Also see our sidebar for links to hundreds of posts to those experts who have not become "we're all global warmers, now" per Ronald Bailey's pronouncement over a year ago. Or plug in the term global warming on the search feature at the upper left of the screen to find a rundown on the issue.
Planet in Peril: Global Warming
Aired May 24, 2007 - 22:00 ET
...COOPER: Yes, I can, John. Yes, we're on Constable Point, which is on the east coast of Greenland. Jeff is much farther west than we are.
A lot of what he said, it's the same situation here. I mean, Greenland is a prime example, probably the best place to come, to really see the real impact of global warming so far. The average temperatures in Greenland have risen 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit in the last 30 years. That's more than double the global average. The ice sheet here is melting much faster, faster than anyone thought. It's really hot.
It's really caught a lot of scientists by surprise. The models they had to predict about what's going to happen to sea levels in the coming years, in the coming decades. It may not be that accurate. They're still trying to figure out exactly what may happen down the road.
But any melting of this icecap, any melting of the ice sheet here, which covers some 82 percent of Greenland, affects sea levels around the world, affects us all.
As we just said already, ice in some place has decreased by as much as 40 percent in the last 40 years -- in the last 30 years, an area the size of Texas and a half has already melted.
And here, what's most fascinating about Greenland is that the mass of Greenland is constantly changing. Literally, the maps are having to be redrawn as we speak.
We're in Constable Point on the east coast, with an explorer named Dennis Schmidt, who about two years ago, discovered an island right off the coast of Greenland which hadn't existed the year before when he had been here.
Previously, it had been thought to be a peninsula. It was attached to the mainland by a glacier, by a sheet of ice. It was thought that it was actually a part of Greenland. But because of the melting, the glacier had melted away. And now you can see, it's a distinct island off the coast of Greenland. It's now called Warming Island.
But those maps are constantly being redrawn because of the ice melt. More land is being exposed. And the geography of this huge island is constantly changing, John.
KING: And Anderson, we're showing our viewers the fascinating, although somewhat troubling -- given the conditions and the changing -- pictures of where you are. Talk to us a little bit about what you hope to see and accomplish over the next day or so.
COOPER: We're going to head to Warming Island, which is this island I was talking about, that's just been discovered by Dennis Schmidt, to really kind of get a sense of how quickly this ice is melting and how this topography is changing.
Also, we're trying to sort of assess the impact on sea levels around the world. The worst-case scenario, of course, is if the entire ice sheet melted, which no one thinks is going to happen in that country.
But if that did happen, sea levels would rise around the world of 20 feet. Frankly, it's more likely sea levels will rise in the next 100 years about 1 1/2 feet. But even that, even the rise of one foot, it would have major implications for millions of people around the world, John...
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0705/24/acd.01.html
Planet in Peril: The Shrinking Ice Sheet
Aired May 25, 2007 - 22:00 ET
...COOPER: In the last 30 -- 30 years, the average temperature here in Greenland has risen 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. That's more than double the -- the rise in temperatures anywhere else around the world.
And, obviously, that impacts the ice here. And, as the ice here melts, sea levels around the world can rise...
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0705/25/acd.01.html
Apparently, he and others simply have "progressive" blinders on when presented with any information to the contrary.
Bob McCarty Writes captured a key bit of info posting on his blog.
Writer Dissects ‘Consensus’ of Global Warming
June 4th, 2007 · No Comments
http://bobmccarty.wordpress.com/2007/06/04/writer-dissects-consensus-of-global-warming/
Link to
They call this a consensus?
Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post
Published: Saturday, June 02, 2007
"Only an insignificant fraction of scientists deny the global warming crisis. The time for debate is over. The science is settled."
S o said Al Gore ... in 1992. Amazingly, he made his claims despite much evidence of their falsity. A Gallup poll at the time reported that 53% of scientists actively involved in global climate research did not believe global warming had occurred; 30% weren't sure; and only 17% believed global warming had begun. Even a Greenpeace poll showed 47% of climatologists didn't think a runaway greenhouse effect was imminent; only 36% thought it possible and a mere 13% thought it probable.
Today, Al Gore is making the same claims of a scientific consensus, as do the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and hundreds of government agencies and environmental groups around the world. But the claims of a scientific consensus remain unsubstantiated. They have only become louder and more frequent.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=c47c1209-233b-412c-b6d1-5c755457a8af&p=1
The Tempest
By Joel Achenbach
Sunday, May 28, 2006; W08... All of the above is part of the emerging, solidifying scientific consensus on global warming -- a consensus that raises the urgent political and economic issue of climate change. This isn't a theory anymore. This is happening now. Business as usual, many scientists say, could lead to a wildly destabilized climate for the first time since the dawn of human civilization.
But when you step into the realm of the skeptics, you find yourself on a parallel Earth.
It is a planet where global warming isn't happening -- or, if it is happening, isn't happening because of human beings. Or, if it is happening because of human beings, isn't going to be a big problem. And, even if it is a big problem, we can't realistically do anything about it other than adapt.
Certainly there's no consensus on global warming, they say. There is only abundant uncertainty. The IPCC process is a sham, a mechanism for turning vague scientific statements into headline-grabbing alarmism. Drastic actions such as mandated cuts in carbon emissions would be imprudent. Alternative sources of energy are fine, they say, but let's not be naive. We are an energy-intensive civilization. To obtain the kind of energy we need, we must burn fossil fuels. We must emit carbon. That's the real world.
Since the late 1980s, when oil, gas, coal, auto and chemical companies formed the Global Climate Coalition, industries have poured millions of dollars into a campaign to discredit the emerging global warming consensus. The coalition disbanded a few years ago (some members recast themselves as "green"), but the skeptic community remains rambunctious. Many skeptics work in think tanks, such as the George C. Marshall Institute or the National Center for Policy Analysis. They have the ear of powerful leaders in the White House and on Capitol Hill. The skeptics helped scuttle any possibility that the United States would ratify the Kyoto treaty that would have committed the nation to cuts in greenhouse gas emissions (conservatives object to the treaty for, among other things, not requiring reductions by developing nations such as China and India).
In the world of the skeptics you'll come across Richard Lindzen, an MIT climate scientist who has steadfastly maintained for years that clouds and water vapor will counteract the greenhouse emissions of human beings. You'll find S. Fred Singer, author of Hot Talk, Cold Science, who points to the positive side of the melting Arctic: "We spent 500 years looking for a Northwest Passage, and now we've got one." You'll quickly run across Pat Michaels, the University of Virginia climatologist and author of Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians and the Media . You might dip into TCSDaily.com, the online clearinghouse for anti-global-warming punditry. You'll meet the Cooler Heads Coalition and the Greening Earth Society.
The skeptics point to the global temperature graph for the past century. Notice how, after rising steadily in the early 20th century, in 1940 the temperature suddenly levels off. No -- it goes down! For the next 35 years! If the planet is getting steadily warmer due to Industrial Age greenhouse gases, why did it get cooler when industries began belching out carbon dioxide at full tilt at the start of World War II?
Now look at the ice in Antarctica: Getting thicker in places!
Sea level rise? It's actually dropping around certain islands in the Pacific and Indian oceans.
There are all these . . . anomalies.
The skeptics scoff at climate models. They're just computer programs. They have to interpret innumerable feedback loops, all the convective forces, the evaporation, the winds, the ocean currents, the changing albedo (reflectivity) of Earth's surface, on and on and on.
Bill Gray has a favorite diagram, taken from a 1985 climate model, showing little nodules in the center with such labels as "thermal inertia" and "net energy balance" and "latent heat flux" and "subsurface heat storage" and "absorbed heat radiation" and so on, and they are emitting arrows that curve and loop in all directions, bumping into yet more jargon, like "soil moisture" and "surface roughness" and "vertical wind" and "meltwater" and "volcanoes."
"It's a big can of worms!" Gray says. It's his favorite line.
The models can't even predict the weather in two weeks, much less 100 years, he says.
"They sit in this ivory tower, playing around, and they don't tell us if this is going to be a hot summer coming up. Why not? Because the models are no damn good!"
Gray says the recent rash of strong hurricanes is just part of a cycle. This is part of the broader skeptical message: Climate change is normal and natural. There was a Medieval Warm Period, for example, long before Exxon Mobil existed.
Sterling Burnett, a skeptic who is a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas, says that even if he's wrong about global warming, mandating cuts in carbon emissions would mean economic disaster for poor countries, and cost jobs in America: "I don't know any politician anywhere who is going to run on a platform of saying, 'I'm
going to put you out of work.'"
The skeptics don't have to win the argument, they just have to stay in the game, keep things stirred up and make sure the politicians don't pass any laws that have dangerous climate change as a premise. They're winning that battle. The Senate had hearings on climate change this spring but has put off action for now. The Bush administration is hoping for some kind of technological solution and won't commit itself to cuts in emissions.
The skeptics have a final trump in the argument: Climate change is actually good. Growing seasons will be longer. Plants like carbon dioxide. Trees devour it. This demonized molecule, CO2, isn't some kind of toxin or contaminant or pollutant -- it's fertilizer...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/23/AR2006052301305_pf.html
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