World's Ice Caps are Melting!

[Avatar]

What sensationalism? If you read the full article, it's clearly stated that the problem is that the present climate models/simulations for Antartica are insufficient for the job and didn't predict this temperature rise.
Nowhere does it say that soon flowers will blossom there.

 

[Edufer]

read it all: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4857832.stm

The usual rubbish from the BBC. You must analyze the way they construct the misinformation. They are quite good at it, and they fool casual an inattentive readers. They say, for example:

<dir>The study questions the reliability of current climate models that fail to simulate the temperature rise.
In addition, the scientists from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) say the cause of the warming is not clear.

It could be linked to increases in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere or natural variations in Antarctica's climate system.

Scientists are keen to understand the change in temperatures over the continent as the region holds enough water in its ice to raise sea levels by 60 metres.</dir>
The study does not question the reliability of models –but it says the models are not predicting the “terrible” increases in everything horrible that is happening, and we should take immediate action to stop global warming by stopping fossil fuel use NOW. Today, or at least tomorrow.

Then the study acknowledges the causes are not clear. They must do this because they might be prosecuted for distribution of false information while using government money for their work. With that statement they bypass legal actions and avoid also the critics from the rest of serious atmospheric scientists that will disagree with them if they said they know the cause –even for anything related to the climatic sciences.

But they will, nonetheless, link everything they see happening on Earth’s surface to global warming. If the present trend in misinformation continues, very soon we’ll see global warming being accused of all natural catastrophes, public policy failures, including poverty, floods, droughts, lack of potable water, perhaps even terrorism.

Global Warming is like those socks we see in Wall Mart, “One Size Fits All”. Any foot can get in there, no matter how big or how stupid or how implausible might be.

Now we see that the trend is blaming the Bush administration for not having stopped global warming, because G. Bush didn’t ratify Kyoto. AS Tony Blair is retreating from Kyoto too with his new policy, he will also be responsible of increasing GW –at least they didn’t reduce their CO2 emissions, did Europeans accomplish their reduction quotas?

We’ll see that soon China, India, Brazil, Malaysia, etc will be blamed like Bush for heating the planet. I am not defending Bush at all, because I personally dislike him very much (as most Latin Americans do) but may I remind you that it is not the privilege of a US president to ratify ANY treaty that compromise the country’s security or its economy. That is simple the congress privilege to do that, and the US Senate rejected Al Gore’s proposal in 1997 of ratifying Kyoto by an overwhelming 95-0 vote.

Bill Clinton and Al gore had three more years to convince their senators to ratify the treaty, but they didn’t bother to do it. They both just let it go and started later blaming Bush for not ratifying it. Have you seen hypocrites like these before? Hardly.

Politicians really suck. And their job too.

 

[Avatar]

I know their global warming alarmist style and methods, but I didn't link to that article with the idea of helping them. There is information in misinformation.

As for the global warming - I don't care much for the fate of humanity, life will go on.
Alas I don't plan to buy any property near the sea.

 

[Billy T]

...Alas I don't plan to buy any property near the sea.

Might be OK move, if we can get most cars converted to 100% biofuels as on balance, they reduce CO2 in air.

 

[protostar]

Why do you guys think global warming is caused by earth bound elements?
Its solar. It's all about the magnetic universe.(Look, all the planets are going through solar warming.) The ice caps are melting but the glaciers are moving.
Growing even. The hydro thermal mega plume is growing and the earth is reacting to Solar System influences.

 

[Edufer]

BillyT, have you made the calculation of how many square miles of arable land you need for producing one ton of biofuel? There are people who have done it, and for replacing the entire oil production with biofuel you would need another planet Earth because the entire world surface is not enough to grow crops for producing biofuels.

As an example, you can get an excellent yield with soybean at 5 tons by hectare. That would yield (with luck) about 500 litres of soybean oil. And soybean oil would yield about 100 litres of biofuel. That is a 6 month production, so 1 year gives 200 litres of biofuel. You can imagine the rest. You use that kind of fuel in one week or less, so for 52 weeks you’d need 200 x 52 = 10,400 litres.

Then we’d have the problem that we still need arable land for conventional crops as rice, wheat, corn, potatoes, and other things we are used to eat. How are they going to solve that problem? I’ll give you a clue: stick with fossil fuels for the moment, until nuclear energy is widely available –or until oil runs out. Then, we’ll see if global warming stops or not.

But, for what I have seen lately, warming seems to have stopped and we are going back to cooler times. At least, here in the southern hemisphere, South America, we have been having extremely cool weather for the last two years, and every month it gets cooler and cooler. Strange, isn’t it? CO2 has not gone down, but temperatures did. What’s the mystery? CO2 and temperatures are inversely correlated: temperature increases come first, and then come CO2 increases, lagging temperature for some 400-800 years.

 

[Ophiolite]

Research into hydrogen production from algae are likely to produce economic processes within ten years. The entire gasoline consumption of the US today could be replaced by such farming over 25,000 square kilometres. For reference, that is about 10% of what is currently devoted to soya production. Moreover, the ideal location would be in semi-desert areas, so that agricultural land would not be lost to this production.

Summary: you are ignoring developments and so are mistaken.

 

[Edufer]

We are not talking about hydrogen but about biofuels.

Following with our calculations regarding biofuel use, if we need 1 hectare for getting 200 litres of biofuel per year, we’d need 52 hectares for getting our 10,400 litres.

It means that each car in the world will need 52 hectares and as only the USA has about 226 million cars (let aside trucks, airplanes, ships, electric utilities) we’d need about 117 million square kilometres for supplying USA car fleet. Make your own numbers gentlemen.

The USA has 9,629,091 km2. We need 117 million km2. We’d need about 10 USA for that end. Piece of cake. Conquer another planet similar to Earth.

 

[Edufer]

Research into hydrogen production from algae are likely to produce economic processes within ten years. The entire gasoline consumption of the US today could be replaced by such farming over 25,000 square kilometres. For reference, that is about 10% of what is currently devoted to soya production. Moreover, the ideal location would be in semi-desert areas, so that agricultural land would not be lost to this production.

Summary: you are ignoring developments and so are mistaken.

They said FUSION energy was to produce electricity in 30 years. That was 30 years ago , and now they say that fusion energy is still 50 years ahead.

In 10 years time hydrogen technology might still be 20 years ahead. We should learn from history. Although technology has improved and it is improving faster than ever, there are fields governed by thermodynamics laws that refuse to cooperate with our dreams. Hydrogen is one of them.

 

[Andre]

Back to the Antarctica article. Here is the original version:

Significant Warming of the Antarctic Winter Troposphere
J. Turner,* T. A. Lachlan-Cope, S. Colwell, G. J. Marshall, W. M. Connolley
We report an undocumented major warming of the Antarctic winter troposphere that is larger than any previously identified regional tropospheric warming on Earth. This result has come to light through an analysis of recently digitized and rigorously quality controlled Antarctic radiosonde observations. The data show that regional midtropospheric temperatures have increased at a statistically significant rate of 0.5- to 0.7-Celsius per decade over the past 30 years. Analysis of the time series of radiosonde temperatures indicates that the data are temporally omogeneous.
The available data do not allow us to unambiguously assign a cause to the tropospheric warming at this stage. midtroposphere. In the stratosphere, there has been cooling between 200 and 50 hPa, and the largest decrease in temperature was –0.16-C
per decade at 100 hPa. The standard deviation (SD) of the station trends is large at the surface (Fig. 1B) because the pattern of change at this level is variable across the continent, and in the stratosphere because the impact of the Antarctic
ozone hole has varied around the continent. However, the SD values are small in the midtroposphere, indicating that a fairly uniform warming has occurred across the Antarctic at this level.[/quote]

So the article is definitely about troposphere warming measured at the 500 hpa level (18,000 ft) and higher and not surface which however has elevations of about 7000 ~ 10,000 and there is no known cause which includes that "global warming" is not seen as cause. Which is logical since the hard surface data for greater Antarctica do not show a trend.

Indeed this shows the great conning skill of the BBC writers making it seem that Antarctica is about to melt due to global warming as poor misled and desperate Avatar tells us:

Winter air temperatures over Antarctica have risen by more than 2C in the last 30 years, a new study shows.

So what is air temperature. Meant is upper air temperature. After glancing at this you have the impression that it pertains the surface air temperature.

Actually this:

Winter air temperatures over Antarctica have dropped by more than a half degree in the last 30 years, a new study shows.

is equally true if you read the article. But then we are talking about the stratopauze at 100hpa.

Perhaps this exposure of this tiny little misleading opens some eyes because dishonesty in climate scaremongering is the norm ever after Paul Schneiders offering-scary-scenario statement being more important than honesty.

 

[Edufer]

Famous French climatologist, Professor Marcel Leroux, author of the recently published book “Global Warming, Myth and Reality” (Ed. Spinger 2005), considers that in atmospheric circulation the so called Mobile Polar anticyclones (or MPH, or Mobile Polar Highs) play a fundamental role.

In the following graph you can see those MPH (in color violet), that are superficial polar cold air masses with a thickness of about 1500 metres and with a lenticular shape and a diameter of about 2000 to 3000 kilometres.

<img src="http://mitosyfraudes.org/images-13/circulacionleroux.jpg" width=700>

They originate in the polar regions and move to lower latitudes (towards the equator, blue lines in the graph) with trajectories conditioned by the most important geographic accidents as high mountains.

Their have an associated peripheral corridor of low pressures at their front and a low pressure closed by the east, with a warm cyclonic air mass which results in a return flux in the surface and in height towards polar regions (in red lines).

Mobile Polar anticyclones in winter are more powerful and reach more to the south than in summer, intensifying sensible and latent heat transfer from the tropics towards the poles through the low pressure corridor and by means of associated storms.

Mobile Polar anticyclones (or MPH) are the result of thermal deficit in polar regions and the consequent subsidence of cold and dense air. These cold air “lentils” abandon polar regions when they achieve a critical mass and they do it with an approximate daily frequency at each Pole. In their movement from the poles towards tropical latitudes those air discs become thinner as they move, until surface geographic accidents of about 1000 meters become unsurpassable barriers and deflect their path.

In mid and subtropical latitudes, successive mobile polar anticyclones, slowed down and weakened, form more stable anticyclonic agglutinations. This is the reason for the “abnormal” terrible cold winter of 2006, with so many “cold fronts”. The increase in temperature observed in the Arctic is caused by the warm air returning to the polar region as a result of the MPH going towards the equator in increasing amounts.

It is the change in winds patterns that causes the ice thinning and not the overall warming in the Polar region. The reason is more meteorological than climatic, but many scientists in the Warming Room refuse to consider meteorology in their analysis of the causes. They prefer to blame AWG and CO2 increases because it is “fashionable”. That’s what fund providers want to listen. So they oblige. It is a simple matter of survival in the terrible jungle of climate researchers. Did you know there are more than 100.000 researchers competing for their dough in the climate field?

And the ones who make more noise get more attention –and more money. (According to the greens Humans are so despicable, aren’t they?)

 

[2inquisitive]

by Edufer:

"As an example, you can get an excellent yield with soybean at 5 tons by hectare. That would yield (with luck) about 500 litres of soybean oil. And soybean oil would yield about 100 litres of biofuel. That is a 6 month production, so 1 year gives 200 litres of biofuel. You can imagine the rest. You use that kind of fuel in one week or less, so for 52 weeks you’d need 200 x 52 = 10,400 litres."
===============================================================

Edufer, this is the biggest crock of shit I have ever witnessed. To begin with, 100 pounds of vegetable oil plus 10 pounds of alcohol equals 100 pounds of biodiesel plus 10 pounds of glyceral. Your '500 liters of oil to produce 100 liters of biodiesel' is bullshit.

And of course, soybeans are certainly NOT the best way of producing oil for biodiesel. Algae probably is, unless something else is found. here are some numbers for you:

For a truly renewable source of oil, crops or other similar cultivatable sources would have to be considered. Plants utilize photosynthesis to convert solar energy into chemical energy. It is this chemical energy that biodiesel stores and is released when it is burned. Therefore plants can offer a sustainable oil source for biodiesel production. Different plants produce usable oil at different rates. Some studies have shown the following annual production:

Soybean: 40 to 50 US gal/acre (35 to 45,000 L/km²)
Rapeseed: 110 to 145 US gal/acre (100 to 130,000 L/km²)
Mustard: 140 US gal/acre (130,000 L/km²)
Jatropha: 175 US gal/acre (160,000 L/km²)
Palm oil: 650 US gal/acre (580,000 L/km²) [6]
Algae: 10,000 to 20,000 US gal/acre (9,000,000 to 18,000,000 L/km²)
There is ongoing research into finding more suitable crops and improving oil yield. Using the current yields, vast amounts of land and fresh water would be needed to produce enough oil to completely replace fossil fuel usage. It would require twice the land area of the US to be devoted to soybean production, or two-thirds to be devoted to rapeseed production, to meet current US heating and transportation needs.

Edufer, I have read some of your posts in the past with interest, but this most recent one convinced me to take your posts with a grain of salt.

 

[Edufer]

Good. Then you may take my next posts with just half a grain of salt because I missed the target by by half the quantity produced by soybean. Your figures say:

30 to 45,000 litres by Km2 (lets make an average of 40,000 l/km2), which translates into 400 litres by hectare (1 km2 = 100 hectares). I had given a figure of 200 litres by hectare based on experiments made by some people down here in Argentina, called here “biodiesel”, that is even produced from used kitchen oil. A nice fantasy, but after all the work and hassle and energy invested in the process, they find that have saved a few pennies. But my calculus was mostly based on figures I thought I had in my memory, that I read some months ago. I didn’t go and checked actual studies and experiments. My fault.

Even so, according to your figures, instead of needing 117 million km2 of soybean crops we are going to need half that area: 58,5 million km2, which still calls for conquering a similar planet –if we used soybean oil as a source of biofuel, and if wanted to supply ONLY the 226 million cars in the USA. How many extra planets we’d need if we were to replace the entire world oil supply with biofuel? I would really like to hear your opinion. I won’t make the calculation because I don’t like to waste my time in nonsense.

I was not wrong in the spirit of my post, that was showing there is no use in trying to replace petroleum with biofuels. So, starting again from the beginning: you should throw away your grains of salt when reading my posts.

 

[2inquisitive]

Edufer, you also stated it took 500 liters of oil to produce 100 liters of biodiesel. That is completely false, as I stated above. I have a Cummins diesel that was run on home-brewed biodiesel for years. I know how it is made.

You also conviently bypass the production of oil by algae crops, estimated at 10,000 to 20,000 gallons per acre. No, I do not believe JUST biodiesel will solve the world's dependence on fossil fuel, but it is an important step for many countries to become more energy independent and for some, to become completely independent. Biodiesel wouldn't make much sense for the petroleum rich, dry climates of middle eastern countries, unless seawater can be pumped into the deserts to grow some type of oil producing plant or a hybrid of....seaweed?

 

[Edufer]

You are just being too picky on very unimportant details. I started giving a fast example (that stands) that biodfuels or biodiesels will not solve the needs of no one on Eareth. You are entitled to have the opinion you feel is right, or that suits best your agendas (if you have one). We have already passed through the experience of biofuels when we began mixing alocohol from sugar cane and gasoline (called "alconafta" here), at the same time Brazil made its experiment with pure alcohol.

The experience was droped after two or three years because it gave lousy results. Cars running on ure alcohol quickly rusted its cylinders when stopped for a period od one week or so, and they were badly scratched when started againg. They had to change piston rings very often.

I have serious doubts about any country getting independent from oil imports by using biofuels. The amount of land needed to produce fuels is too big. that land would have to be taken from traditional crops and the amount of food for people -especially in poor countries-is critical for survival. The reason is that poor countries suffer from a lack of infrastructure in storing, transporting and keeping crops in healty conditions free from pests. The present ban of methyl bromide does not come to the help of poor countries and the result will be a much greater loss of edible produce being lost to pests.

Everything has to do with everyting. Energy is expensive to generate for developing countries, and the meager savings obtained by using biofuels are lost (and more) when fertile lands are taken away from food production and used for biofuel production.

Yes, biofuels are another fantastic dream, similar to wind and solar power or even hydrogen. Not yet, and I think not for a long time. It has the strong appeal of all "free lunchs", but in this case, there is no free lunch coming from biofuels, no matter what you wanted to say.

But the topic here is not biofuels but "World's ice Caps are Melting".

 

[Edufer]

An afterthought: Why there are not crowds of people rushing to use fuels obtained from algae? or another kind of biofuels? There must be a reason, isn't it?

 

[Ophiolite]

We are not talking about hydrogen but about biofuels.

It is a matter of definition, and all definitions are artificial, but if we produce a fuel by biological means (as is the case with hydrogen from algae) I think it is reasonable to call it a biofuel. Don't you?

They said FUSION energy was to produce electricity in 30 years. That was 30 years ago , and now they say that fusion energy is still 50 years ahead.

Oh, Wonder! Oh, Magnificence!

A new biofuel is introduced to the world. Promising immediate energy benefits, requiring no use of agricultural land, and downloadable anywhere in the world from the internet.

Introducing, E3 Edufer Ecological Energy, the EcoFriendly Fuel, constructed of strawmen.

In 10 years time hydrogen technology might still be 20 years ahead.

I hope your grasp of science is better than your grasp of English, though I doubt it. The technology cannot still be twenty years ahead, since that requires that it currently be twenty years ahead.

It is clear that since you are unable to refute the reality of hydrogen production from algae, or to challenge its potential impact on global energy needs, you have resorted to a cheap debating tactic: irrelevant strawmen. (Are there any other kind.)

Don't bother replying. Your single minded, myopic agenda is visible to all. I just stopped by from my voluntary absence to rattle a few cages of the quaint animals that have a lot of knowledge and little understanding. You can get back to your self delusions now. Just stop trying to fool the rest of us.

 

[Edufer]

Ophiolite: as usual, you are STILL full of it. Your grandiose prose and syntax is admirable. I am really ashamed by my poor grasp of the English language. That may be because my native tongue is not English. (Thank god!) However, I would like to see how your grasp of Spanish, German, French, Italian and two Amazonian indian dialects is. Let's check out.

BTW: You degree of understanding is still low (or "lousy", as usual). If 20 years ago they said that the technology was 20 years ahead, and today, 20 years later they say that the technology is 20 years ahead, well, then the technology STILL IS 20 years ahead.

Please, Shakespeare, explain me what's wrong with the grammar or syntax.

 

[Avatar]

as poor misled and desperate Avatar tells us:

WTF?! Do you think I didn't understand that they are talking about considerably above ground level? :bugeye:
That is mentioned in that article and all I did was post a link to it.
Don't shoot the messenger, I didn't write the article and didn't claim that it's the ground level temperature.
So cease your silly rambling.

 

[Hipparchia]

hic