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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (150667)	8/29/2002 5:51:22 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1585592

Here is a good example oh how people take a short term trend (a few decades is a very short term trend when you are dealing with world climate changes) and extend it resulting in predictions of imment doom. Global warming is a similer case. You need a lote more then a few decades worth of data to tell a real trend. Tim burrow.marnanel.org "Perhaps the most famous form of the ``sky is falling'' claim today is global warming--the so-called ``Greenhouse Effect.'' The U.N.'s 1992 Rio summit focused on this issue. The fear is that pollution, particularly such ``greenhouse gases'' as carbon dioxide, will stay within the atmosphere, leading to a rise in the earth's temperature, which will create deserts, melt the polar icecaps, and flood coastal nations. In fact, warnings of global warming are not new: The theory was first advanced in the 1890s and re-emerged in the 1950s. But soon thereafter a new theory gained sway--that we were entering a new Ice Age. In 1974 the U.S. National Science Board stated that ``during the last 20 to 30 years, world temperature has fallen, irregularly at first but more sharply over the last decade.'' In the same year, Time magazine opined that ``the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing.'' Similarly, observed Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 1976, ``Since about 1940 there has been a distinct drop in average global temperature. It's fallen about half a degree Fahrenheit.'' Five years later Fred Hoyle's Ice: The Ultimate Human Catastrophe appeared, warning that a new Ice Age was long overdue, and ``when the ice comes, most of northern America, Britain, and northern Europe will disappear under the glaciers. . . . The right conditions can arise within a single decade.'' He advocated warming the oceans to forestall this ``ultimate human catastrophe.'' Another two years passed and Rolling Stone magazine declared that: ``For years now, climatologists have foreseen a trend toward colder weather--long range, to be sure, but a trend as inevitable as death. . . . According to [one] theory, all it would take is a single cold summer to plunge the earth into a sudden apocalypse of ice.'' " burrow.marnanel.org

To: TimF who wrote (150667)	8/29/2002 10:54:55 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1585592

"Not only are there major reasons to believe that models are exaggerating the response to increasing carbon dioxide, but, perhaps even more significantly, the models' predictions for the past century incorrectly describe the pattern of warming and greatly overestimate its magnitude. The global average temperature record for the past century or so is irregular and not without problems. It does, however, show an average increase in temperature of about .45 degree centigrade plus or minus .15 degree centigrade with most of the increase occurring before 1940, followed by some cooling through the early 1970s and a rapid (but modest) temperature increase in the late 1970s. As noted, we have already seen an increase in "equivalent'' carbon dioxide of 50 percent. Thus, on the basis of models that predict a four degree centigrade warming for a doubling of carbon dioxide we might expect to have seen a warming of two degrees centigrade already. If, however, we include the delay imposed by the oceans' heat capacity, we might expect a warming of about one degree centigrade--which is still twice what has been observed. Moreover, most of that warming occurred before the bulk of the minor greenhouse gases were added to the atmosphere. Figure 2 shows what might have been expected for models with differing sensitivities to a doubling of carbon dioxide. What we see is that the past record is most consistent with an equilibrium response to a doubling of about 1.3 degrees centigrade--assuming that all the observed warming was due to increasing carbon dioxide. There is nothing in the record that can be distinguished from the natural variability of the climate, however. Tim, this is like most topics.......the version you get depends on who you use for your source. The sites I most trust when linking on the thread are governmental ones.....like the Library of Congress and the CIA. However, I did briefly skim several sites that made claims that global warming is a farce. They could well be right........they certainly support their positions with scientific rhetoric. And I could almost believe them if they could explain adequately why the oceans are rising. But I don't think they do. Consequently, I feel most comfortable with the EPA site. They readily admit they are not sure that global warming is a real phenomenon but they feel their is quite a bit of convincing evidence to support it. I will post some of their comments to you. If one considers the tropics, that conclusion is even more disturbing. There is ample evidence that the average equatorial sea surface has remained within plus or minus one degree centigrade of its present temperature for billions of years, yet current models predict average warming of from two to four degrees centigrade even at the equator. It should be noted that for much of the Earth's history, the atmosphere had much more carbon dioxide than is currently anticipated for centuries to come. I could, in fact, go on at great length listing the evidence for small responses to a doubling of carbon dioxide; there are space constraints, however. " cato.org Or look at this graph accesstoenergy.com It shows that from 1850 to 1940 temps went up about .7 degrees with about another .2 degrees added since 1940. I believe those those numbers are in a centigrade metric. BTW, the EPA has said as have other advocates of global warming that global temps increased by only one Farenheit degree in the 20th century. That might not seem like much but remember during the little Ice Age of the Pleistocene Epoch, global temps only dropped by two degrees. ted

To: TimF who wrote (150667)	8/29/2002 11:07:39 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1585592

"Although scientists have incontrovertible evidence that the surfaces of the land and oceans have been warming, some scientists are not yet convinced that the atmosphere is also warming. Satellite data on temperatures in the lower 4.8 miles of the atmosphere, spanning a period from 1979 to the present, show little if any warming trend compared with the surface-based record during the same period. However, the 1979-2000 satellite data series may be too short to show a trend in atmospheric temperature. There also are physical reasons (such as the different responses of the atmosphere and surface to stratospheric ozone depletion and El Nino events) to expect that changes in atmospheric temperatures may not exactly match temperature changes on the surface during this period." epa.gov epa.gov

To: TimF who wrote (150667)	8/29/2002 11:16:36 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1585592

"In North America, precipitation has increased significantly. Precipitation in the United States has increased by an average of 5-10 percent in the last century. Along the northern tier states and in Southern Canada, rainfall has increased 10-15 percent. Much of the increase in rainfall has been taking place between September and November. Rainfall is also tending to be more concentrated in heavy downpours, according to studies by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA. At the beginning of the 20th century, only 9 percent of the nation experienced a storm each year in which more than two inches of precipitation fell in a 24-hour period. In recent decades, such a severe storm has occurred each year over close to 11 percent of the nation." epa.gov

To: TimF who wrote (150667)	8/29/2002 11:19:07 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1585592

"Sea level has risen worldwide approximately 15-20 cm (6-8 inches) in the last century. Approximately 2-5 cm (1-2 inches) of the rise has resulted from the melting of mountain glaciers. Another 2-7 cm has resulted from the expansion of ocean water that resulted from warmer ocean temperatures. The pumping of ground water and melting of the polar ice sheets may have also added water to the oceans. Along most of the U.S. coast, sea level has been rising 2.5-3.0 mm/yr (10-12 inches per century). Nevertheless, the rate varies from about 1 cm per year (three feet per century) along the Louisiana Coast, to a drop of several millimeters per year (a few inches per decade) in parts of Alaska. The rapid rate in Louisiana resulted from the settling of newly created land formed by the sediments that washed down the Mississippi River. In Galveston, the removal of groundwater led the land above the water table to sink. In areas that were covered by glaciers during the last Ice Age, by contrast, the land is rising because of the removal of the weight of the ice, which had previously compressed the land downward. As a result, the sea is dropping relative to these coasts." epa.gov