years. The increase in the rate of warming is real, but it is what is expected, it is not greater than what is expected.

You can pretty much imagine what the scientists were saying after 200 years of straight temperature declines back during the middle of the Little Ice Age. If Schneider and the others lived back then, you know they'd all be going up the walls with their Man-Made Cooling hypothesis, but after centuies of declining temperatures who could blame them? 200 years of temperature data seems pretty strong, but as we know now, it wasn't strong at all. 200 years to the Earth is nothing, less than the blink of an eye in Geologic Time.

THE BIG GUNS OF TEMPERATURE CHANGE

Earth weather, has two major influences that I'd like to now introduce. One is old knowledge, the Sun, the Sun has long been held as the driving force behind Earth's weather, but in the 1990's, another major player was found and a whole NEW scientific field was created for it called, COSMOCLIMATOLOGY.


THE SUN

The Earth's distance from the Sun; the WHY of Ice Ages.

We all know that the Earth revolves between periods of cold (Ice Ages), and periods of warm (Inter-glacial Ages). Ice Ages however haven't always happened, remember the dinosaur? The Earth was much warmer back then. The sea level was hundreds of feet higher then. You may remember seeing in science class, a map of the US during the age of the dinosaurs. The Gulf of Mexico, stretched north joining up with the Hudson Bay creating a great inland sea that cut the US into two halves. The rocky mountains on the western shore and the Appalachian mountain range on the eastern shore. The Earth wasn't just warm like this for the 150 million years the dinosaurs lived though. For the first 3.5 billion years of Earth's history the planet was very warm. There was no snow, or ice anywhere to be found. So, what happened to make the Earth so cool that we now have such low sea levels and ice at the poles you ask?

Do you remember what happened to the dinosaurs? They died away when a huge asteroid struck the Earth 65 million years ago. The blast and heat devastated the surface of the Earth causing dust and dirt to be thrown up into the air, with planet-wide wildfires that put so much smoke into the air that it blocked out the sun for years cooling the Earth and killing the dinosaurs through exposure to cold temperatures too cold for them to survive. What we have also learned is that the Earth was changed 65 million years ago in one other way. The Earth's orbit developed a wobble because of that asteroid collision.


Our Wobbly Earth.

This wobble in the Earth's orbit causes the Earth to orbit further away from the sun periodically. The Earth's orbit gets bigger in other words. When the earth reaches its furthest orbital distance, it shrinks back to normal, and then it gets bigger again. As the Earth gets further from the sun, the planet receives a little less solar radiation from the sun, and the Earth cools slightly. At the equator this change in temperature is barely noticeable, a mere 3 degree drop in the seasonal average temperature. At the poles however, it drops 8 full degrees. 40 degree winter temperatures now drop to freezing, and snow and ice move southward covering Canada, northern United States, and all of Europe and Russia and most of China. Glaciers advance towards the equator from the poles, and snow and ice build up on mountains and higher elevations; and sea levels fall as more water is converted into snow and sits on land. For the last 45,000 years, the Earth has been getting warmer as our planet moves closer to the sun. It is estimated that the planet will continue to move closer to the Sun for another 12,000 to 15,000 years, then, the Earth will start to move away from the Sun, starting another glacial cycle.

The earth has had 5 glaciations since that asteroid hit, making this the 5th Interglacial period. That bit of news means that by examining the Earth's temperate condition during the past 4 interglacial periods, we can determine if our Earth's present temperate condition is any different from what it would be if human civilization were not here to pollute. If you are a Pro-Global warming, this is bad news for you, common sense tells you that right? If our planet's temperate condition was really worse than in the past interglacial periods, the global warming nuts would never STOP talking about it; instead, they never STARTED to talk about it.

So, just how bad is the news for the Global warming folks?

Everything that could be worse, was!

One of the interesting things about ice is that it traps tiny bubbles of air as water freezes into ice. You have no doubt, noticed these bubbles in your ice cubes. The ice is clear at the edges, but white in the middle. That white is the air bubbles trapped inside the ice. By drilling ice cores from deep into the ice shelf, extracting the snow and ice laid down during the last interglacial ages, researchers have put together the most comprehensive chart of ancient Earth temperate conditions ever. From Alaska all the ways around the Earth to Siberia's shores, Ice-cores were drilled and examined. What they told us was, pollution is not new. In all 4 previous interglacial periods, the amount of Carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere was HIGHER than today. Methane gas levels were HIGHER than today. Particulate matter in the air was HIGHER than today, and Global Temperatures were HIGHER that they are today. Sediment layers from 130,000 years ago, at the height of the last Interglacial Age show us that the sea level was 20 feet higher than today as well. According to the most conservative estimates, that means that the Greenland Ice Sheet did not exist 130,000 years ago, it had completely melted; as well as much of the ice covering the Antarctic. Even more shocking was that 11 million years ago, it was found that carbon-dioxide levels were over 6 times higher than today, around 2,000ppb, versus only 350pbb today, putting an end to the talk that Earth's Carbon-dioxide level couldn't be this high without human intervention.


The Spring Back From the Little Ice Age.

Several scientists are saying that the data seems to say that the Earth is warming up at a rate slightly faster than in the past. There are two reasons for this, one is the sun is hotter now than in the past, and the other is because of the Little Ice Age ending.


Radiant Solar Loading

During the Little Ice age, the Earth was getting closer to the sun, and so should have been getting warmer not colder. However as solar records indicate there was a distinct drop in sun spot activity during the Little Ice Age. This tells us that the sun was less active then, meaning it was putting out less heat, light and solar wind. This drop in the suns output was what caused the earth to get colder during the Little Ice Age. The earth got closer, but the sun got cooler faster. Eventually however, every cyclic low ends, and in the 1850's it did. The suns activity rose to normal levels and the earth got warmer ending the Little Ice Age. That meant the earth took a major leap forward in temperature because the earth was closer to the sun at the end of the Little Ice Age than at the beginning. If the suns output had been steady, then the earth would have gotten slowly warmer during the centuries of the Little Ice Age, but it didn't, and we didn't, we got closer without experiencing the effects of gradual warming; instead all that warming got dumped on the earth all at once over the last century. The true effect of the warming wasn't noticeable till the 1980's because the oceans had been absorbing all the excess heat coming in, keeping the earth cool, but starting in 1972, ocean surface temperatures started to rise as well. The ocean remember also got colder during the Little Ice Age, but by 1972, they'd absorbed enough heat to warm up to where they would have been if the Little Ice Age hadn't happened, and so stopped absorbing the excess heat allowing the earth's surface temperatures to warm up too.



Sun Mega Cycles.

Starting in the early 1980's the solar observers tell us, the sun went into a phase of high sun spot activity. The sun got warmer. It is estimated by solar scientists that the sun, since the 1980's, has been at a 1,000 year high output, while a minority estimate it to be a 10,000 year high output. Either way, just as the sun was cooler for the time of the Little Ice Age, the sun has swung back the other way and we are now experiencing the cyclic high after the cyclic low of the Little Ice Age. And this high solar output, will probably last as long as the low did...for centuries! So in essence we are getting a double whammy from the sun. Radiant solar loading from the period of the Little Ice Age dumping all that heat on us all at once, AND the beginning of a centuries long 1,000 year high sun output.
The heat new isn't over yet though new evidence give the sun's up tick in output even more ominous effect on the earth's temperature than once was believed


Earth Weather's Cosmic Connection. Cosmic Radiation and Cloud Formation.


During the Little Ice Age Earth's temperature dropped. Glaciers advanced in the Alps, the Sierra Nevada, Alaska, and the Andes, with correspondingly lower sea levels. The main westerly storm belts also shift southward and much of the northern and southern latitudes experienced severely colder temperatures. Astronomers also record back then that the mean solar activity was quite low during this period! There were they noted, very few Sun spots. This drop in solar activity meant nothing to scientist until quite recently, but now is turning out to be a key to understanding Earth Temperature.

In 1991, Eigil and Knud Lasses Flin-Christensen had reported that after studying solar activity over the past hundred years, they had found a solid correlation between solar activity and temperatures on the Earth. It was already know that the solar wind, which is a plasma of electrons, atomic nuclei, and magnetic fields which stream out from the sun constantly, helped to protect the Earth from Cosmic radiation streaming in through the Heliosphere from outer space. The greater the solar activity, the greater the solar wind and less cosmic radiation reaches the Earth . How cosmic radiation might effect the chemistry in the upper atmosphere to change the Earth's temperature was not understood, until that is, fellow Dane Henrik Svensmark Director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen stepped in. Svensmark and his team build an 8 meter square chamber within which to study the effects of cosmic radiation on Earth's atmosphere. In the next half decade, Svensmark and his team learned that cosmic rays entering the upper atmosphere ionize the molecules there producing small aerosols which are the building blocks for cloud condensation nuclei. During a period of high solar activity like now, where the Sun's solar activity is higher than it has been in the last 1,000 years, much less cosmic radiation enters the atmosphere greatly diminishing cloud formation in the stratosphere, clouds which normally would be reflecting the suns warmth back out into space cooling the earth. At this point in science, carbon dioxides place in global warming is, while not erased, is diminished, and so too, is our role in Climate change.

The Big nail in the Coffin.

Of course, even without Svensmark's work, the big nail in the coffin of man-made Global Warming had already been hammered into its coffin. Scientist supporting Man Made Global Warming have been doing their own mathematical calculations, estimating based upon pollution levels what the earth's temperature should be.. These guys are getting the help of the best super computers available, and have made very meticulous climate models based upon the amount of carbon man is burning each day; and I'm happy to announce, they have all been WRONG. For 40 years, every computer model has failed to correctly predict what happened in nature. According to almost all of the computer programs out there, the Earth should be 3 degrees warmer than it is, if man is changing the temperature with his pollution. Scientifically that means the hypothesis of Man Mad Global Warming is WRONG. What it predicts isn't happening in nature.
That isn't the end however. Some climatologists explained the failure to accurately predict the temperature change due to the failure of these computer models to take into account the Cooling Effect of human civilization! The cooling of human activity negates some of the warming effect they say. And Svensmark says none of those computer models take into account cloud formation either. If this is true, then they may be right, we may indeed be warming the earth with our pollution


It's Not Easy Being Green

In the 1990's German researchers notice a huge cloud of Methane gas over the Black Forest of German where none should be. It has always been believed that Methane could only be produced in an anaerobic environment. What their work would show is Methane is actually produced by Green trees and vegetation!

Methane is much more powerful a greenhouse gas than is carbon dioxide. Once it was understood that green trees are the chief producers of methane on Earth the effect on climate became clear. By cutting down the forests of Europe and the United States, man has actually been cooling the earth by lowering the Methane level in the atmosphere. Even more important is that trees also evaporate water vapor from their leaves! While people talk about Methane and Carbon dioxide as serious green house gasses, the truth is, Water Vapor is THE BIGGEST Greenhouse gas of all. Trees thus have a double play in the global warming department. The put Methane and Water Vapor into the air. By cutting down so many trees, the amount of methane and water vapor in the air has been significantly reduced. You may remember reading stories over the last decade that the South Americans, who are cutting down the forests for farming, have been inducing changes in the weather patterns by doing so. That is another example of trees effecting weather, or, not effecting weather because they aren't there. Also, by absorbing the Sun's rays, trees keep the Sun's heat down near the surface. Without green trees to absorb the sun light, the lighter dirt would reflect more light back into space and help cool the earth.

SUMMATION

At this point in time, there is no scientifically verifiable evidence that anything is happening that should not be.

[Earth16]

Nice Summary

But much too long and factual to compete with climate models, which are based on so many assumptions that stacking BBs is easy by comparison. Especially since, as you noted, not only do they (the models) fail to explain the past, they don't accurately depict the present, much less predict the future.

FYI, the solar boys are predicting the solar activity of the next cycle to be less that the Maunder Minimum (Little Ice Age). Guess they won't be growing much wheat in Canada in 20 years.

[Mark Greene]

Great -- now read some actual empirical articles...

nt

[d8wave]

Global Warming on Global Health

What will get us first? The side effects of Global Warming or the fallout from man-made pollutants in our environment? Aren't all the things that cause Global Warming also factors in our personal health?
I'm personally more worried about how my environment is affecting our quality of life. It is something that hits home, eventually, for everyone. This is the real galvanizing issue for some, not Global Warming. How many of you know someone under 40 years old who has or has had cancer or some other debilitating disease.
The same response by all of us is required but the concept of man-made environmental changes on our health is more easily understood and would better ignite personal action. Telling someone that their SUV is going to cause NY to flood is too abstract for a mid westerner. Telling them that the pollutants from the exhaust of that SUV and all there neighbors SUV's are the cause of their health problems may be more convincing. And I find it easier to shut up the Global Warming nay sayers when I change the subject to personal health.
Maybe Global Warming along with personal health is the double whammy that will connect with everyone.

[d8wave]

I heard Noah's Building an Ark

...and I'm still waiting for his call?!!!

Whether it is Global Warming, Destruction of Resources, over population, greed or a Virus that teeters our civilization over the precipice the bottom line is that there are many things we can all do to circumvent the inevitable outcome. Buy use and demand local, renewable, organic and recyclable products.

[rockybruni]

Global warming - on Mars

Interestingly enough, Mars is warming up at approximately the same rate as Earth. Must be those two cars NASA put up there...

To think, twenty years ago we were worried about global cooling...

Perhaps, as a world leader, Al should pass a law restricting solar output variation?

A lot of the hoopla surrounding global warming seems to be of the Emperor's New Clothes variety. There are reputable scientists who question the conclusions drawn, but there's a genuine concern that doing so publicly would cost them their tenure and grants.

There's also no question but what lessening our environmental footprint is a good thing. It's just a shame we have to base it on voodoo environmentalism.

[harlequin115]

Why do none of the deniers ever use Google?

Use google, guys--it's not exactly difficult or expensive.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=192

THAT's the reason behind Mars warming--and where you got the idea it's in any way at the same rate as Earth is beyond me--probably something lost in translation.

Human-caused Global Warming is a FACT.... Even the Chinese accept it as such, which says VOLUMES about how ridiculous our government is right now.

[longnow]

You Have to be Getting Paid

Those talking points are old. Global ice age
was never taken seriously by GW scientists when
it was thrown around back in the day. Someone
figured that since snow can only happen at
the poles if the weather warms to a certain
degree then GW will cause massive snow, increase
in glacier creep and at new ice age. It was
rumor backed by rumor.
By the way the EPA official web site states
that climate change is man made...flat out.
Sun caused CC-completely discounted. No evidence
of increased sun output to account for cc.
despite what Senator Inhofe or Art Bell say.