Ok, I know you have heard all these idiots who got 20" of snow...in the north eastern US...in February, and all of the sudden they think that means that either the Earth is getting colder or that it isn't getting warmer. Now, being the ethnocentric, over zealous, reactionary, fly by the seat of their pants, "I feel it in my gut", go along with the in-crowd who can't see the world beyond their own back yard that my conservative friends always seem to be, that is completely opposite of what they have been saying over the last few years where they actually conceded that the Earth was warming but it couldn't possibly have anything to do with greenhouse gases or man's activities and it is just a natural cycle of the planet (which it is but not now, we should be close to approaching another ice age if anything). But now that there is SNOW IN FEBRUARY they are back on the bandwagon that there is no such thing as climate change at all. They even make such claims (Denis Miller) that, "who cares, 1-2 degrees. What's the big deal". Well the big deal is that at 32 degrees water is ice but at 33 degrees it's water...Fresh water....melting not into lake Tahoe or a water tower in the middle of the Mojave, but into our oceans which currently contain salt water which is a whole other problem for people in the UK, Scandinavia and Iceland that I won't get into.
Here are the facts:
Venus is hotter than Mercury even though it is twice as far away from the Sun and Venus only receives 1/4 of the Sun's energy as Mercury . Why? Greenhouse gases!
The lowest temperatures on Mercury (closest planet to the Sun) is about 297 degrees BELOW ZERO F. The low temperatures on Venus only get down to about 675 degrees Fahrenheit AOVE ZERO. Why? Because Mercury has no greenhouse gases, Venus' atmosphere is 96.5% CO2. So there, now we know the effects a greenhouse gas like CO2 can have on a planet.
Now, what have people on Earth been spewing out of their automobiles, coal plants, trains, boats and factories for the last 150 years?? That's right! CO2. But don't forget Methane, which acts as a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, can be generated by the decomposition of our garbage but mainly comes from the digestion of our livestock. Yes fatty, that steak raises green house gas levels in our atmosphere. And don't say you can't stop cows from farting because if you thought it through for a couple more minutes it was all start to make sense...I just don't want anyone to embarrass themselves. Speaking of which, contrary to what Congressmen John Boehner says, cows do not fart CO2.
Over the last 400,000 years, CO2 levels have averaged about 300 ppm but due to our industrial revolution and population explosion we have contributed another 80 ppm to that figure bringing current average CO2 concentrations to 380 ppm, a 26.6% increase. During the last ice age when it was obviously really cold, CO2 concentrations were at about 180 ppm and guess what, there were not cars, coal plants or animal husbandry to generate the massive amounts of CO2 or Methane the Western diet generates today.
Every warming period going back 400,000 years has coincided with a rise in CO2 levels. CO2 levels have been higher in the past as volcanic activity and the dying off of the majority of life on the planet and other factors can release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as well.
CO2 is toxic to humans, it's why we exhale it....But it does have a nice effect for metal bands in the form of dry ice.
Since the end of the last ice age (16000 BC) the oceans have risen 300 feet (it's why there is now a Bering Strait as opposed to a Bering land bridge) and the average temperature of the Earth has gone up 16 degrees F. So you see, when it gets warmer, ice does melt, when ice melts, the sea levels do rise. I know Faux News says that ice doesn't make the water levels rise but they are wrong about that along with a great number of other things....like the definition of "news" for instance.
Europe's "little ice age" lasted from 1400 until the start of the industrial revolution (1860)...no coincidence there. The interesting thing is that during this time, they experienced very little precipitation. This colder environment along with drier weather resulted in the decline of the Vikings and the Irish Potato Famine. So 24" of snow (precipitation) on the east coast in the middle of February doesn't mean the Earth is getting cooler or even that it isn't getting warmer. Just as Antarctica is one of, if not the driest places on Earth even though it is one of the coldest, it can still snow even if its just a little warmer than it was last year. By the way 2008 saw a 1.34" above average amount of precipitation. Bottom line, warmer air can hold more moisture than colder air.
Combined global land and ocean temperatures January of 2010 was the 4th warmest on record according to the activist, leftist, Stalinist, global warming profiting, biased, conspiracy laden National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. June of 2009 was the second warmest on record since records have been kept going back to 1880.
For the Southern Hemisphere June of 2009 was the warmest month on record. You may recall the photos Koala Bears
begging humans for water.
According to the World Meteorological Organization (not amateur Faux News reporters) the 2000s (2000-2009) were the warmest decade ever since humans have been recording such data. And I am not just talking about all the hot air from the Bush administration.
2009 was the 5 warmest year since humans have been recording such data.
New studies (
NCAR) show that the occurrences of days where a record high temperature was set have vastly outnumbered the days where record lows were set have been steadily increasing over the last 50 years and is now at a ratio of 2 to 1. How the data works out is that there are fewer days where record lows are set, not that there are so many more days where record highs are set and what it also suggests is that our days aren't getting that much warmer but our nights are becoming less cold. A less cold/warmer night would make sense if there were more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere as the warm air would be trapped in the atmosphere which keeps the nights warm even after the Sun goes down...See the Venus effect where it has hot nights and Mercury has very cold nights but very hot days but there are no greenhouse gases to trap that heat as there is in Venus and now Earth.
From 1995-2001 the Larsen Ice Shelf in Antarctica lost 970 square miles of it's surface area.
The Jones Ice Shelf had an area of 35 km2 in 1970 but was gone by 2008.
Of the 2000 or so glaciers being monitored in Alaska, 99% are retreating along with several hundred in Patagonia and the glacier on Mt. Kilimanjaro has retreated 75% since 1912.
Since 1980, the average thickness of glaciers being monitored (30 glaciers in 9 mountain ranges) has decreased by 11.3 meters water equivalent.
Interesting Coincidences:
In first half of the 1940's there was and increase in both CO2 levels and global temperatures.
At the same time, the world was at war building the largest armies the world has ever seen and transporting those armies across the world burning massive amounts fossil fuels.
There were some very cold weeks this winter, at least in the midwest. At the same time, electricity generated by coal plants in the US from October of 2008 to October of 2009 was down 11,592 thousand megawatt hours or 7.6%, Declines in Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Indiana, Alabama, and West Virginia accounted for 56.3 of that decline but electricity generated by hydroelectric sources
was up 29.8%. Due to the stagnant economy, net generation of electricity was down 3.8% during the same time frame.
So, what does the anomaly of 2 big snow storms and 2 or 3 average winters over the last 20 years in the Northern Hemisphere or North America do to disprove the effects of man's impact on the climate or at very least that the Earth's climate is changing??
Not dick!Boulder, CO:
Grinnell Glacier:
Morteratsch Glacier:
Mass Balance of Glaciers:
Decline of Specific Mass Balance:
Glaciers don't recede if the climate gets colder. Get it?
And I know some on the right will say that there is all this money to be made in global warming and that Al Gore has made millions selling global warming and giving speeches. Well ok, if you want to follow the money let's do that.
We know that the "science" against climate change is coming from the people who sell fossil fuels such as the Coal industry and big oil. So, lets look at how much money they stand to lose vs. the money Al Gore and a few climatologists stand to gain in the climate change debate.
Roughly 45-50% of all the electricity generated in the US comes from Coal fired power plants. The Coal industry in the US, which is second only 2nd China, generates profits between $50-60 billion per year. We also know that Exxon ALONE had $40 Billion in profit in 2007. So how much did Al Gore make off An Inconvenient Truth? How much funding do climatologists who research climate change receive world wide?? You tell me but I know its not $100s of Billions.
So who has the biggest incentive in skewing or proving data one way or the other? The guys making $100s of Billions per year or the guys who are receiving millions per year?
