Written by Mike Thomas, Orlando Sentinel Wednesday, 11 February 2009
Did last week have anyone questioning global warming?
Think how people in Chicago feel. They're going through the coldest winter in a quarter-century, and the ninth-coldest of all time.
Of course, none of this contradicts the theory that we are turning Planet Earth into a convection oven.
It goes something like this: If the planet is warm, it is because of global warming. If the planet is cold, it is in spite of global warming.
I've noticed this dynamic in play for quite some time. Whenever the weather smacks us around, be it a Midwest flood, a Florida drought, a New Orleans hurricane or a California wildfire, it is blamed on Hummers.
Those who dispute this are one of the following: dumb, misinformed, skeptics, members of the flat-earth society, members of the Cato Institute or paid off by Exxon.
And the beauty of this juggernaut is that it has inoculated itself against dissent by labeling, in advance, any dissenters as deniers.
True believers must buy into the apocalypse. Every day seems to bring yet another doomsday scenario for penguins, polar bears and Miami Beach condo dwellers.
Deniers are a threat to our very survival. Even worse, they are a threat to the careers (and funding) of countless researchers, as well as an entire industrial complex that is about to make global warming a trillion-dollar business.
The science of global warming has arrived at a conclusion, which all data must now accommodate.
Unfortunately, it sometimes does not.
You may recall that in his movie, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore noted nine of the 10 hottest recorded years have occurred since 1995. That's what the NASA data showed until a blogger crunched the agency's data and found out it made a mistake.
In fact, six of the 10 hottest years came before 1954, with the 1930s being particularly toasty. Ever hear of the Dust Bowl?
There has been much alarm about Greenland melting and drowning Florida. Feeding this are images of rapidly melting glaciers. They were melting quickly between 2000 and 2005. But since then the melting has slowed to what is considered a normal level.
Researchers from the Los Alamos National Laboratory discovered that the rate of warming in Greenland between 1920 and 1930 was 50 percent higher than today. And the glaciers were smaller.
Ice cores taken from a Russian research site in the Antarctic reveal that when you go back in time, the theory of global warming seems to put the cart before the horse. We are told that greenhouse gases build up and cause temperatures to rise.
But an analysis of the ice cores shows the temperature goes up first, followed by an increase in greenhouse gases. The heat is triggered by other natural phenomenon, such as solar radiation. This heats up the ocean, which releases carbon dioxide.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere right now actually is downright paltry compared with what it has been during Earth's history.
I could go on and on. Most all scientists agree the world has gotten warmer.
But many distinguished scientists think the evidence blaming humans is either bogus, incomplete or not overwhelming enough to think we are a significant part of a problem.
I have gone from being a believer to being a global-warming agnostic. I think we are having some impact but am not convinced how much of one. I remain receptive to arguments from both sides.
Global warming is a science in which imperfect data are plugged into imperfect models by too many scientists looking for the same conclusion.
Submitted by atheo on Wed, 2009-02-11 20:14
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when florida starts flooding from sea level rise.
on the other hand, if the carbon traders can make a killing from global warming, why shouldnt the orlando sentinel try to prop up its real estate ad revenue for as long as it can?
not to mention the inconvenient truth that those stats about the hottest years...
...apply to the US only, which doesnt stop you guys from implying that the hottest years stats apply globally.
more sleaze from the deniers.
florida starts flooding....
They sky has been falling for years now, and no sign of this promised sea-level rises
Alarmist nonsense used as a pretext for repressive governance, that's what it is.
sorry
...and fossil fuel consumption falls, and the particulates settle out and quit shading the planet, and the co2 becomes more dominant, you can probably get some good real estate deals on beachfront property in miami.
you might have to take a boat and scuba gear to visit your land, but that's okay.
and, are you denying that mankind is putting about 30 extra gigatons per year into the atmosphere?
Hmm, I wouldn't miss out certain parts of Boca Raton & certain gold lame T shirt wearing "lovely" people of Boca. Been there once and that was enough for me.
I've never seen that many rude & mannerless people elsewhere in the States.
is a minor greenhouse gas. Water vapour has a far greater greenhouse effect. Should we ban that too? Aren't you forgetting that the greenhouse effect is one of the reasons why this planet is habitable? Take your global warming shilling and shove it where the sun doesn't shine and where as a consequence there is no greenhouse effect.
As I said in my last post, I don't need fucktard zealots (the state, the scientists, or shills like you) telling me how I need to live my life.
and mankind is putting an extra 30 gigatons of co2 into the atmosphere every year.
greenhouse gases
Water vapor is a naturally occurring greenhouse gas and accounts for the largest percentage of the greenhouse effect, between 36% and 70%.
...air can hold more water vapor per unit volume when it warms.
...water vapor concentrations in warmer air will amplify the greenhouse effect created by anthropogenic greenhouse gases while maintaining nearly constant relative humidity. Thus water vapor acts as a positive feedback to the forcing provided by greenhouse gases such as CO2.
...a greenhouse gas, and also prove that mankind is not putting close to 30 gigatons of co2 into the atmosphere every year, you're kind sucking hind tit.
Sullivan,
Of course the establishment can come up with any number of rationales and methods for increased taxation and interfering with trade relations with Islamic nations. Those ends don't necessarily rely on AGW as a basis.
A new generation of nuclear power plants and the continuation of the WMD industry does however require subsidization to be viable. AGW fearmongering is the only way that this imperative can be accomplished.
is just as bad as any other kind of fearmongering.
however, when you're standing in the middle of a bus lane, and a bus is bearing down on you, it's not "fearmongering" when the bus honks at you.
boombox so loudly that you cant hear the bus honking, you gotta wonder about your "friendship".
If you don't let us build new A plants the world will end!!!!! BTW ,we need you to pay for them too.
You go first Wadosy, pay up, and while you are at it you can relocate next door to one of the new uranium mines or reprocessing plants that of course will be excused from monitoring or environmental regulation. Its an emergency you know!!!!
...exxon's alliance with the israeli american AEI think tank.
in the meantime, i dont think nuke plants are the answer.
if you're telling the truth about your lifestyle, you're already living part of the answer.
the rest of the answer lies in growing as much of your own food as you can.
if you arent in a position to grow your own food, you, and hundreds of millions like you, can kiss your ass goodbye... figuratively speaking.
practice for hard times, because we are all gonna need the practice, sooner or later.
What counts is the carbon taxes that will allow nuclear plants to compete in the power marketplace, and of course there's the $50 billion for nuke plants that the senate has put in the just passed "stimulus" bill.
You can "grow your own" but the fallout (an ever present fact of life with nukes) will land on your crops just as readily as commercially grown.
in the meantime, and to repeat myself, nukes are not the answer.
you can whine about the carbon trading all you want, but you're doing everyone a huge disservice when you couple that whining to global warming denial.
...stuff like this is not so pretty productive...
know what i mean?
... as to how the AGW fearmongers will spend our money, both in the US and Britain. Go figure. It's all about nukes, that's the only proven fact.
what if we're gonna have to live within our means?
looks to me like there's not gonna be enough money to continue the wars, subdue enraged americans, support israel and build the nuke plants... not to mention the looters who see the peak oil handwriting on the wall.
the carbon trading scheme is just another scheme to loot a dying system, as is the bank bailout scheme.
maybe the only answer lies is being as self-sufficient as possible, and letting the rest of it go to hell.
...something like 1500 nuke plants to replace the oil...
at 10 billion a clatter, how many trillions of dollars is that?
The nuclear arms industry requires a nuclear power infrastructure. For those who live to dominate through terror, AGW is the only paradigm that provides the "answer". No, they won't replace or eliminate carbon based fuels, but they will get their nukes and we will pay for them also. They don't need 1500 plants for their WMDs.
you cant refute the logic, the facts or the physics of global warming.
it makes no difference how bad the slimebags exploit global warming, because no amount of exploitation can change the basic logid, facts and physics.
meanwhile, remind me not to stand in a bus lane with you and your boombox.
is haywire, especially since we already have enough nukes to immolate ourselves a thousand times over.
...is the final solution to the global warming problem.
... the WMDs are old and must be replaced. Re-using the fisile material is not an option. Domination through terror is the motive for the deception. You, wadosy, are a victim of the biggest bait and switch scam ever. The "stimulus" will be either paid by taxpayers or inflated away by destroying the currency. Meanwhile the nuclear plants will be funded. Middle America will think that their newly increased electric rates is the price for saving the climate while the bomb makers will get their enriched uranium.
Domination requires having the latest most deadly weopons which can't be produced with recycled material. That's not what they want, they don't want a dirty bomb, they want one that will turn their opponents nation into a "glass parking lot". People like you, wadosy, are going to give them what they want.
it can be retooled into new weapons.
from sandia labs
For the foreseeable future, the U.S will not produce any new plutonium or highly enriched uranium, but the nuclear weapons complex will retain the ability to process both materials and will produce tritium as required.
The complex will have the capability to produce a limited number of new primary and secondary component designs in quantities necessary to support a future weapons stockpile by recycling plutonium and highly enriched uranium from retired weapons.
Pantex Plant
FUNCTION: Currently evaluates, refurbishes, and modifies stockpiled weapons, fabricates high-explosive components16 and disassembles retired nuclear weapons.
brookings institution
...a "limited number" of "secondary component design" weopons may have to keep them satisfied until the new plants are up and running. From their perspective at least they have a sufficient number of reliable weopons on hand, for the time being.
Funny how the AGW hoax has turned "the foreseeable future" into or short recess.
what's the problem with that?
meanwhile, you cant touch the logic, the facts or the physics of global warming, you have been proven wrong about recycling weapons grade uranium and plutonium, and now you have to fall back on your ad hom attacks.
not such a stellar performance.
want to take a stab at guessing how much spare plutonium the US has from retired weapons?
want to tell us how much plutonium it takes to make a bomb?
want to divide A into B and come up with the number of weapons we could make if we retooled the spare plutonium into new weapons?
has fallen flat on its ass.
meanwhile, we're putting 30 gigatons of co2, the second-most important greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere every year, and you dont dare touch that, do you?
so you have to derail the thread by throwing out these nuclear red herrings.
tsk tsk
how'bout you try to hold your breath until that light bulb is correctly screwed in.
...wants to limit itself to using decayed plutonium?
All isotopes of plutonium are radioactive, but they have widely varying half-lives. The half-life is the time it takes for half the atoms of an element to decay. For instance, plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24, 110 years while plutonium-241 has a half-life of 14.4 years. The various isotopes also have different principal decay modes. The isotopes present in commercial or military plutonium-239 are plutonium-240, -241, and -242.
http://www.ieer.org/fctsheet/pu-props.html
"Plutonium is very new, scientifically speaking. It's only 50 years old. Nobody knows age decay issues or stability issues related to plutonium and that is another reason to have this capability, whether it's an interim capability until 2020, at Los Alamos. We're talking about just a few plutonium pits -- not many at all -- to maintain our current stockpile. Or on the other hand, if one is discussing a permanent facility to manufacture pits, like all other nuclear nations have, if a problem is discovered with plutonium, specifically an age decay issue, or a stability issue, and suddenly many of our weapons have to have their plutonium replaced, we're going to need the capability to do it."
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in his foreword to the United States' 2002 Nuclear Posture Review -- a strategic document outlining America's defense strategy for the next decade -- wrote that America's nuclear infrastructure had "atrophied."
He emphasized the importance of revitalizing it "to increase confidence in the deployed forces, eliminate unneeded weapons, and mitigate the risks of technological surprise."
from retired nuke weapons?
how many pounds of plutonium does it take to make a weapon?
how many weapons can be fabricated from plutonium from weapons now in storage?
why do the nuke scientists at sandia say that retired nuke weapons will be recycled into new ones?
has rumsfeld ever lied to you?
oh, a big mystery, for sure.
...why do you pretend to believe people who probably staged 9/11, lied us into two wars, and are attempting to lie us into more wars?
why do you trot out a prominent member of that group as an expert on recycling nuclear weapons, when he is a career politician, a proven liar, and a complete sleaze?
why do you pretend to believe rumsfeld the sleaze in preference to the professional nuclear scientists at sandia?
why do you pretend to believe the AEI/exxon sleazeballs about global warming, after they've staged 9/11, lied us into two wars, and are attempting to lie us into more wars?
that's the big mystery about atheo the mysterious.
but maybe it's not such a big mystery... maybe what we got here is somebody who's aspiring to a few 10k backhanders out of the exxon/AEI warming denial reptile fund.
seeing as how we got 50 tons of plutonium in storage from retired weapons, seeing as how it takes five or ten pounds, (maybe 15 for the BMFs) of plutonium to make a bomb, and seeing as how the half-life of weapons grade plutonium ---aka plutonium 239--- is over 24 thousand years, it doesnt seem likely we're gonna run out of plutonium bombs in the forseeable future.
... certainly the author refers to recorded history.
This is from The Volokh Conspiracy