Al Gore's Private Jet

Please name some species that are threatened by global warming. Polar
bears don't count, since their population is actually UP.

The fact is, global warming is cyclic, and species will move to
environments that fit them. They won't stay in one place. Can you name
any species that have gone extinct due to global warming?

Larry Dighera wrote:
On Fri, 06 Apr 2007 18:31:53 GMT, "Steven P. McNicoll"
wrote in
.net:

"Larry Dighera" wrote in message
...
Perhaps you should suggest that to the myriad species that are
threatened with extinction due to the warming climate. :-)

What about the presently threatened species that would flourish in a warmer
climate? :-)



Name a few.

Are you suggesting that it's better to increase the numbers of a given
species at the expense of reducing the total number of species
currently living?

More melt means more moisture in the air which means more snow falls on
the ice packs. Glaciers retreat and advance all the time. Why should
they be static just cause mankind is here?

Larry Dighera wrote:
On Fri, 06 Apr 2007 21:39:57 GMT, "Steven P. McNicoll"
wrote in
.net:

I think I'm better off sticking with objective sources.

Do your objective sources mention the rapid rate of polar ice melting,
and consequences it may cause as a result of altering the "conveyer
belt" ocean currents?

"Dan Luke" wrote:
"Matt Barrow" wrote:
[ Dan Luke wrote: ]
Are you going to answer Logajan's challenges to the professor's
letter?

I've KF'ed him longgg ago.

How convenient.

Dan, feel free to repost any or all of my responses to Matt if you think
it would help.

Also, Matt's claim that over 60% of the global warming from 1850 to the
present occurred before 1940 is roughly true - but that is because that
year was near a peak in average global surface temperature. Here are
links to some graphs showing the complete story:

http://climate.dot.gov/images/temp4.gif
(from: http://climate.dot.gov/warming.html )

http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/aboutus/cli...amics/fig1.gif
(from: http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/aboutus/cli...t_webpage.html )

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globa...trumental.html

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/temp/jo...ics/nhshgl.jpg
(from: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/temp/jonescru/jones.html )

Now here's a graph showing temperatures, CO2, and sea levels for the
last 400,000 years to provide some longer term perspective:

http://www.toppa.com/photos/albums/misc/co2_levels.jpg

On Thu, 12 Apr 2007 11:30:16 -0500, "Dan Luke"
wrote:


Gee...what new large source of CO2 emissions has appeared lately?

Gonna answer this one?

I will.

There are a number of new sources of CO2.

One part of it is that cause and effect are being reversed. As the
seas warm due to whatever process was in place prior to 1940 and still
continues, they will hold less CO2 in solution. Though it takes
decades because the sea is so massive, CO2 is coming out of the sea as
a result of warming rather than as the cause of it.

Another big source is third world agriculture. The typical method of
clearing land for farming in the tropics is called "slash and burn"
Trees are killed by hacking through the bark and first layer of wood,
a process called girdling. After the trees are dead, they are burned
in place, releasing all the carbon sequestered in the tree. The stumps
are left to be destroyed by bacteria and termites, which also release
a great deal of CO2, plus methane, which is 28 times as potent a
greenhouse gas as CO2.

While the stumps are rotting out, the land is used for grazing cattle,
contributing even more methane. Finally, the land can be plowed for
the first time, and CO2 trapped for centuries in the soil is released.

Third world agriculture actually contributes more to global warming
than all forms of transportation.

Of course, it would be politically incorrect to tell third world
people to not develop their land and leave it as rainforest instead.

Don

On Thu, 12 Apr 2007 07:03:25 -0700, "Matt Barrow"
wrote:

Don
Hansen was not the one who asserted that lying was proper; that was Algore.

In an open letter in Natural Science in 2003, Hansen said that it had
been appropriate to do so in the past in order to get the public's
attention but that it was(in 2003) time to shift to more realistic
scenario's to avoid a backlash.

Don

Gee...what new large source of CO2 emissions has appeared lately?

Gonna answer this one?

I will.

There are a number of new sources of CO2.

One part of it is that cause and effect are being reversed. As the
seas warm due to whatever process was in place prior to 1940 and still
continues, they will hold less CO2 in solution. Though it takes
decades because the sea is so massive, CO2 is coming out of the sea as
a result of warming rather than as the cause of it.

Sorry, doesn't hold up. If it were responsible for the current remarkable
levels of atmospheric CO2, similar CO2 spikes would be evident with each
natural warming period going back 1000s of years. No such spikes occured.

Some clarification. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations *do* roughly follow
natural global temperature cycles. What is unprecedented in over 400K years
is the size of the current spike:

ABSTRACT

"The recent completion of drilling at Vostok station in East Antarctica has
allowed the extension of the ice record of atmospheric composition and
climate to the past four glacial–interglacial cycles. The succession of
changes through each climate cycle and termination was similar, and
atmospheric and climate properties oscillated between stable bounds.
Interglacial periods differed in temporal evolution and duration. Atmospheric
concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane correlate well with Antarctic
air-temperature throughout the record. Present-day atmospheric burdens of
these two important greenhouse gases seem to have been unprecedented during
the past 420,000 years."


Nature 399, 429-436 (3 June 1999)

"Dan Luke" wrote:
"Don Tabor" wrote:

Hansen was not the one who asserted that lying was proper; that was
Algore.

In an open letter in Natural Science in 2003, Hansen said that it had
been appropriate to do so in the past in order to get the public's
attention but that it was(in 2003) time to shift to more realistic
scenario's to avoid a backlash.

Got a link?

I found two items by Hansen using Natural Science's search function, one
of which is labeled an "Open Letter" but was published in 2000[1]. The
other is an article published in 2003[2] and contains a passage in an
appendix which may be what Don refers to:

"Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one time,
when the public and decision-makers were relatively unaware of the global
warming issue, and energy sources such as "synfuels," shale oil and tar
sands were receiving strong consideration. Now, however, the need is for
demonstrably objective climate forcing scenarios consistent with what is
realistic under current conditions. Scenarios that accurately fit recent
and near-future observations have the best chance of bringing all of the
important players into the discussion, and they also are what is needed
for the purpose of providing policy-makers the most effective and
efficient options to stop global warming."

That's it. No mention of lying. The bulk of the article is primarily
technical where Hansen presents the evidence and reasoning for his case.
Back in 1988 Hansen specifically provided three scenarios (A, B, & C)
based on three possible future projections for CO2 concentrations.
Hansen's charts during his congressional testimony back then were based
on the midrange (B) scenario - _not_ the extreme scenarios. Ironically it
was critics of Hansen's work like Patrick Michaels and Michael Crichton
who emphasized the extreme scenario.[3]

[1] The open letter from 2000:
http://naturalscience.com/ns/letters/ns_let25.html

[2] The complete article from 2003:
http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-16/ns_jeh.html

[3] Hansen's account:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/hansen_re-crichton.pdf

"Jim Logajan" wrote:

"Don Tabor" wrote:

Hansen was not the one who asserted that lying was proper; that was
Algore.

In an open letter in Natural Science in 2003, Hansen said that it had
been appropriate to do so in the past in order to get the public's
attention but that it was(in 2003) time to shift to more realistic
scenario's to avoid a backlash.

Got a link?

I found two items by Hansen using Natural Science's search function, one
of which is labeled an "Open Letter" but was published in 2000[1]. The
other is an article published in 2003[2] and contains a passage in an
appendix which may be what Don refers to:

"Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one time,
when the public and decision-makers were relatively unaware of the global
warming issue, and energy sources such as "synfuels," shale oil and tar
sands were receiving strong consideration. Now, however, the need is for
demonstrably objective climate forcing scenarios consistent with what is
realistic under current conditions. Scenarios that accurately fit recent
and near-future observations have the best chance of bringing all of the
important players into the discussion, and they also are what is needed
for the purpose of providing policy-makers the most effective and
efficient options to stop global warming."

That's it. No mention of lying. The bulk of the article is primarily
technical where Hansen presents the evidence and reasoning for his case.
Back in 1988 Hansen specifically provided three scenarios (A, B, & C)
based on three possible future projections for CO2 concentrations.
Hansen's charts during his congressional testimony back then were based
on the midrange (B) scenario - _not_ the extreme scenarios. Ironically it
was critics of Hansen's work like Patrick Michaels and Michael Crichton
who emphasized the extreme scenario.[3]

Ah, the cold light of factual information.

Harsh, isn't it?

--
Dan

"The opposite of science is not religion; the opposite of science is wishful
thinking."
-John Derbyshire

On 2007-04-12, Don Tabor wrote:
Could it be that they chose that time frame to exclude the Medieval
Warm Period which was coming to an end about 1000 to 1100AD?

Well, my plants are certainly enjoying the modern warm period. In the
70s, if the temperature in Britain reached 80 degrees, the tabloids
would print a massive headline "80" with a front page article about the
heatwave.

They are forecasting 21 celcius for Liverpool tomorrow, in the cool
north of England - that's 70 deg. F. That was the usual temperature for
the north of England in July and August thirty years ago - and we've hit
that in mid-April. We are now disappointed if it doesn't touch 90
degrees during the middle of summer. Each summer now breaks records, and
the Met. Office's long range forecast gives us a 70% chance of breaking
temperature records again this summer.

As I said, my garden's enjoying it - that's because I have a juvenile
Washingtonia filifera (California desert fan palm, not normally seen
outside the southwestern United States). It's quite happy at 52 degrees
north - this winter we've not had a flake of snow, and it's grown two
inches of new leaf in the last two weeks. Indeed, most of what I've
planted is subtropical in nature and I think these plants will be
romping away this summer. At 52 degrees north, not 30 degrees north!

--
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.
Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de

In article ,
"Matt Barrow" wrote:

It thought it was impossible to prove a negative.

Why?
Fundemental law of science.

where is this proven or stated as an assumption?

Well, gee...starting with Aristotle's law of contradiction about 2500 years
ago...

Given that I can prove at least one negative wrt Petri nets models, even when
the model has an infinite state space, I gather that there must be some
particular definition of "a negative" in the context of "it is impossible
to prove a negative"?

I assume people (mis)use the phrase "you can't prove a negative" when
they really mean the absence of a known contrary proof or example isn't
useful.

--
Bob Noel
(goodness, please trim replies!!!)