Global warming? Hmmm
fear4freedom
Posts: 920
Climate changes all the time....and its natural! Man does have some effect, but the world cleanses itself and trees suck up all the CO2 that they have to! We are all ok people....as long as we dont play politics here!
It boggles my mind that some people think that the biggest greatest threat of our lifetime could all be settled if we just elect a few Democrats. All the problems will cease to exist if we just elect some Democrats to office. LOL OK
It boggles my mind that some people think that the biggest greatest threat of our lifetime could all be settled if we just elect a few Democrats. All the problems will cease to exist if we just elect some Democrats to office. LOL OK
Theres no time like the present
A man that stands for nothing....will fall for anything!
All people need to do more on every level!
A man that stands for nothing....will fall for anything!
All people need to do more on every level!
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
uhhh ... did you read the article?
they said the analysis will be done in another department to better align resources and that the person calling it a waste is some republican ...
Not so.. if one reads the article:
"This unit was started in 2009 not to study the science behind climate change but to use intelligence to evaluate how various potential results of global warming could impact national security."
And as polaris pointed out - the work is being integrated in another department.
A 'non event' really....
This seems to be the case with almost everything the OP posts.
Sha la la la i'm in love with a jersey girl
I love you forever and forever
Adel 03 Melb 1 03 LA 2 06 Santa Barbara 06 Gorge 1 06 Gorge 2 06 Adel 1 06 Adel 2 06 Camden 1 08 Camden 2 08 Washington DC 08 Hartford 08
Noone ever said that here.....like I said the Climate does change all the time and its natural and science is happening everywhere all the time. There is as much evidence that supports man made conspiracy as man made global warming! Climate Gate and the evidence there is astounding! There are as many scientists that dont believe in it, that do! There was periods in the past where CO2 was higher than it is now. Humans will dirty the world a little and the world can cleanse itself if it wanted. What gets me is your spokesperson, AL GORE, who happens to have a plastic face now, has a huge mansion that sucks up more power than anyone I know! He leaves his lights on when he is not home! He drives gas guzzlers. He is a sham and a hypocrite and gives the global warming movement nothing to stand on! "HE PLAYED ON YOUR FEARS"!!!! is his favorite line! LOL Yeah he did what he accused Bush of doing! LOL
Seriously, if Gore had any heart, he would not live the way he lives! He is the worst ever!
A man that stands for nothing....will fall for anything!
All people need to do more on every level!
Gore isn't my spokesman.. but I think you will find the evidence is overwhelming in favor that climate change is a fact. Not sure where you're getting you info from?
Sha la la la i'm in love with a jersey girl
I love you forever and forever
Adel 03 Melb 1 03 LA 2 06 Santa Barbara 06 Gorge 1 06 Gorge 2 06 Adel 1 06 Adel 2 06 Camden 1 08 Camden 2 08 Washington DC 08 Hartford 08
Wouldn't it still be a good idea to not pollute the shit out of the planet?
this is what 10+ years of indoctrination does ... which brings me back to my comment to all the moderate conservatives ... how do you go about and erase the brainwashing perpetrated by the right and corporations over the last while? ... how do you run a candidate who accepts that global warming is indeed caused primarily by man and has dire consequences? ... the evidence is overwhelming but yet you still have people re-iterating talking points that have been proven to be false ... that's the result of massive PR campaigns and indoctrination ...
the 'clean coal' companies love spreading the bullshit and the people lap it up. there are a lot more scientists who believe climate change as fact (because of the evidence duh!) then not.
Sha la la la i'm in love with a jersey girl
I love you forever and forever
Adel 03 Melb 1 03 LA 2 06 Santa Barbara 06 Gorge 1 06 Gorge 2 06 Adel 1 06 Adel 2 06 Camden 1 08 Camden 2 08 Washington DC 08 Hartford 08
there aren't many climate scientists who don't believe in AGW ...
Would you please pass the marshmallows and a stick?
It is just a liberal plot to ........
Abort your babies
Raise your taxes
And create more government
:wave:
I will not have my babies abouted!
good catch!!!
The things I do to keep myself amused while the global warming known as a mild fever burns in my head!
Nice action shot of the pooch in you avatar, by the way. :thumbup:
I suppose we should just ignore Nasa climate scientists, and Cambridge professors, e.t.c, and believe wacky Youtube clips, blogs, and energy corporation spokespersons, instead, right?
LOL WOW that was GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A man that stands for nothing....will fall for anything!
All people need to do more on every level!
I see this with my eyes! I see the Tea Parties and conservatives completely clean up after themselves in a moral and ethical way at every event I attend! I see my conservative family members clean up and recycle after themselves more so than any liberal I know. I see the people who love this country show more care about their consumption and waste! This is what I have witnessed without the media being involved!
I have been to Occupy, One Nation and other liberal gatherings and its a complete MESS! These people say they care about the planet but hate our fabric, how can that be? These people litter and leave a mess like they just dont care! A bunch of consuming, entitled people who believe that the producers of this nation pollute, but they somehow dont!
I have witnessed this for years! My liberal family members dont even recycle! WHAT? They are living in the 70's still! And when I attend liberal events, I see it and feel it everywhere!
A man that stands for nothing....will fall for anything!
All people need to do more on every level!
I see it in liberals actions when I attend all their events! I see their nature and I also see their game plans! They are ruthless and they litter more than anyone I know! They are the biggest hypocrites I know...by far!
FACT!
A man that stands for nothing....will fall for anything!
All people need to do more on every level!
these tea party people and conservatives you speak of... what kind of cars do they drive? how much electricity do the consume? is is solar powered? what is the square footage of their homes? are their houses air conditioned and cebtrally heated? how are they off setting their carbon footprint? cause you know no matter which side of the fence you sit on, just picking up after yourself and recycling isnt really getting it done if thats all you do.. especially when you then jump into your car and drive home to your energy sucking house.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
Thank you! When all else fails, be ridiculous, right?
This is it- we can point fingers all day long at little instances and ignore the big picture simply- I suppose- for the sake of argument. Catefrances is pointing out here, fear, that your microcosm example of a few people recycling or not misses the big picture. I could do the same. The most conservative man I personally know recycles like a true believer and drives a Prius. Oh, but he also owns a private airplane, a ROAT (ridiculously over-sized American truck) lives in a huge house with a two-car-one airplane garage and shop (the separate house itself is probably around 3,000 sg.ft.) has a heated swimming pool, a pair of jet skis (nothing like a little gas and oil in our water resevoirs) and god knows what else. I also know a liberal guy who throws some trash in the bushes. Oh, but he lives there too. So yeah, I could say liberals are stinkin' and trashing up the place and conservatives reeeeeeeecycle. B-F-D. It ain't about the labels, fear!
A United Nations report says the world's permafrost is beginning to thaw, bringing with it the threat of a big increase in global warming by 2100.
Permafrost is a deep layer of frozen soil covering about a quarter of landmass in the northern hemisphere, and is thought to contain twice the amount of carbon already in the atmosphere
An accelerating melt would free vast amounts of carbon dioxide and methane which has been trapped in organic matter in the subsoil, often for thousands of years.
In the report released at climate talks in Qatar, the UN Environment Program warned that the thaw could accelerate global warming.
The report says that warming permafrost could release the equivalent of between 43 and 135 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, by 2100, up to 39 per cent of annual emissions from human sources.
Andy Pitman, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Climate Systems Science at the University of New South Wales, says the thaw could also release large amounts of methane.
"Permafrost stores carbon dioxide, but it also has lots of little microbes in it and lots of organic matter," he said.
"And when that organic matter isn't frozen any more, it gets broken down by microbes in the soil and under certain circumstances that breakdown process releases a lot of methane."
Charles Miller is the principal investigator for NASA's Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment
'Canary in the coalmine'
Dr Miller says that in the short term, methane releases have a far greater impact on global temperatures than carbon dioxide.
"We're looking to see whether or not the impacts of climate change will cause the mobilisation of this stored carbon into dynamic carbon cycling which means it would be available in the atmosphere for photosynthetic uptake, and whether or not this carbon as it is released comes in the form of carbon dioxide or methane," he said.
"On a per molecule basis, methane is 75 times stronger than carbon dioxide over a 20 year time span."
He told the ABC's AM program that a thaw in parts of the northern hemisphere could provide also provide insight into the impacts of climate change worldwide.
"It's expected that climate change will impact the Arctic earliest. It's anticipated that climate change in the Arctic will be more dynamic than it would be in many other parts of the world," he said.
"And the ecosystems in the Arctic are so heavily adapted to the harsh conditions that exist there that the changes that are already occurring are happening faster than ecosystems can adapt.
"This is really a case of the canary in the coalmine where we might be able to find early detection of some things that would have larger, perhaps even global scale impact."
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
Good article Catefrances.
Here's one a Dancepartner brought to my attention. Also worth the read:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/11/27-6
A Thermonuclear Energy Bomb in Christmas Wrappings
World Energy Report 2012: The Good, the Bad, and the Really, Truly Ugly
by Michael T. Klare
Rarely does the release of a data-driven report on energy trends trigger front-page headlines around the world. That, however, is exactly what happened on November 12th when the prestigious Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) released this year’s edition of its World Energy Outlook. In the process, just about everyone missed its real news, which should have set off alarm bells across the planet.
Claiming that advances in drilling technology were producing an upsurge in North American energy output, World Energy Outlook predicted that the United States would overtake Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the planet’s leading oil producer by 2020. “North America is at the forefront of a sweeping transformation in oil and gas production that will affect all regions of the world,” declared IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven in a widely quoted statement.
In the U.S., the prediction of imminent supremacy in the oil-output sweepstakes was generally greeted with unabashed jubilation. “This is a remarkable change,” said John Larson of IHS, a corporate research firm. “It’s truly transformative. It’s fundamentally changing the energy outlook for this country.” Not only will this result in a diminished reliance on imported oil, he indicated, but also generate vast numbers of new jobs. “This is about jobs. You know, it's about blue-collar jobs. These are good jobs.”
The editors of the Wall Street Journal were no less ecstatic. In an editorial with the eye-catching headline “Saudi America,” they lauded U.S. energy companies for bringing about a technological revolution, largely based on the utilization of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) to extract oil and gas from shale rock. That, they claimed, was what made a new mega-energy boom possible. “This is a real energy revolution,” the Journal noted, “even if it's far from the renewable energy dreamland of so many government subsidies and mandates.”
Other commentaries were similarly focused on the U.S. outpacing Saudi Arabia and Russia, even if some questioned whether the benefits would be as great as advertised or obtainable at an acceptable cost to the environment.
While agreeing that the expected spurt in U.S. production is mostly “good news,” Michael A. Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations warned that gas prices will not drop significantly because oil is a global commodity and those prices are largely set by international market forces. “[T]he U.S. may be slightly more protected, but it doesn’t give you the energy independence some people claim,” he told the New York Times.
Some observers focused on whether increased output and job creation could possibly outweigh the harm that the exploitation of extreme energy resources like fracked oil or Canadian tar sands was sure to do to the environment. Daniel J. Weiss of the Center for American Progress, for example, warned of a growing threat to America’s water supply from poorly regulated fracking operations. “In addition, oil companies want to open up areas off the northern coast of Alaska in the Arctic Ocean, where they are not prepared to address a major oil blowout or spill like we had in the Gulf of Mexico.”
Such a focus certainly offered a timely reminder of how important oil remains to the American economy (and political culture), but it stole attention away from other aspects of the World Energy Report that were, in some cases, downright scary. Its portrait of our global energy future should have dampened enthusiasm everywhere, focusing as it did on an uncertain future energy supply, excessive reliance on fossil fuels, inadequate investment in renewables, and an increasingly hot, erratic, and dangerous climate. Here are some of the most worrisome takeaways from the report.
Shrinking World Oil Supply
Given the hullabaloo about rising energy production in the U.S., you would think that the IEA report was loaded with good news about the world’s future oil supply. No such luck. In fact, on a close reading anyone who has the slightest familiarity with world oil dynamics should shudder, as its overall emphasis is on decline and uncertainty.
Take U.S. oil production surpassing Saudi Arabia’s and Russia’s. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Here’s the catch: previous editions of the IEA report and the International Energy Outlook, its equivalent from the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), rested their claims about a growing future global oil supply on the assumption that those two countries would far surpass U.S. output. Yet the U.S. will pull ahead of them in the 2020s only because, the IEA now asserts, their output is going to fall, not rise as previously assumed.
This is one hidden surprise in the report that’s gone unnoticed. According to the DoE’s 2011 projections, Saudi production was expected to rise to 13.9 million barrels per day in 2025, and Russian output to 12.2 million barrels, jointly providing much of the world’s added petroleum supply; the United States, in this calculation, would reach the 11.7 million barrel mark.
The IEA’s latest revision of those figures suggests that U.S. production will indeed rise, as expected, to about 11 million barrels per day in 2025, but that Saudi output will unexpectedly fall to about 10.6 million barrels and Russian to 9.7 million barrels. The U.S., that is, will essentially become number one by default. At best, then, the global oil supply is not going to grow appreciably -- despite the IEA’s projection of a significant upswing in international demand.
But wait, suggests the IEA, there’s still one wild card hope out there: Iraq. Yes, Iraq. In the belief that the Iraqis will somehow overcome their sectarian differences, attain a high level of internal stability, establish a legal framework for oil production, and secure the necessary investment and technical support, the IEA predicts that its output will jump from 3.4 million barrels per day this year to 8 million barrels in 2035, adding an extra 4.6 million barrels to the global supply. In fact, claims the IEA, this gain would represent half the total increase in world oil production over the next 25 years. Certainly, stranger things have happened, but for the obvious reasons, it remains an implausible scenario.
Add all this together -- declining output from Russia and Saudi Arabia, continuing strife in Iraq, uncertain results elsewhere -- and you get insufficient oil in the 2020s and 2030s to meet anticipated world demand. From a global warming perspective that may be good news, but economically, without a massive increase in investment in alternate energy sources, the outlook is grim. You don’t know what bad times are until you don’t have enough energy to run the machinery of civilization. As suggested by the IEA, “Much is riding on Iraq’s success... Without this supply growth from Iraq, oil markets would be set for difficult times.”
Continuing Reliance on Fossil Fuels
For all the talk of the need to increase reliance on renewable sources of energy, fossil fuels -- coal, oil, and natural gas -- will continue to provide most of the additional energy supplies needed to satisfy soaring world demand. “Taking all new developments and policies into account,” the IEA reported, “the world is still failing to put the global energy system onto a more sustainable path.” In fact, recent developments seem to favor greater fossil-fuel reliance.
In the United States, for instance, the increased extraction of oil and gas from shale formations has largely silenced calls for government investment in renewable technology. In its editorial on the IEA report, for example, the Wall Street Journal ridiculed such investment. It had, the Journal’s writers suggested, now become unnecessary due to the Saudi Arabian-style oil and gas boom to come. “Historians will one day marvel that so much political and financial capital was invested in a [failed] green-energy revolution at the very moment a fossil fuel revolution was aborning,” they declared.
One aspect of this energy “revolution” deserves special attention. The growing availability of cheap natural gas, thanks to hydro-fracking, has already reduced the use of coal as a fuel for electrical power plants in the United States. This would seem to be an obvious environmental plus, since gas produces less climate-altering carbon dioxide than does coal. Unfortunately, coal output and its use haven’t diminished: American producers have simply increased their coal exports to Asia and Europe. In fact, U.S. coal exports are expected to reach as high as 133 million tons in 2012, overtaking an export record set in 1981.
Despite its deleterious effects on the environment, coal remains popular in countries seeking to increase their electricity output and promote economic development. Shockingly, according to the IEA, it supplied nearly half of the increase in global energy consumption over the last decade, growing faster than renewables. And the agency predicts that coal will continue its rise in the decades ahead. The world’s top coal consumer, China, will burn ever more of it until 2020, when demand is finally expected to level off. India’s usage will rise without cessation, with that country overtaking the U.S. as the number two consumer around 2025.
In many regions, notes the IEA report, the continued dominance of fossil fuels is sustained by government policies. In the developing world, countries commonly subsidize energy consumption, selling transportation, cooking, and heating fuels at below-market rates. In this way, they hope to buffer their populations from rising commodity costs, and so protect their regimes from popular unrest. Cutting back on such subsidies can prove dangerous, as in Jordan where a recent government decision to raise fuel prices led to widespread riots and calls for the monarchy’s abolition. In 2011, such subsidies amounted to $523 billion globally, says the IEA, up almost 30% from 2010 and six times greater than subsidies for renewable energy.
No Hope for Averting Catastrophic Climate Change
Of all the findings in the 2012 edition of the World Energy Outlook, the one that merits the greatest international attention is the one that received the least. Even if governments take vigorous steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the report concluded, the continuing increase in fossil fuel consumption will result in “a long-term average global temperature increase of 3.6 degrees C.”
This should stop everyone in their tracks. Most scientists believe that an increase of 2 degrees Celsius is about all the planet can accommodate without unimaginably catastrophic consequences: sea-level increases that will wipe out many coastal cities, persistent droughts that will destroy farmland on which hundreds of millions of people depend for their survival, the collapse of vital ecosystems, and far more. An increase of 3.6 degrees C essentially suggests the end of human civilization as we know it.
To put this in context, human activity has already warmed the planet by about 0.8 degrees C -- enough to produce severe droughts around the world, trigger or intensify intense storms like Hurricane Sandy, and drastically reduce the Arctic ice cap. “Given those impacts,” writes noted environmental author and activist Bill McKibben, “many scientists have come to think that two degrees is far too lenient a target.” Among those cited by McKibben is Kerry Emanuel of MIT, a leading authority on hurricanes. “Any number much above one degree involves a gamble,” Emanuel writes, “and the odds become less and less favorable as the temperature goes up.” Thomas Lovejoy, once the World Bank's chief biodiversity adviser, puts it this way: “If we’re seeing what we're seeing today at 0.8 degrees Celsius, two degrees is simply too much.”
At this point, it’s hard even to imagine what a planet that's 3.6 degrees C hotter would be like, though some climate-change scholars and prophets -- like former Vice President Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth -- have tried. In all likelihood, the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets would melt entirely, raising sea levels by several dozen feet and completely inundating coastal cities like New York and Shanghai. Large parts of Africa, Central Asia, the Middle East, and the American Southwest would be rendered uninhabitable thanks to lack of water and desertification, while wildfires of a sort that we can’t imagine today would consume the parched forests of the temperate latitudes.
In a report that leads with the “good news” of impending U.S. oil supremacy, to calmly suggest that the world is headed for that 3.6 degree C mark is like placing a thermonuclear bomb in a gaudily-wrapped Christmas present. In fact, the “good news” is really the bad news: the energy industry’s ability to boost production of oil, coal, and natural gas in North America is feeding a global surge in demand for these commodities, ensuring ever higher levels of carbon emissions. As long as these trends persist -- and the IEA report provides no evidence that they will be reversed in the coming years -- we are all in a race to see who gets to the Apocalypse first.
© 2012 Michael T. Klare
Brain, do you suppose -- oh never mind, I'll just ask him myself.
fearforfreedom; could you tell me if you intentionally goad Brian or that you know not what you do? :corn:
Go to a NASCAR Race.
Get back to me.
Hail, Hail!!!
Or any football tailgate in Atlanta or Charlotte this weekend.
"...I changed by not changing at all..."
WHAT? LOL :corn: :corn:
A man that stands for nothing....will fall for anything!
All people need to do more on every level!