You think global warming is a problem?

I wish we had that kinda wheather in Calgary right now. Except for the heat strokes, it'd be kinda cool.

Its snowing right now

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We got some wild weather up here.... we reached a high of about 70 and now were snowing, coming into an overnight low of 15 (for all you Americans who hate metric

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)

70 is an abnormal high for this time of year, and 15 is an abnormal low.......I wish I were in India right now.

 

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I live in Maine, and our snowbanks are no longer 14-footers in the winter. Kind of sad, really. Snow is fun.

 

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Grrrrr,.....

.

 

You consider ohio a cold climate?????
You consider Utah a cold climate?????

If you could see outside my window right now, the first thing you'd notice is the snow. It's about 20 fahrenheit.....I can only take so much winter......

I'll admit its tough on the elderly, but hypothetically, it's alot more fun to bask in a warm summer than a cold winter (or spring). Humidity here isnt a problem either. Usually around 10%.

We'll, my point is, you dont know what you got until you dont got it. I consider Utah and Ohio tropical compared to my neck o the woods. But I guess the same would apply to me.....

 

Ahum,....

Well eeh,....hehehe: you should look beyond the tip of your nose,...in this case: not only limit your vision to that wich you have from looking out of the window,...

What I'm saying is: you should devellop, or try to devellop a totallity image,...envision the whole world: not just the sight you have from your window,...

What I'm pointing out here is for everybody to understand,...not just for you,....so don't take it too personal,...(warning).

Thx
:bugeye:

 

I think our weather is mainly sun driven,& the weather changes over the years because of it.

There are a lot of people making a lot of money out of global warming,so is in there interest to blame man.

Less than 1% of CO2 in the atmosphere is made by man!

 

That's a lie!

How dare you come up with a Lie like that!

 

Fukushi

If the sun went out there would be no weather!
& if you think I am wrong about the less than 1% CO2 what figure do you have??

I got my less than 1% figure from a documentary on BBC 1,where they were asking scientists,& that was the figure they quoted!

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I think you will find the latest thinking on this is,that the Gulf stream melts the ice at the pole,& when the ice has decrease the gulf stream stops flowing, & a new ice age starts.Then after years the opposite happens.
while the stream melts the ice the temp rises for a while,until the new ice age starts.
Again as seen on BBC TV

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Propaganda in service of the goverments in service of economy owned by the rich.

just to give you an example of how politicians are at the finger-tips of the lobby's,...in the name of envirionment and in the name of doing the right thing,... showing an absolute lack of fantasy or imagination not even the slightest coöperation with some envirionmental groups are considdered,...what a shame,....these politicians should not be alowed to fulfill their electoral period: the prove not to be capable.

February 9, 2000 Radioactive Water Leaked from Garoña Nuclear Plant--Again. The Garoña nuclear plant in the province of Burgos again has leaked low-level radioactive water. The leak, caused by a faulty valve, is part of the structural problems facing the nuclear plant built in the 1960s. Besides the faulty valve, the nuclear plant has severe cracks in its primary cooling system. It is now known that the Garoña's reactor built in the 1960's, have serious defects in primary circuit welds. Spain's ruiling Popular Party this summer extended the power companies' license for exploitation of nuclear resources for 10 more years. Navarre's local governments and parliament have asked Madrid to close the Garoña nuclear plant. However, last November, Spain's Environment Minister Isabel Tocino made political waves by announcing that increasing nuclear power output might come part of the state's climate change policy. In a paper presented to the parliament, the minister said upgrading nuclear resources was one way Spain could meet its Kyoto protocol commitments. Tocino's suggestion provoked outrage among environmental groups who accused her of being a "mouthpiece" for the nuclear lobby.


if you have money and power enough you can make the people even believe that they should stop shitting: because it polutes the air: thus : it's them being the source for global warming,...Things like acid rain,globalwarming, holes in the ozone layer,rising of the ocean due to the melting of the polar ice caps are contributing to the destruction of our earth,but the general public are doing very little to stop it
now this may sound a bit laughable at the end but: Global warming is caused by too much greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere causing an overly strong greenhouse effect. Humans are doing this by releasing too many of these gasses into the air.(I've just farted again!!sorry,...

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) Some of the main gasses we release are carbon dioxide,methane and once again CFC's.The extra CO2(carbon dioxide)comes from the burning of fossil fuels.Many or most factories burn fossil fuels and release huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.
Also many countries are burning enormous expansess of trees, unintentially,or otherwise.This practise not only destroys plant and wildlife,but in burning these trees,it creates huge amounts of CO2 and at the same time removes trees-some of the most important CO2 absorbers on earth. Methane is another greenhouse gase that we are releasing into the air. Methane is created by the rotting of organic matter and a lot of it is coming from human waste dumps.Also a lot of methane is coming from cattle breaking wind.A single cow releases about 73,000 litres of the gas a year and the world's cattle,altogether releases a total of about 73 million tonnnes of methane into the air.

The 1985 report of the discovery of an "ozone hole" over Antarctica focused attention on the idea that humans can have a significant impact on the global environment. This discovery, along with evidence that ozone is being lost at nearly all latitudes outside the tropics, has prompted much research into the causes of ozone depletion and the biological effects of increased ultraviolet radiation exposure.

The ozone layer is under threat from the various chemicals we use that produce in their turn even other and even more powerfull chemicals. When CFC's reach the ozone layer they are hit by UV ray's which makes them release chlorine.This chlorine reacts with the ozone,breaking it up into different forms of oxygen. The chlorine remains unchanged so in keeps reacting with more ozone, destroying a large amount of it in a short space of time.CFC's can remain in the atmosphere for up to 100 years!!!

CFC's have taken there toll in the Antartic An enormous floating ice shelf in Antarctica that has existed since the last Ice Age 12,000 years ago collapsed with staggering speed during one of the warmest summers on record there
the ice shelf had persisted through previous climate changes well before civilization began altering the environment
``It's a profound event,'' said geologist Christina Hulbe of Portland State University. ``This ice shelf has endured many climate oscillations over many thousands of years. Now it's gone.''
``We're seeing a very rapid and profound response by the ice sheet to a warming that's been around for just a few decades,'' said Ted Scambos of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado.
``We knew what was left would collapse eventually, but the speed of it is staggering,'' said David Vaughan, a glaciologist at the British Antarctic Survey. ``Hard to believe that 500 million billion tons of ice sheet has disintegrated in less than a month.''
Previous measurements showed the Antarctic Peninsula has warmed an average of more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit during the past half-century, a rate that is as much as five times faster than the global average!!!

In 1995, when Larsen A broke off, the summer melt had persisted for 80 days, about 20 days longer than average.
The next portion of the ice shelf is known as Larsen C. It is losing stability and could suffer the same fate in the coming years if the warming trend continues, researchers said.
``Other ice shelves are closer to the breaking point than we previously thought,'' Scambos said. ``Breakups in some other areas, such as the Ross Ice Shelf, could lead to increases in ice flow off the Antarctic and cause sea level to rise.''


Outdoor activities will become almost non existant as the sun does serious damage to our skin in a short space of time.Most of the earth would be out of bounds because radiation levels will be too high to sustain life. Land mass will be smaller and many major cities flooded due to melting of the polar ice caps (remember the floods in China: Flood facts
More than 14 million people have lost their homes to the ever-rising waters of the Yangtze and Songhua rivers.
The Songhua and other rivers in China's north-east are expected to reach their highest levels this century.
One in five of China's population has experienced the floods at first hand as civilians joined soldiers waist deep in water trying to repair flood defences.
August , 1998
Floods in India 12 August 2000
A wave of floods has killed hundreds of people in the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh, Assam, West Bengal and Bihar as well as neighboring south Asian countries, for the second time that year. While the floods have wreaked havoc, destroying countless homes and exposing millions of people to famine and disease, India's Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP)-led government has again demonstrated its callous disregard for the fate of masses of ordinary people.

According to reports on August 10, more than 300 people have been killed and over five million made homeless in the north and northeast of India, as well as in Bhutan, Nepal, and Bangladesh. But these figures, which are regarded as conservative, are expected to increase as ongoing rain worsens flooding in coming days.

Can you picture yourself HOMELESS? I didn't think so: well: I CAN,..

Floods Devastate India's Orissa State July 19, 2001
Floods caused by unusually heavy monsoon rains over the past week have swept through 7,000 Indian villages in the state of Orissa. The raging floods have killed at least 32 people, who were either carried away by the swirling waters or buried in collapsed houses, according to CNN. Red Cross volunteers and India military forces are rushing to bring humanitarian relief to millions who are marooned or in shelters.

"These floods are particularly bad. The Mahanadi River has nearly 50 percent more water than normal and it could rise even further," said Hrushikesh Harichandan, coordinator of the Indian Red Cross flood emergency operation in Orissa.

Some 312,000 hectares of crops have been devastated by the floods, ironically, in a region that was suffering from drought prior to this year's monsoons.

Flash floods have also hit the neighboring state of Chattisgarh following the release of water from the Hirakud dam in Orissa
Orissa is still struggling to recover from the devastating cyclone that left at least 10,000 dead and hundreds of thousands homeless in 1999. "Most of the victims [of the current flooding] are survivors of the cyclone of 1999," said Rabi Ratna Das, secretary of the Orissa branch of the Indian Red Cross.

Floods and landslides have also brought devastation to South Korea In South Korea, flooding in Seoul and surrounding areas has caused 62 deaths since last weekend. According to local media, about one third of the deaths were due to electrocution as people walked by street lamps on flooded streets.

The Korea Times reported that floodwaters had submerged 60,000 houses and 2,000 hectares of farmland, causing up to 97 billion won ($74.5 million) in damages.



Sept. 8, 2000 -- A NASA spectrometer has detected an Antarctic ozone "hole" (what scientists call an "ozone depletion area") that is three times larger than the entire land mass of the United States - the largest such area ever observed.
The "hole" expanded to a record size of approximately 28.3 million square kilometers on Sept. 3, 2000. The previous record was approximately 27.2 million square km on Sept. 19, 1998.

Because ultraviolet radiation is damaging to DNA--a vital component of living material--you should avoid unnecessary exposure to high levels of it. Take precautions in summer by wearing a sunhat, useing protective creams and building and wearing your cosmic ray deflector...

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Eventually human leaders will realise that there is no hope for 'them' (the rich) on earth and 'they' will have to move to another planet,most probably Mars.(leaving the rest of us behind to sufficate) Unfortunately for them : if our environment's health keeps declining at the rate it is now,earth will not be sufficient to sustain life before the technology is capable enough to sustain live on Mars,or any other planet.

http://www.ciesin.org/docs/011-464/011-464.html
http://www.cmdl.noaa.gov/info/ozone_anim.html
http://www.awi-bremerhaven.de/MET/Neumayer/ozone.html
http://toms.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.html
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/ozone_city001005.html
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/ice001005.html
http://www.eurogeosurveys.org/projects/GestcoWeb/project/definition.html

 

Fukushi

My Gov loves Global warming.They tax us heavily, using it as an excuse.They do nothing to help the environment with the money they get from this.

Sorry, but I cannot read all you wrote,I would be brain dead by the end of it.So I just skimmed through it.

What has the ozone hole got to do with Global warming then????

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Rotten meat smells bad...

You have been reading too many green newsletters, and are ignoring too much of real science. I should not be answering your post --it is so naive-- but I have some free time left today, and I am in the mood for banging away at the keyboard.

<b>Quote:</b> <i>"... of how politicians are at the finger-tips of the lobby's,..."</i>

You should consider that <b>these too are lobbies:</b> The Club of Rome, Greenpeace, WWF (Worldwide Fund for Nature), World Resources Insitute, Nature Conservancy, Wilderness Society, Conservation International, Earth Island Society, Planned Parenthood, National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), The Worldwatch Institute, The Audubon Society, The Sierra Club, Rachel.org, (and about 8,000 more) funded by Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon, Ritchfield Oil, Amoco, Chevron, Conoco, Philip Petroleum, Arco, British Petroleum Oil, DuPont, Ford Foundation, The Carnegie Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, (and more than 500 "charitable" foundations and huge corporations) that makes more harm to the environment (people are part of it) than common polluters.

<b>Quote:</b> <i>February 9, 2000 Radioactive Water Leaked from Garoña Nuclear Plant--Again. The Garoña nuclear plant in the province of Burgos again has leaked low-level radioactive water." </i>

Low level? What do you consider low- or high-level radioactive? Specify that in grays, rads, millirems, milliSieverts, picoCuries, or whater radiation measure unit you like. Until we know the level of radioactivity, your information remaind as a "gossip". By the way, waters in the thermal baths (hot springs) around the world are in the range of 1,500 picoCuries/liter, and natural gas used for cooking in the English city of Bath has <b>33,650 picoCuries/liter</b>. Compare this to the high level for radon gas set by the EPA of <b>4 picoCuries/liter</b>. After that, they should take "remediation measures". The EPA must tell people living in Bath that they should move fast out of town! And think about those poor people who goes to Bath for curing their ailments! Know something? They actually get cured. The world is full of mysterious things. (The campaign against Garo&ntilde;a nuclear station is promoted by Greenpeace. Nuclear paranoia at its best).

<b>Quote:</b> <i>"Because ultraviolet radiation is damaging to DNA--a vital component of living material--you should avoid unnecessary exposure to high levels of it. Take precautions in summer by wearing a sunhat, useing protective creams and building and wearing your cosmic ray deflector... "</i>

Somebody sold you rotten meat... and you bought it without smelling it first. You should go back to your physics textbooks (I wonder if you ever saw one). UV damages DNA in the UV-C range of the spectrum (286 nm to 40 nm) which is almost completely filtered by oxygen molecules (O2) high in the stratosphere, as ozone has not the potential to filter UV-C. You might find <b>infinitesimal</b> amounts of UV-C in the top of the Everest (about 9000 meters high), but not much lower than that.

Using a hat in summer is a good advise, but wearing sunblocking creams is not. Read this an see why: <A HREF=http://mitosyfraudes.8k.com/INGLES/PlaySafe.html><b>Play It Safe: Take Sun at Noon"</b></A>

<b>Quote</b>.<i>"Global warming is caused by too much greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere causing an overly strong greenhouse effect."</I>

The main greenhouse gas is <b>water vapor</b>, that accounts for about 95% of the heat retaining capacity of Earth's atmosphere. CO2 takes just 3,5% of its capacity. The rest is accounted for by the remaining gases (Argon, Krypton, Neon, Methane, etc, and even CFCs.) But the concentration of CFCs is so infinitesimal that they are just a drop in the Pacific Ocean.

<b>Quote:</b> <i>"The extra CO2 (carbon dioxide) comes from the burning of fossil fuels. Many or most factories burn fossil fuels and release huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.</i>

So what? The amount of CO2 released by human activities is just as somebody posted previously: <b>just 1%.</b> Even if we stopped completely our industrial activities, that 1% does not make any difference.

<b>Quote:</b> <i>"... but in burning these trees, it creates huge amounts of CO2 and at the same time removes trees --some of the most important CO2 absorbers on earth ... Methane is another greenhouse gas that we are releasing into the air."</i>

You keep buying rotten meat, Do you have something wrong with your smell sense? The <b>whole vegetal mass of Earth</b> produces just 3.5% to 5.00% of the oxygen produced every year in our wonderful planet. This means that trees, plants, crops, golf lawns, and anything green covering Earth's surface just takes about 5% of the CO2 from the atmosphere. The great producers of oxygen (they take it from CO2 in the air) are the trillions of tiny creatures known as "phytoplankton", swimming in the ocean blue...

<b>Quote:</b> <i>"The 1985 report of the discovery of an "ozone hole" over Antarctica focused attention on the idea that humans can have a significant impact on the global environment."</i>

That's a lie, but <b>it is not your lie.</b> It's that habit of yours of buying rotten meat. The infamous "Ozone Hole" was "discovered" --in the exact same way that Colombus "discovered" America-- by Gordon M.B. Dobson, the bristish scientist, back in 1957 during the first really scientific studies made on the ozone layer. That happened during the "International Geophysical Year Campaign", and the hole was also noticed --on the other side of the Antarctic continent by the French scientists at the Dumont D'Urville scientific station. Worse yet: the recorded decrease of ozone levels then, in 1957, have not been reached in recent decades. The ozone hole --as America-- have been there since Earth gained its atmosphere, or at least, since the terrestrial axis got into its present position.


<b>Quote:</b> <i>"This discovery, along with evidence that ozone is being lost at nearly all latitudes outside the tropics, ..." </i>

I'll quote what Lic. Victoria Tafuri, head of the Ozone Measuring Dept. at the National Meteorological Observatory in Villa Ort&uacute;zar, Buenos Aires stated to the press, after she came back from Antarctica in 1997: <i>"We have been measuring ozone levels over Buenos Aires (that is, outside the tropics) for the last 25 years, and found those levels have been normal for that period."</i> And Isidro Orlansky and Ernesto Martinez, from the Physics Lab at Buenos Aires National University, found that UV-B radiation passing through an ozone "mini-hole" over Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, was delivering barely 100-150 watts/m2, while at the same time there were falling over Buenos Aires 300 watts/m2.

<b>Quote:</B> <i>"The chlorine remains unchanged so in keeps reacting with more ozone, destroying a large amount of it in a short space of time.CFC's can remain in the atmosphere for up to 100 years!!!"</I>

That's a fairytale. But even if it were true: So what? CFCs never reach the altitude of the stratosphere where the strong UV-C rays could dissociate them. CFCs have been found at its highest point at about 30 kms, and UV-C radiation is almost gone by 45 km. Add to this that concentrations of CFCs there are measured in the <b>trillion per parts"</b> range, because the overwhelming majority of CFCs remain at ground floor, even deep in the oceans. They are 4,5 times heavier than air. Atom by atom, CFCs are heavier than iron!.

<b>Quote:</b> <i>"An enormous floating ice shelf in Antarctica that has existed since the last Ice Age 12,000 years ago collapsed with staggering speed during one of the warmest summers on record there" ... "``We're seeing a very rapid and profound response by the ice sheet to a warming that's been around for just a few decades,'' said Ted Scambos... "Hard to believe that 500 million billion tons of ice sheet has disintegrated in less than a month.'' </i>

Better believe it or bust! When someting collapses --as the Twin Towers did-- things happen quite fast. Now you see it, now you don't. The collapse of the Larsen and other ice shelf was due to their huge weight, that provokes the breaking of the "balconies", and their fall into the sea underneath. I wonder if you knew that "ice barriers" are mostly hanging --not floating?. They are being "eaten" (or melted) from below, by the warmer waters where they formed.

Glaciers move over the Antarctic land and keep moving advancing into the sea. The warmer waters melt the botton of the high barrier forming a perfect balcony. This balcony is pushed forward by the glacier's advance and after some thousand years they are so large, so long and wide, that the ice finally gives up. The balcony breaks in some points and collapses to the sea. Nothing strange here. Nature doing its work.

The barriers didn't <b>melt</b>at the sides. They broke off because the ice that had been forming over them for centuries, or millenia, finally broke the resistance of the ice in the borders of the shelfs. Just physics. Mechanical forces at work. Warming had nothing to do with it, simply because <b>there have not been ANY warming in Antartica for the past 70 years!</B>

<b>Quote:</b> <i>"Previous measurements showed the Antarctic Peninsula has warmed an average of more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit during the past half-century, a rate that is as much as five times faster than the global average!!!</i>

More rotten meat. Check satellite measurements at <b>ALL</b> Artic and Antarctic scientific stations: <A HREF=http://www.john.daly.com/stations/stations.htm><b>Wheather Stations of the World</b></A>. Make your comparisons, make your homework.

<b>Quote:</b> <i>"Land mass will be smaller and many major cities flooded due to melting of the polar ice caps."</I>

Rotten meat once more. Artic ice is <b>floating</b> on the Artic Ocean. Even if melted down completely it would not add a millimeter to the ocean levels. Physics again. But ice in the Artic has not melted an inch since scientific studies began on the subject. Some years there is more ice, some years there is less ice. Natural variations. If the "warming" had melted the ice, the warming would have prevented the formation and growing again of the Artic ice cap. (and Greenland's too...).

<b>Quote:</b> <i>"(remember the floods in China?): Flood facts: More than 14 million people have lost their homes to the ever-rising waters of the Yangtze and Songhua rivers."</I>

Yes, I remember the floods in China. I don't know if you do, or if you ever knew... During the 2,200 years, from the beginning of the Han Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1991, <b>there have been 214 floods</b>, and average of one every 10 years. In this century there have been five severe floods. Combined floods in the Yangtze and Han rivers in 1911, is said to have claimed hundred of thousands of lives. The great flood in 1931, <b>took the lives of 145,000 people</b>, inundated an area the size of New York State, submerged more than 3 million hectares of farmland and <b>destroyed 108 million houses</b>. Four years later, the flood of 1935, <b>142,000 people were killed</b>. Now floods seem to be much "lighter", according to the data you provide to scare us:

<b>quote:</b> <i>"According to reports on August 10, more than <b>300 people</b> have been killed and over <b>five million made homeless</b> ... The Korea Times reported that floodwaters had submerged 60,000 houses and 2,000 hectares of farmland, causing up to 97 billion won ($74.5 million) in damages. "</i>

Well, put into mathematical terms: 300 deaths < 145,000 deaths, 60,000 houses < 108 million houses, and 2,000 hectares < 3 million hectares. Today floodings are child's play.

<b>Quote:</b> "... if our environment's health keeps declining at the rate it is now, earth will not be sufficient to sustain life before the technology is capable enough to sustain live on Mars, or any other planet."

You have been reading too much of Paul Erhlich and Lester Brown. It is time for you to start checking other sources as:

<A HREF=http://www.junkscience.com>Junkscience.com</A>,
Or maybe: <A HREF=http://www.lewrockwell.com><b>http://www.lewrockwell.com</b></A>
Or this really good one: <A HREF="http://www.john-daly.com/"><b>Still Waiting for the Greenhouse</b></A>
Or, why not an update to : <A HREF="http://mitosyfraudes.8k.com/ENGLISH.html"><b>Myths and Frauds in Ecology</b></A>
Or really serious climate science: <A HREF="http://www.co2science.org/">Science and Climate Org.</b></A>

That's enough for a starter on sound science learning.

 

Edufer

Your right,but to him its a religion,as it is with other green's,so it does not matter what science proves they will still think they are right!
Every one wants to be a do good'er so they jump on any band wagon!
He will probably pretend he has not seen this!

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Odin

Yeah! We are walking down a lonely road. Religion and science don't not mix well. Ask Galileo Galilei or Giordano Bruno. :bugeye:

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Climate Science? Where?

<center><font size=4 color=red><b>In Antarctica, No Warming Trend </b></font><font size=3><b>
Scientists Find Temperatures Have<br>Gotten Colder in Past Two Decades</b></font>
_____Special Report_____ </center>

By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 14, 2002; Page A02

The Earth may be in the midst of a planet-wide warming cycle, but in a startling departure from global trends, scientists have found that temperatures on the Antarctic continent have fallen steadily for more than two decades. Researcher Peter Doran said scientists working in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of east Antarctica have found temperatures dropping at a rate of 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since 1986, and have observed similar downward trends across the continent since 1978.

Doran stressed that although scientists could not explain the falling temperatures, the research <i>"does not change the fact that the planet has warmed up on the whole. The findings simply point out that Antarctica is not responding as expected."</i> The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that there has been a net rise in global air temperature of 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit per decade in the 20th century, a calculation that includes the Antarctic data. Doran also warned that <i>"you don't want to overstate the effects"</i> of the cooling trend, because any rise in sea level caused by global warming this century is expected to come from thermal expansion of existing oceans and not from any theoretical melting of the southern ice cap.

<i>"I'd be very careful with this,"</i> added Michael Oppenheimer, chief scientist for Environmental Defense. <i>"My general view has been that there's simply not enough data to make a broad statement about all of Antarctica."</i>

In a paper published yesterday in the online version of the journal Nature, Doran and other members of the National Science Foundation's Longterm Ecological Research team presented data gathered during years of research in the Dry Valleys near McMurdo Sound. The Dry Valleys are a perpetually snow-free mountainous desert of chill, arid soils, bleak, bedrock outcroppings and ice-covered lakes. Microscopic invertebrates, mostly nematodes, make up a fragile ecosystem. Maintenance of this marginal environment depends on an annual period of four to six weeks of above-freezing temperatures during the southern summer, Doran said. The relative warmth causes melt water from hillside glaciers to cascade downward in seasonal arroyos that feed the lakes.

<i>"A lot of the people [co-authors] in the paper have been working in the valleys since the mid-'80s, and at first it seemed that lake levels were going up,"</i> said Doran, a hydrometeorologist from the University of Illinois at Chicago. <b><i>"But two or three years ago, when we were waiting for the big summers, we noticed that they didn't come,"</i></b> he added. <i>"We were thinking that warm summers were the norm, and we were saying, 'It's going to get back to normal,' but it never did."</i>

So the researchers began looking at data collected since the project's inception, and found that temperatures had been dropping, not rising, since 1986, with the effect most pronounced in summer and autumn. Glacial ice wasn't melting, streams weren't flowing, lakes were shrinking and microorganisms were disappearing. Next, Doran said, the scientists looked at data collected since 1966 from permanent installations throughout the Antarctic. Previous studies had shown overall warming, but the researchers found that these calculations relied disproportionately on readings from the Antarctic Peninsula, the continent's northernmost piece of land and home of the greatest number of scientific outposts.

The peninsula projects into the south Atlantic and "seems to be part of the regular climate tendency" toward global warming, Doran said, while the Antarctic continent is ringed by a cold water current that isolates the landmass in its own ecosystem. When the researchers corrected for the peninsular distortion, they found that Antarctica as a whole <b>had gotten considerably colder</b>. <i>"Temperatures were rising between 1966 and 1978,"</i> Doran said, but then they started to fall and have continued falling ever since. Doran said the researchers cannot explain why this has happened. They do know that temperatures in the Dry Valleys get warmer when the wind blows and when there are clouds in the sky.

He explained that as winds roll downhill off the Antarctic plateau into the Dry Valleys, the air compresses and heats up as a result, an effect similar to the Chinook winds of the western United States. At the same time, relatively warm summer winds gathering speed over the ocean bring warmer air in from the coast to promote the thaw, he said. Wind generally brings clouds, he added, which appear to add to the warming effect.

Recently, however, <i>"we're getting a decrease in winds from both directions,"</i> Doran said, and, perhaps as a consequence, temperatures in the Dry Valleys are dropping. <i>"It's clearly connected to the winds, but what's controlling the decrease in the winds is not clear."</i> Also, he noted, still air in the Dry Valleys <b>tells researchers nothing about why temperatures are dropping on the plateau:<i><font color=red> "We've sort of hit a point where we're a little confused,"</font></b></i> he said.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

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Summing up, <b>some "media-prone" scientists know nothing about climatology</b>, when it comes to explain <b>why the Earth is cooling instead of warming as computers predicted.</b> (or prophecized?) They should resource to Jeremiah, Hezekiah or Ezekiel. It's a pitty they died long ago... What a laugh! LOL!</b>

 

we're about 100-500 years away from another Ice Age. Geohistorically speaking. And I worry about our Oceans a lot more than our Ozone. If youve studied marine biology you would know 75% of what happens on this planet is caused by Oceanic turmoil. As the planet warms, the Oceans will most certainly seek equilibrium. when they achieve it, convectional currents will bombard the poles and The New Ice Age will begin with a giant freezing latice of gulf-streams headed directly at the equator. This will do terrible things as the doldrums are turned into "hell on Earth". Those unfortunate enough to be alive will witness the ambient temperatures of the doldrums hyper-fluxuate; -50 one day, 120 another. Nature will then raise the ante with the largest undersea Earthquakes anyone has ever seen due to massive convectional displacement and this will cause apocalyptic sized tsunamis that will not only flood continents but will begin to freeze and cover the coasts with sheets of ice a mile deep.

so no, the government cannot save us from another Ice Age. only a lucky few will survive to further spread our seed.

 

hopefully by then we will be on Mars, Moon and possibly Alpha Centauri.

 

Some people don't know what they are talking about. By the way, if CFCs are broken down by UV rays, then we should make more of them, the radaition absorbed would counteract teh ozone hole

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. I make a suggestion that is required on the popsci forums: quote a paragraph from an article, and provide a link to it. This saves space in the thread.