Group Passes Global Warming

Group Passes on Addressing Global Warming

Thu Nov 25, 1:24 PM ET By BART CAMERON, Associated Press Writer

REYKJAVIK, Iceland - Although faced with fresh evidence of global warming, the United States and other members the Arctic Council on Wednesday failed to make any recommendations to combat a problem most scientists say is causing sea ice to melt and temperatures to rise.

The council met to consider a new scientific report suggesting the Arctic is warming up much faster than the rest of the planet.

Some delegates on the council, a respected international panel that advises governments on Arctic issues, seemed to blame their group's inaction on America's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol (news - web sites), which requires industrial nations to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. The Bush administration prefers voluntary measures to save the environment.

'We no sooner leave the science proper than we enter into politics,' said Bryndis Kjartansdottir, speaking on behalf of the Icelandic ministry which chaired the one-day meeting.

The study, compiled by 300 scientists and released earlier this month, said the Arctic is particularly vulnerable to warming from industrial greenhouse gases. One reason is that when snow and ice melt, the exposed, bare ground absorbs more heat.

It projects that some animals could become extinct and people living in the region could be threatened by the thinning sea ice, melting glaciers and thawing permafrost.

Sea ice in the Arctic has already decreased about 8 percent in 30 years, resulting in the loss of 386,100 square miles of sea ice, according to the report.

Delegates said the findings will help inform governments about global warming, but declined to make any specific recommendations in a declaration adopted Wednesday.

Paula Dobriansky, the U.S. under secretary of global affairs, told the council's closing news conference that she was happy with that decision. She said America's participation in the council is just one part of the Bush administration's $5.2 billion spent for environmental projects such as renewable energies.

But anger from other delegates over the U.S. position on global warming seemed evident during the news conference, particularly the Bush Administration's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol in 2001.

The U.N.-sponsored accord, which was negotiated in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, requires industrial nations to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases below 1990 levels.

When Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja said, 'It is the best possible declaration that could be adopted today,' other delegates exploded in laughter.

The rest of this story is at:

'...Although faced with fresh evidence of global warming....'

Bet our boy Bart Cameron thinks his 'reporting' is not biased. Unfortunately, his ignorance comes from being indoctrinated instead of educated in today's universities, where they teach journalism 'stooge-ents' to 'change the world' instead of just informing the reader/viewer what's actually going on in the world!

So they wonder why they, the news media, are no longer taken seriously by grownups, only by people with undergrad diplomas but have never left the campus mentally!

WDA

end

I like to refer to them as the news-entertainment media. The 'news' is a product and nothing more.

Whether or not we agree that global warming is real, we can surely agree that humanity - and not just the first world - is consuming and polluting and denuding its environment at an alarming rate.

To my mind, the 'empowerment' of the individual encourages this selfishness, and should be replaced with enlightened local governments of an authoritarian nature regarding environmental issues.

Is that all you can do WDA? You can't challenge the facts so you attack the author, and journalism schools as well. The Arctic Council had fresh evidence, their own report, the work of hundreds of scientists over the last 4 years.

The fact that global warming is observed to be stronger at high latitudes, precludes other explanations for global warming, but CO2 greenhouse forcing. Water vapor and CO2 share some of the same infra red spectrum, so the anthropogenic increase in CO2 will show at cold high latitudes where there is lest water vapor in the air. Other explanations for the rapid polar warming don't cut it. For example, if an increase in solar radiation was responsible for the warming, then the entire earth would warm, regardless of latitude.

November 27, 2004

<plonk>

Thomas Lee Elifritz

I don't see how we can be sure about historical Antarctic temperatures. There are few stations with long series there. Zonal data from the South Polar regions, even GISS data for the Southern Hemisphere, has few points and high variances. In the future, hopefully we will have better

From a simplistic point of view global warming can be caused by either increased heat retention(greenhouse gases) or release of oceanic heat stored during periods of global cooling(natural cycles). Anthropogenic global warming won't annhilate natural cycles, but possibly hide the cooling parts of the cycles. Further, if arctic ocean surface warming most often occur during periods of global cooling(increased oceanic heat storage), Arctic warming in a period of G.warming will strongly point towards CO2 induced warming.

Real world data shows that average Arctic/N.Atlantic wind patterns since the late 1980's have pumped more warm water into the Arctic, but I'm not sure how this fit into the simplified analysis above.

And the warming of the tropical upper troposphere is related to tropical ocean surface temperatures, natural flucuations ?

<plonk>

Some of this may be so, though I can still see your hands waving. But if it is, this points out:

1. Inadequacy of the GCMs which do not model this.

2. That some not well modeled stratospher-troposphere exchange is mixing CO2 cooling in the stratosphere lower levels. This amounts to some negative feedback to LW forcing.

Roger's post used high latitude warming as rationale for 'it must be CO2'.

But the models completely blow the tropical upper troposphere and Antarctic.

Thats 35 years gracie. One might say using the last 35 years is also cherry picking.

What? The surface data might be unreliable?

The models used to predict high latitude warming did not include the ozone depletion. Newer model work does support this scenario.

Southern Hemisphere climate response to ozone changes and greenhouse gas increases

D. T. Shindell, G. A. Schmidt

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 31, L18209, doi:10.1029/2004GL020724, 2004

But, the models appear to have been correct over the Arctic.

Look at 1900 thru 2003. Is that cherry picking too?

I can't deny that there were warm years before 1940, however, there are several possible reasons for that, such as a colder period at the start of the record, due to volcanic activity. Also, don't forget that the Dust Bowl happened and was exacerbated by poor farming practices. One data set I saw indicated that sea surface temperatures over the central Pacific ocean warmed during that time. Those data were derived from ships, many of which were lost in WW II, so there is a period of sparce data from which to select. Also, the trade embargo against Japan just before WW II ment that there were fewer ships traveling in the area of reported warming, perhaps a slight southward track as they traveled to China or other ports in Asia.

Yes, the surface data is corrected for several influences. There have been stories that the Soviets reported colder temperatures than actual in winter, as their winter heating alotment was deterined by the temperatures. If so, such reporting may not have happened during the WW II.