Thursday, May 7, 2009

GLOBAL WARMING ON THE ROCKS

From the National Center for Policy analysis: http://www.ncpa.org/

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GLOBAL WARMING ON THE ROCKS

Last week Al Gore said the world must act quickly to slow the melting of the world's polar ice packs and glaciers before it reaches a critical rate for global warming.

"We have to act and we have to act quickly because we don't want to cross this tipping point," the Nobel peace laureate and former U.S. vice president told a meeting of foreign ministers, experts and scientists from the most affected countries.

But it turns out the world acted very quickly indeed, as Germany's Radio Bremen reports:

The research aircraft "Polar 5" concluded its Arctic expedition in Canada.

During the flight, researchers measured the current ice thickness at the North Pole and in areas that have never before been surveyed.

The sea-ice in the surveyed areas is apparently thicker than scientists had suspected.
According to a spokesperson for Bremerhaven's Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research:

Normally, newly formed ice measures some two meters in thickness after two years.

In the surveyed area, scientists measured ice thickness up to four meters.

At present, this result contradicts the warming of the sea water, according to the scientists.

Is it possible that global warming is neither a catastrophe waiting to happen nor a fraud but merely the result of confusion induced by the metric system, asks the Wall Street Journal?

Source: Blog, "Global Warming on the Rocks," Wall Street Journal, April 29, 2009; based upon Doug Mellgren, "Al Gore calls for prompt action on melting ice," Associated Press/Seattle Post Intelligencer, April 28, 2009; and Radio Breman, "North Pole Sea Ice twice as thick as expected," Canada Free Press, April 29, 2009.

For text:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124102148212069089.html

For Post Intelligencer text:
http://www.seattlepi.com/national/1103ap_eu_norway_melting_ice.html

For Canada Free Press text:
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/10662

For more on Global Warming Science:
http://environment.ncpa.org/issues/?c=science

For more on Global Warming:
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=32

6 comments:

  1. It's not only thicker, but there's more of it. Within the past winter, those same scientists admitted their calculations missed an area of polar ice about the size of Alaska - some 600,000 square miles! Meanwhile, an entire village has just been scrubbed off the landscape in east central Alaska by ice floes from the Kuskokwim River, just now thawing. The Governor has declared a very large flooded area to be a disaster zone. Global cooling, anyone?

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  2. You have to watch Dr. Muller's talk at the Strategic Studies Institutes' 20th Annual Strategy Conference at the US Army War College in April 09. His comments regarding global warming are spot on.

    http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/conf/panels-media-2009.cfm

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  3. I think "global warming" is likely a result of two modern human tendencies:

    1) The Kent Brockman Syndrome. It can be summed up thus:
    - Several years in the late 1990s and early 2000s experienced warmer than normal weather.
    ...and THEREFORE:
    - This is a trend! And it's always going to remain this way! If the temperatures went up a bit every year from 2001 to 2005, then it stands to reason that this will continue for the next several centuries!

    2) The tendency of many to believe that they, and everything they do, matter a great deal more than is actually the case.

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  4. Headline in the local paper today (Plains Reporter of eastern MT and western ND) --> "Planting season is getting later". Getting crops planted is two to three weeks behind schedule due to cool temperatures and a chance for more moisture. Late planting means later emergence. Late emergence means later growth to the reproductive stage, putting it into July which stresses the plants. Less than optimum yields are an end result. Since ND and MT are major grain growers this will more than likely impact commodity prices. Plan accordingly. Where's that 'global warming' when you want it? ;)

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  5. For more on Global Warming Science:
    http://environment.ncpa.org/issues/?c=science

    *****
    Why would someone recommend a rightwing political think tank that has a political agenda but no climate scientists?

    Wouldn't it make more sense to recommend people go to one of the many great science sites run by climatologists?

    That is, if one is interested in learning accurate information.

    Oops. Wrong blog for that!

    Hey, it's rainy and cool here today. Maybe you guys are on to something. Yesterday it was almost 90 degrees. It's so confusing. Maybe I'll read a Plains Reporter newspaper headline. They wouldn't be wrong about climate science.

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  6. Sorry, climatologists are not real scientists. If it makes you feel any better, neither are economists.

    ReplyDelete