Al Gore"s "An Inconvenient Truth"

[Woody]

One way we have "helped" solve global warming is to use ethonal for our fuel. Already the poor in Mexico are suffering because so much corn has been moved out of food and into the production of energy.

[Gerr]

And perhaps the UN is giving the best case scenario? So then, let's take the middle ground and so 10 ft? A 10 ft rise in sea level, where would the bread basket of Egypt be? Bandladesh? It would still cover a lot of Florida.

Gerry

[Gerr]

Sugarcane would be a more logical source of ethanol than corn. Corn has to be replanted after each harvest. That requires the use of fuel. You can cut sugarcane and more will sprout for another harvest. I don't know how many times that can be done, but even if only harvests can be gotten from one planting, that cuts the energy expenditure in producing the fuel by half. We could turn LA & MS into sugarcane producing states.

Gerry

[Toni]

Sugarcane would be a more logical source of ethanol than corn. Corn has to be replanted after each harvest. That requires the use of fuel. You can cut sugarcane and more will sprout for another harvest. I don't know how many times that can be done, but even if only harvests can be gotten from one planting, that cuts the energy expenditure in producing the fuel by half. We could turn LA & MS into sugarcane producing states.

Gerry

There was an article in a recent Popular Science issue (or maybe it was Scientific American? My DH gets both and I can't remember which it was) about this. I didn't read it, but my DH did and told me a bit about it. It was interesting!

[Toni]

It's near the top of my Netflix queue!

[Dr. Shane]

Quote:

let's take the middle ground and so 10 ft?

The UN says 3.5 to 34 inches.

Al Gore says 20 feet which = 240 inches.

How is 10 feet, or 120 inches, middle ground?

Those are two completely different ball parks. There is no middle ground. What? Do we take subtract 34 inches from 240, get 206, divide that by 2 and say 103 inches is middle ground? Where is the logic behind that. Why are we arbitrarily dividing the difference by 2?

Al Gore is clearly playing the part of an alarmist. Maybe that is what is needed to draw attention to the subject. It may well cost him any political future he ever hopes to have. Bless his heart, he is willing to take that risk.

[olger]

"Al Gore is clearly playing the part of an alarmist." Of course he is...no surprise there. Do you think it's easy inventing the internet?

`G

[jasd]

>>…the sun is showing increased sunspot activity,<<

I was thinking more in the line of electromagnetic influences system-wide; like,

why is the earth losing its magnetic field density, and why is the process increasing (without seemingly being impacted by solar cycles or activity)?

I remember reading that we’ve measured frequency waves which emanate from the sun at 27 billion times per second and others – 27 years per cycle. Perhaps,

there are waves we cannot (for lack of the necessarily precise instruments) measure that are

stimulating sympathetic resonances, or…? What I am suggesting is,

what about the forming oceans on Mars, the diminishing spot on Jupiter, the heat build-up on Saturn, and so on? I also recall that Christ forecast

increased earthquake activity at some point removed from His time. That would surely occur as the diminishing magnetic field of the earth allows the more or less solid magma beneath the earth’s crust to become more fluid. That suggests to me

increased plate movements – and quakes, and volcanic activity, and climatic change resulting in unforeseen crop failures, and…. And for the

adipose-inclined like me to take note [/oy!]

[jasd]

>>Al Gore said sea levels will rise 20 feet.<<

Uhh, one wonders just how much of our submerged cities and forests are due to past meltings -- or mebbe, just plate movements [/smiling]

[Bravus]

Mmmkay. I enjoy your posts, jasd, and this one is a beauty. What it does basically say, though, is that when all the science points the 'wrong' way, we can always go outside the science to 'mysterious undetected waves' to explain what's going on.

[Amelia]

"Night-shining" clouds bring mystery

By Katy Human

Denver Post Staff Writer

The Denver Post

04/03/2007

Since their discovery 120 years ago, strangely luminescent clouds called noctilucent clouds have been creeping slowly toward the equator.

Once confined to Earth's poles, the bizarre clouds have now been spotted above central Colorado, and they appear to be getting brighter and more numerous, too, said David Rusch, a University of Colorado atmospheric scientist.

This month, NASA plans to launch the $110 million AIM (Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere) mission to measure noctilucent clouds and the circumstances in which they form - which may be linked to climate change.

The satellite will measure air temperature and pressure, moisture content and cloud dimensions.

Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder will control the satellite, process data and try to understand what some call the planet's most mysterious clouds.

Noctilucent clouds appear only at night, when their altitude - 50 miles up in the atmosphere - lets them catch sunlight no longer visible from Earth's surface, said James Russell, an atmospheric scientist at Hampton University in Virginia, the NASA mission's principal investigator.

That makes noctilucent - "night-shining" - clouds appear almost iridescent, he said. Most normal clouds are less than 10 miles up.

"They're very beautiful, they look very mysterious, but aside from all that, these clouds are changing in ways we don't understand," Russell said.

Researchers have many ideas about why noctilucent clouds may be growing in number and brightness, and most of them are related to global warming.

The greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, which warms Earth's surface, paradoxically cools the upper atmosphere, CU's Rusch said.

Noctilucent clouds - which are made of ice crystals, not water droplets - need very cold temperatures to form, he said.

In the atmosphere's coldest reaches, there's very little water vapor, a key ingredient for cloud formation, Rusch said.

Observed increases in water vapor in the atmosphere - a consequence of warming - may also make it easier for the clouds to form, he said.

Methane, another powerful greenhouse gas, may also be involved, said Scott Bailey, an engineering professor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va.

Methane's presence can increase the amount of water in the upper atmosphere, through a complicated chemical dance.

Scientists don't know enough yet to definitively call noctilucent clouds harbingers of climate change, Russell said.

"But right now, we don't have another explanation," he admitted. "We don't have enough information about them. Hopefully, in this mission, we'll be able to get it."

[Bravus]

Very cool to know about, even independent of the climate change link.

[Amelia]

Report Details Global Biological Change

By The Associated Press

01 April 2007

From the micro to the macro, from plankton in the oceans to polar bears in the far north and seals in the far south, global warming has begun changing life on Earth, international scientists will report next Friday.

"Changes in climate are now affecting physical and biological systems on every continent,'' says a draft obtained by The Associated Press of a report on warming's impacts, to be issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the authoritative U.N. network of 2,000 scientists and more than 100 governments.

In February the panel declared it "very likely'' most global warming has been caused by manmade emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Animal and plant life in the Arctic and Antarctic is undergoing substantial change, scientists say. Rising sea levels elsewhere are damaging coastal wetlands. Warmer waters are bleaching and killing coral reefs, pushing marine species toward the poles, reducing fish populations in African lakes, research finds.

"Hundreds of species have already changed their ranges, and ecosystems are being disrupted,'' said University of Michigan ecologist Rosina Bierbaum, former head of the U.S. IPCC delegation. "It is clear that a number of species are going to be lost.''

The IPCC draft estimates that if temperatures rise approximately 2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit more, one-third of species will be lost from their current range, either moved elsewhere or vanished.

From Associated Press bureaus around the world, here are snapshots of animals and plants the IPCC will identify as already affected by climate change:

The frogs went silent in the night

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP)—Back in the Puerto Rican rain forest for the first time in five years, biologist Rafael Joglar sensed something was wrong. He wasn't hearing the frogs whose nocturnal calls he had long recorded in the misty highlands.

It was as if a small orchestra had lost key players, he recalled.

After that discovery in 1981, Joglar and wife Patricia Burrowes, a fellow University of Puerto Rico amphibian specialist, found that other populations of frogs in the genus Eleutherodactylus—known locally as coquis for the distinctive co-kee sound made by two species—were also mysteriously absent. Similar reports trickled in from frog specialists worldwide, particularly in Central and South America.

Working their way through such suspected culprits as pollution and habitat loss, researchers here eventually zeroed in on climate change. The average minimum temperature had risen from 1970 to 2000 by 2 degrees Fahrenheit, a significant rise for climate-sensitive amphibians.

Scientists believe higher temperatures lead to more dry periods and a chain reaction, at higher elevations, that leaves the frogs vulnerable to a devastating fungus, Burrowes said.

In Puerto Rico and nearby islands, experts believe three of 17 known Eleutherodactylus species are extinct and seven or eight are declining. Loss of the frogs, scientists warn, could have disastrous consequences, depriving birds and other predators of a food source, eliminating a consumer of insects and disrupting the ecosystem in ways impossible to guess.

***

Fragile, sensitive coral sounds the alarm

SYDNEY, Australia (AP)—The rainbow world of the Great Barrier Reef may fade away.

Scientists say rising sea temperatures worldwide are causing more coral bleaching—the draining of color when the fragile animals that form reefs become stressed and spew out the algae that give coral its color and energy to build massive reef structures.

Oceans are also absorbing more carbon dioxide, increasing their acidity and eroding coral's ability to build reef skeletons.

Because just a 2-degree-Fahrenheit shift can trigger a major bleaching event, the behavior of corals is an early sign that global warming is already changing our world, experts say.

"We've got about 20 years to turn (greenhouse gas emissions) around or it's going to cost the world a lot environmentally but also economically,'' said Terry Hughes, a leading Australian coral specialist.

The 1,250-mile-long Great Barrier Reef, off Australia's northeast coast, produces $4 billion a year in tourism revenues. Forecasts vary, but many experts say ocean temperature rises projected for the next 50 years could strip this natural wonder of most of its color. The changes will affect countless millions of fish and other marine organisms that depend on the reef.

Many reefs worldwide will fare worse, since they don't have the protection against pollution and overfishing provided by the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area.

***

Ticks move north, carrying diseases with them

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP)—A bloodthirsty parasite is popping up in parts of Sweden where deep winter chills used to make survival difficult, if not impossible.

Ticks are spreading north along the Scandinavian country's shorelines, pestering pets and spreading infectious diseases to humans.

"It probably has to do with the greenhouse effect,'' said Thomas Jaenson, professor in medical entomology at Uppsala University. "The fact that we've seen ticks in January indicates that there has been a major change.''

Swedish studies have shown that ticks have multiplied countrywide in recent decades, spreading north from traditional breeding grounds in the Stockholm archipelago. The pinhead-sized arachnids have even turned up near the Arctic Circle.

"There are more of them now. And they show up earlier in the year,'' said Marja Lodin, 69, who has a summer house near the northern city of Umea. Two years ago she was infected with Lyme disease, which causes fever, headache, fatigue and skin rash, from a tick lodged in her navel.

Sweden's disease control agency doesn't keep records on Lyme disease, but said the potentially deadly tick-borne encephalitis virus, known as TBE, is on the rise. Reported annual cases more than doubled from 60 in the late 1990s to 131 in the 2001-2005 period. In 2006, there were 155 cases, two of which turned fatal.

"It is possible that these people would be alive if we had had a more stable climate,'' Jaenson said.

***

White giants face future of too much water, too little ice

TORONTO (AP)—Inuit hunters in Canada's Arctic say they have seen polar bears moving farther north as the polar ice cap recedes, or farther south in search of new sources of food.

The northern people who have hunted these majestic marine mammals for thousands of years say they haven't seen a dramatic decline yet in their numbers. But scientists worry that the polar bear will be pushed steadily toward extinction by 2050, to be found only in zoos, as Arctic waters grow warmer.

The bears depend on sea ice for survival. They have their pups and they hunt seal and walrus on ice floes. But the summer ice cap is about 20 percent smaller today than in 1978, the U.N. climate panel reported in February. And as sea ice shrinks, bears are forced to hunt and to fast for longer periods.

Biologists believe 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears roam the frozen Arctic, about 60 percent in Canada. The research group Polar Bears International says one polar bear population, in Canada's western Hudson Bay, has dropped 22 percent since the 1980s, about the time Inuit hunters started noticing dramatic changes in wind and weather patterns.

The trends are so troubling that the U.S. government has proposed listing polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

***

Changing climate, vanishing plankton threaten cod

LONDON (AP)—Overfishing has cut deeply into the North Sea's cod population in recent decades, and scientists now say this important food fish faces a second challenge—climate change.

North Sea water temperatures have climbed 1 degree Fahrenheit over the past 100 years, and that has shifted currents, carrying a major food source, plankton, away from the cod, said scientist Chris Reid of the Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans in Plymouth, England.

"The only way that these increases can be explained is by greenhouse gas emissions,'' Reid said. In their larval stage, the cod feed on the minute plants and animals known as plankton. Chances of survival without them are slim. North Sea cod that do survive today are smaller and less successful at mating and reproducing, Reid explained. In addition, warmer temperatures increase cod metabolism and the larvae's need for nutrition, he and other marine scientists noted in a 2003 research paper.

Because the European Union's 2003 cod recovery plan isn't working, scientists and fishing industry representatives met March 9-10 to discuss new ways to counter the threats and help the cod.

***

The dimb's demise tells of African climate change

DAKAR, Senegal (AP)—It's getting harder for villagers in the north of this dry West African country to find a favored ingredient for a traditional couscous dish—the fruit of the dimb tree.

The once-prevalent tree with its meaty fruit has disappeared from all but one village in an area the size of Connecticut, as shifting rainfall patterns have made northern Senegal drier and hotter, research has found.

Many tree species like the dimb are retreating from the Sahel, the arid region south of the Sahara Desert, losing ground to more arid species. In the zone that climate change scientist Patrick Gonzalez studied, the dimb's range decreased 96 percent between 1945 and 1994—from 27 villages to one.

Gonzalez said he looked at many factors, including population shifts and tree cutting, but "precipitation and temperature explained most of the variance in the data.''

The greenhouse effect has warmed the southern Atlantic Ocean, source of the African monsoon, causing more rain to fall over the sea and less over the Sahel, said the Nature Conservancy's Gonzalez, who did the research while with the U.S. Geological Survey.

Fig and firewood species also are dying, forcing women gatherers to range farther and spend more time hunting firewood. "Once you don't have that, people start burning cow dung. And that's when environmentally the area is in great trouble,'' Gonzalez said.

This report was written by AP correspondents Charles J. Hanley, New York; Ben Fox, San Juan; Rohan Sullivan, Sydney; Karl Ritter, Stockholm; Beth Duff-Brown, Toronto; Courtney French, London; and Heidi Vogt, Dakar.

[Dr. Shane]

Poor Gore :sad

Al Gore graduates from Concordia

Concordia president Claude Lajeunesse was booed as he took the stage to give Al Gore an honorary doctorate from the university on March 22.

The brainchild of Concordia Student Union president Khaleed Juma, the doctorate was presented while the crowd, present to listen to speeches from Gore and David Suzuki, filed out the exits after the question and answer period with Gore was cancelled...

His presentation was halted at least twice as opponents to his agenda began to shout out.

They called him a liar and a villain, and screamed, "What about your swimming pools?" in regards to recent allegations that the monthly electricity bill of Gore's estate rivalled a year's bill for the average American home.

This led Gore to joke, "I don't even know if you guys are left- or right-wing".

[Bravus]

I think that's one of the problems with Gore championing the issue: it automatically makes it an issue for the left and a target for the right. Really, it's not political, it effects all of us. There are very real prospects for amazing economic growth and enormous profits if industry is creative and innovative in seeking alternative energy sources. So it would be very sad if it ended up just being another party-political slanging match as an issue.

[Dr. Shane]

His alarmist tactics may not be helping the cause much as it gives the anti-environmentalists a means to discredit him. However who better to champion the cause? PhDs that are qualified to do so would not gain the audience that Al Gore Jr. does. And entertainment celebrities blab so much about things they have no background in, few real people consider them credible. Al Gore Jr., however, has a background in working with environmental causes, a former legislator, vice president and presidential candidate that won the popular vote.

I have heard rumor that LLBN may start airing a program targeted at environmental causes and linking them to faith.

[nuff sed]

So.............It seems that there is no doubt that this time around the planet is "warming'. What has not been "proved" is that mankind has had anything to do with it... Sure has been a lot of "hot air" in this thread..no doubt contributing to it. Regards, Don

[Bravus]

Things aren't proved in science, they are supported by the evidence, and there's a massive amount of evidence supporting the notion that human activities are the major cause of the observed warming.

[Gerr]

Quote:

let's take the middle ground and so 10 ft?

The UN says 3.5 to 34 inches.

Al Gore says 20 feet which = 240 inches.

How is 10 feet, or 120 inches, middle ground?

Let's just say that the UN estimates are conservative and that Al Gore's scenario is extreme on the generous side. Would it not make sense to say, suppose we take the middle ground? Which would be 3.5 + 34 divided by 2, then add Gore's figure of 240" and then divide by 2 = 129.375" to be exact.

Our present situation may be reminiscent of Noah's day. No doubt he was told the same thing, i.e. being an alarmist, because it has never rained before. There were probably no clouds either. We are seeing the same things again today with regards to the Second Coming. How many REALLY believe it even among Christians? Yet by the time people believe it, it will be too late.

Personally, I'd rather err on the side of caution and believe Al Gore's scenario. If I am wrong, no harm no foul, as Chick Hearn would say. But if he is correct and we believed him, it could mean safety & salvation to a lot of people.

Gerry

[Woody]

Quote:

If I am wrong, no harm no foul

Give me a break. Already the price of food is going up because of the spike in the cost of corn. The poor are starving in Mexico because of this scare. And Al Gore is to blame.

[Gerr]

Quote:

If I am wrong, no harm no foul

Give me a break. Already the price of food is going up because of the spike in the cost of corn. The poor are starving in Mexico because of this scare. And Al Gore is to blame.

And you blame it on Gore? Wait till oil runs out. THEN you will see how scarce corn will become. Mexico is a big country. If they are starving there, it's because they are not using their resources wisely!

Gerry

[Dr. Shane]

I don't think even Al Gore Jr. would compare himself to Noah. Has he been having divine visions and dreams lately? One parallel is seems true, the flood of Noah's day was caused by man and so is global warming today.

On what basis do we conclude the UN's estimates are conservative. I have heard conservative environmentalists estimate that the sea level will rise no more than 18" compared to the 34" high estimated by the UN.

However we don't know what will happen. Melting glaciers will put more water into the water cycle so that should mean more rain, on land, sea and polar caps. That will mean that polar caps will get thicker and fresh water reservoirs will grow. Maybe we can go back to 2 gallon toilets again and Bravus can take a real shower.

[Woody]

Quote:

Bravus can take a real shower

He needs one. A Cold one. Since to heat the water takes too much energy.

[Bravus]

Nothing to do with my hot wife then?

Most scenarios suggest more droughts, due to different rainfall distribution and higher evaporation rates, rather than more rainfall on land and bulding ice caps. Most scenarios end up with the already tiny fraction of water on earth that is fresh being further reduced. It could even be that water becomes the centre of crisis and scarcity sooner than oil.

[Bravus]

Having said all that, and everything I've said in this thread, the world is good, life is good, the world is a fantastic and complex system and will try hard to balance out our actions for as long as possible. It's not all a tale of doom and gloom, by any means. It is a case where we are *actively* damaging the environment in a completely unprecedented and accelerating way, and I believe our stewardship of the earth requires us to take a hard look at what we're doing and the world we're leaving to our children and grandchildren.