Re: Climate change deniers jump on minor, irrelevant NASA error -- what else would you expect from a collection of shitheads?

Okay, since you seem to know about the subject matter, can you answer any one of the follwing questions? The more questions you can answer, the more confidence we will have that you really understand the issue....are you ready?

What will be the effects of Global Warming, and when will the effect be the worse?

How certain are the predictions of Global Warming (100% certainty, 90%, 50%)?

When will it happen, and what will happen and how certain are these predictions?

When will Global Warming reach its worst case scenario, and what is that worst case scenario? How certain are the predictions that the worst case scenario will happen? What are the other scenarios of what may happen? If you were to rank each scenario, what is the most likely scenario?

How big a reduction of greenhouses gases is required to avoid Global Warming, how much of a yearly reduction is required, how soon do we have the reach the yearly goal, what happens if we are not able to reach the yearly goal, and can anyone guarantee that we can avoid Global Warming, regardless of what we do? How do we know if the yearly goal is met in any one year? If the goal is not met in any one year, what must the next years goal be? If the goal is not met for more than one year, what should we do to catch up?

What specific actions do we have to take in order to achieve the yearly goal, as an example, how much of a yearly reduction from the entire car manufacturing process for automobiles and all vehicles do we have to achieve? For instance, do we have to reduce gasoline powered automobiles world wide by what percentage, by what year in the future?

Why concentrate on one of the greenhouse gases and not the other greenhouse gases?

What is the maximum rise in sea levels can we expect? I would think that answer can be found in determining how much sea levels will rise "if" all of the ice and snow melts.

Water on this earth is basically static, because none of it escapes from earth. It is either in the form of water, snow, ice, or in the atmosphere. And eventually, it will be returned to its natural form, which is water. So, what is evaporated, will eventually come back to the ground in the form of rain or snow. Where will it come back to earth? Won't the same amount of water that now returns to earth, be the same, if global warming should occur? One study suggested that the maximum rise in sea levels would be 263 feet, which if that happens would put a whole lot of land under water.

Let us for the sake of discussion say that the scientist are right and that if we do not do something to reduce the levels of Carbon Dioxide, global warming will happen. It would just seem to me, then the next question is how can we guarantee that the event will not happen, or can anyone make such a guarantee. What exactly, do we have to do, how fast do we have to do it, would be the next series of questions I would think needs to be answered. Have those scientist who are predicting such an event, know the answers to those questions? If they have the answer, what is the answer? Is there a consensus of what exactly has to be done? If there is no consensus, what should we do, and why is there no consensus?

How many tons of C02 is the earth emitting each year,? How many tons is produced by man?

I await your reply.


"Joe S." <noname@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:fa53u101q5b@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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Climate Change: Deniers Jump on NASA Gaff, While Greenland on Verge of Meltdown
by Stephen Leahy
TORONTO - Scientists warn that climate change tipping points are imminent, and will lead to potentially catastrophic events like a seven-metre sea level rise. Meanwhile, conservatives in the North American media are focusing on a NASA admission of a climate calculation error.

First the error.

U.S. and Canadian mainstream media and Internet news sites devoted tens of thousands of words over the past week to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies admission that it made a calculation error ranking 1998 as the warmest year on record in the United States when it should have been 1934.

While the difference is only a few hundredths of a degree, the climate change deniers variously cite this as evidence of NASA (U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration) incompetence and cover-up, and more proof that global warming is a hoax.

The neo-conservative U.S. network Fox News reported Aug. 9 that "the discovery of an embarrassing temperature error rained on their (the 'alarmists') parade." Canada's National Post on Monday said the reasons given for climate change "hysteria" were "no longer true".

The Washington Post and the Toronto Star both noted the reaction of conservatives in the media and in the blogosphere, including outspoken radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, who said: "We have proof of man-made global warming. The man-made global warming is inside NASA. The man-made global warming is in the scientific community with false data."

Forgotten in all this is that U.S. temperatures are only a small part of the global mean average temperatures, which remain unchanged even with NASA's re-calculation. Nine of the 10 hottest years globally have occurred in the last decade, although that is not the case in the United States, where there were several very warm years in the 1930s.

Now the warning: The complete collapse of the massive Greenland Ice *** - which has a mean height of about two kilometres - now appears inevitable, and could raise sea levels seven metres.

"It's a sobering message, I think," says Tim Lenton, of the School of Environmental Sciences at Britain's University of East Anglia.

Lenton's research group surveyed climate and glacial experts around the world and the consensus is that the recent evidence shows that rising temperatures will soon reach the Greenland Ice ***'s "tipping point", where it will break up within 300 years, raising sea levels by seven metres and flooding millions out their homes long before the year 2300.

Recent calculations show the Greenland collapse could be triggered by temperature rise of just 1 degree Celsius warmer than today. This is an example of what scientists call a "non-linear response", in which a small change can make a big difference, more commonly described as "tipping points".

And this point is coming much sooner than it looks. Due to a time lag in the atmospheric warming response, even if there were no more greenhouse gas emissions from this day forward, temperatures would still rise another 0.6 degrees Celsius.

"I don't want to say the Greenland meltdown is inevitable, but it will be very difficult to avoid," Lenton told IPS.

James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, believes that without drastic international efforts, a sea level rise of up to five metres is possible before the end of this century.

"In my opinion, if the world warms by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius, such massive sea level rise is inevitable, and a substantial fraction of the rise would occur within a century," Hansen wrote in the Jul. 25 issue of New Scientist magazine.

He notes that the last time the Earth was that much warmer was around three million years ago: "It was a dramatically different planet then, with no Arctic sea ice in the warm seasons and sea level about 25 metres higher, give or take 10 metres."

This Northern Hemisphere summer, the amount of sea ice in the Arctic is 30 percent lower than normal, and is expected to be the lowest ever recorded, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) reported last week. It may be that the Arctic sea ice has already passed its tipping point, in which warming temperatures and a "positive ice-albedo feedback" (ice reflectivity) will inevitably result in less and less ice until the Arctic is ice-free in the summer, says Lenton.

While sea ice does not result in sea level rise, it adds more fresh, cold water to the North Atlantic which, along with massive amounts of Greenland Ice *** meltwater, has the potential to slow or reverse the Atlantic Ocean thermohaline circulation (THC).

The THC, sometimes called the ocean conveyor belt, drives the deep currents in the oceans around the world. In the Atlantic Ocean, warm waters from the Gulf of Mexico are transported north-east to help moderate temperatures in the British Isles, Ireland and Northern Europe.

The THC is another potential climate tipping point where a rapid shift could occur. If the Atlantic THC reversed, not only would Northern Europe cool, the southern oceans around Antarctica would warm, according to Lenton's analysis soon to be published.

"It's a case of 'domino dynamics'. These are interrelated systems where a change in one affects the others," he said.

A warmer Southern Ocean will rapidly accelerate the current slow rate of melting of the vast West Antarctic ice ***. A complete collapse of that ice *** would raise sea levels an additional four to six metres, but that point is unlikely to be reached for another 300 years.

Global temperature rise between 3 to 6 C degrees will not only melt a lot of ice, it will greatly strengthen the El Niño Southern Oscillation, research shows. Among its impacts will be severe droughts in South-east Asia, the Amazon and elsewhere. El Niño is a cyclical climate phenomenon arising from a warm Pacific Ocean surface current travelling from west to east.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates a temperature rise this century of at least 1.4 C to as much as 6.4 C degrees in its 2007 assessment report.

"The Indian summer monsoon system could also be in for a rocky ride this century," says Lenton. The Indian monsoon system appears to be sensitive to changes in conditions, switching on and off unpredictably with climate change and affecting millions of people.

Of all these potential events, the melting of Greenland Ice *** is both the first and most likely tipping point we will reach. Preparations for coping and adapting to the resulting sea level rise would have to begin now. In addition, strict mitigation efforts are also needed to reduce both the speed and extent of sea level rise and to avoid crossing other potential tipping points, he said.

The public and policy-makers need to be aware of this non-linearity - that climate change impacts will not be gradual. "Change can come quickly and with a huge escalation in damages and costs," Lenton warns.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/17/3228/

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