Wow truly obvious and powerful statements from that article. We ask about that evidence, but Bryson says itâs second-tier stuff. âDonât talk about proxies,â he says. âWe have written evidence, eyeball evidence. When Eric the Red went to Greenland, how did he get there? Itâs all written down.â Bryson describes the navigational instructions provided for Norse mariners making their way from Europe to their settlements in Greenland. The place was named for a reason: The Norse farmed there from the 10th century to the 13th, a somewhat longer period than the United States has existed. But around 1200 the marinersâ instructions changed in a big way. Ice became a major navigational reference. Today, old Viking farmsteads are covered by glaciers. Bryson mentions the retreat of Alpine glaciers, common grist for current headlines. âWhat do they find when the ice sheets retreat, in the Alps?â We recall the two-year-old report saying a mature forest and agricultural water-management structures had been discovered emerging from the ice, seeing sunlight for the first time in thousands of years. Bryson interrupts excitedly. âA silver mine! The guys had stacked up their tools because they were going to be back the next spring to mine more silver, only the snow never went,â he says. âThere used to be less ice than now. Itâs just getting back to normal.â
On Wisconsin! The modern conservation movement has deep roots at UW-Madison and the badger state. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Muir http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldo_Leopold tough to label him a tool of big oil ...
80% of heat radiated back from the earth is absorbed by water vapor. Not carbon dioxide. He says you can "go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide." That alone is worth the price of admission. If you believe in global warming, you don't believe in SCIENCE. (Forgive the all caps - that's the first time in 2 years).
stop it right now.. you are ruining Gore's grand entrance into the presidential race. he is going to save the day and the planet form global warming. poor polar bears stuck on floating icebergs... don't fret little guys... Gore is here.
I was listening earlier today to an AM radio talk show, can't recall which one. The guest was the guy that outed Al Gore for having a huge carbon footprint via his house. He got hundreds of threatening emails and thousands of insulting ones, not to mention phone calls that terrorized the girls working his phones. He lives 3 miles from Al Gore and thought it was funny that one of the emails called him an inbred southerner hillbilly and how the writer would never visit Tennessee again!! I got a menacing PM after arguing against global warming being man made. There just is no science in this environmental stuff, just not even a trace of it, it's pure political power grabs. Our environmental movement steered us towards coal burning and caused the present mercurial poisining of the oceans. Then they went after the loggers and drove them to log out the whole pacific region because their industry was threatened. Then for an encore the environmentalists blocked all efforts to manage the forests properly which resulted in the burning of most of the publicly owned forest land in California and hundreds of thousands of square miles of national forests in general, all the while they were getting laws passed against the use of leaf blowers because of smoke pollution. The privately held forest land did not burn btw, and currently it is home to birds and other creatures not found in the public forests in spite of what the propagandists that have so incredibly much money to protect their image and cover up their monumental errors spend.
An episode I remember was when the environmental extremists were setting Hummers on fire. Sending large dark plumes of toxic smoke into the very atmosphere they were supposedly trying to protect.
I believe there is a fair amount of evidence that we are heating up. For now. 30 years ago we were cooling. I don't believe there is ANY science that shows its CO2 causing it, when there are so many factors that affect climate, AND that the earth has heated up much faster in the past (before there were any cars about). The thing that really gets me is the total amount of CO2 is less than .04% of the total atmosphere. That's not 4 percent, but 4/100 percent! The rest is nitrogen, oxygen, and argon. And finally, greenhouse theory states that the upper atmosphere should be heating more than at ground level. Its not. Personally, I blame deforestation and the effect of heat islands (cities), for any human involvement. Makes much more sense. Guess where most of the temps taken over the past 100 years to measure changes have been located? Cities, which have ever more asphalt. BTW, it is almost certainly deforestation that has eliminated most of the glacier on Kilimanjaro. There are brutally hot updrafts which rip up the mountain there, which didn't exist before they leveled the forest on it's flanks. Also, there is no significant heating in equatorial regions. Any changes are within margin of error. Although I am an environmentalist big time, I also think its crap science to blame CO2. We should cut the pollution anyway though. Its bad by itself. I believe the Green movement will be a mega boom economically in the long run. imagine all the new industries and jobs. We need a Kyoto protocol to stop wasting the forests.
Yeah, I'm stuck on this one too. I don't think all the ranting and raving about CO2 is worth anything in terms of what they are pointing towards, but it is a good idea to get off of oil and try to be good stewards of the planet. My oil opinions have more to do with lack of innovation and bad economics than anything else. Look at the auto industry. Petroleum engine hasn't really changed at all. They found ways to get the thing running more efficiently, like fuel injection and stuff, but there really hasn't been any innovation since before Henry Ford. 1) Pull piston to top of cylinder 2) Spray some petrol into a cylinder 3) Provide a spark 4) Combustion pushes piston back down Are you telling me we can't figure something out that is better than that?
There are already a number of different engine types/combustion cycles available or in development. Personally I think the biggest reason you haven't seen any serious innovation in this regard is that the powers that be just don't want it.