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Monday, Dec. 29, 2008 | 2:05 a.m.
A new study led by the U.S. Geological Survey on the possibility of abrupt climate change in this century adds weight to the argument that international solutions to the potential hazards of global warming are urgently needed.
It is noteworthy that the report was commissioned by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, which coordinates the climate change research of 13 federal agencies.
One key finding in the report released Dec. 16 is that rapid melting of glaciers and ice sheets could lead to rises in sea level that “substantially exceed” the projections made last year by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That is because of inadequacies in climate models scientists use to make their predictions.
“Small changes in sea-level rise have significant societal and economic impacts through coastal erosion, increased susceptibility to storm surges and resultant flooding, groundwater contamination by salt intrusion, loss of coastal wetlands, and other issues,” the report stated.
The researchers also sounded a warning that the Southwestern United States “may be beginning an abrupt period of increased drought.” It is no secret that Southern Nevada has been suffering from a drought over the past several years, with no relief in sight.
But it could get even more acute. The report pointed to evidence of drying in the planet’s subtropical zones because of greenhouse-gas-induced global warming. The researchers predicted that this drying effect will move northward into the Southwestern United States, which would make our drought conditions worse.
The irony is that wet areas of the planet could experience worse flooding and erosion.
We encourage both our federal government and other nations to advance this research by investing the money necessary to develop climate models that will help scientists make more accurate predictions about the probabilities of sea level increases, drought conditions and other perilous environmental changes caused by global warming.
For years now we have heard of rising oceans and disappearing islands, melting glaciers and cities going under water. Now here is a question in the past 2 decades how much have the oceans risen?????? Since 2000 the overall earth temperatures have not risen and have fallen slightly, is this due to Global Warming????? MIT research has found that methane contributes a factor of more than 25 times that of carbon dioxide t0o global warming. Methane is not produced by power plants or internal combustion engines. Finally FIGURES LIE, LIARS FIGURE!!!!! I BELIEVE THAT A LOT OF SOOOO CALLED CLIMATE EXPERTS ARE ON A MISSION AND LACK ETHICS AND INTEGRITY.
cignettis, here is the actual global temperature scale from NASA...
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs...
You may find that when you stop listening to Rush Limbaugh and his kind, that the issue of Global Warming is not in doubt. The evidence of it is overwhelming and overwhelmingly easy to find, if you actually care to look.
I believe there has to be something to the whole Global Warming premise - the people who choose the recipients of the the Nobel prizes certainly are not dummies are they?
There is a lot of talk about the looming water shortages in the American southwest and the pipe line from central Nevada to the Vegas valley.
The biggest question of this idea is cost and how long will the aquafier last?
I think there is a better source of water available for the Southwest... The Mississippi river .. if the major players in our area, both public and private were to combine their efforts and do a study on the feasibility of a pipeline connecting a series of reserviors across the arid regions I believe there would be a consensus on its viability.
Expensive? Of course it would be ,but there is enough water going out to sea every day to support millions of new residents and the towns that would spring up around the reservoirs.
If such a pipeline/s followed Interstate hwys 10 and/or 40 right of ways, the cost and impact of such a project would be significantly reduced.
10% of the average daily flow of Mississippi river flow at New Orleans is 50 billion gallons of water per day,approx 40,000 acre ft.per day!
Could the country that built such projects as the Panama canal turn the desert into an economic bonanza that would rival some of Americas most prosperous growth spurts?
pmmart - thoughtful idea. I would be curious to see any studies that might have been done on the subject. I have a suspicion about feasibility, as it relates to the reality that nobody has suggested this thus far.
What about the Missouri? That would be somewhat closer and still supports a tremendous volume of water.
What about the pesticides and runoff from midwest farmland? I believe those are the two primary rivers in that regard, and that it is quite an issue.
Anyway, interesting idea.
Boy, HERE is a new story! For about the 10th year in a row, we keep hearing "New study says global warming worse than previously thought," while for about the 10th year in a row, global temperatures continue cooling.
Hey, who cares that study after study after study published in the world's leading scientific journals show that global drought is decreasing and global soil moisture is increasing? (See, for examples, the studies summarized and linked below) As long as we keep rigging our computer models to predict the sky is falling, research grants will keep pouring in and we will keep seeing our names in the paper as the heroic saviors of the planet!
DROUGHT SCIENCE SUMMARIES AND LINKS
The July 2004 issue of International Journal of Climatology reports, "it is now clear that many places in the Northern Hemisphere, and in Australia, have become less arid," and that "the terrestrial surface is both warmer and effectively wetter." The study concludes, "a good analogy to describe the changes in these places is that the terrestrial surface is literally becoming more like a gardener's greenhouse." (http://www.rsbs.anu.edu.au/Profiles/Grah...)
The May 25, 2006, issue of Geophysical Research Letters reports that for 20th century soil moisture trends, "An increasing trend is apparent in both model soil moisture and runoff over much of the U.S." The study adds, "This wetting trend is consistent with the general increase in precipitation in the latter half of the 20th century. Droughts have, for the most part, become shorter, less frequent, and cover a smaller portion of the country over the last century." (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/20...)
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports, "A number of tree-ring records exist for the last two millennia which suggest that 20th century droughts may be mild when evaluated in the context of this longer time frame." (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/drought/d...)
The July 2007 issue of Climatic Change reports that during the Little Ice Age, there occurred three "very large-scale drought[s] more severe and sustained than any witnessed during the period of instrumental weather observations" [i.e., the 20th century]. (http://www.springerlink.com/content/5478...)
Oh, and while the alarmists always cherry-pick the recent retreat in northern hemisphere Arctic sea ice, they conveniently ignore the corresponding INCREASE in southern hemisphere Antarctic sea ice. If the ice at one pole is melting while the ice at the other pole is accumulating, with the net result being no positive or negative trend in polar ice, how is this a sign of global warming?
Al Gore is now worth over $100 million dollars. He lives in a big house, flys around private jets and now owns a big house boat. He does not practice even one inch of he wants others to do. He does done very well with global warming.
Here some facts:
"First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century."
"Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a "scientific consensus" in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world's most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that "consensus" which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions. "
JamieTee,
I just looked at one of your cherry picks and found you somehow left this off:
"The main exception is the Southwest and parts of the interior of the West, where, notwithstanding increased precipitation (and in some cases increased soil moisture and runoff), increased temperature has led to trends in drought characteristics that are mostly opposite to those for the rest of the country especially in the case of drought duration and severity, which have increased."
Hmmm... why did you leave this off your little diatribe?
Unsaid in the LV Sun argument is the strong generational health benefit of nuclear power in reducing globe warming. Millions of people stand to live, and live a better life, if greenhouse gases are eliminated.
But the LV Sun does not believe the Yucca Mountain science.
The directors of 10 national laboratories including Steven Chu as head of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California prepared an eight-page position paper on nuclear power calling for the "licensing of the Yucca repository as a long-term measure."
But for once the LV Sun is right to call for a Yucca Mountain quality program to be applied to junk science global climate models.
The LV Sun says "We encourage both our federal government and other nations to advance this research by investing the money necessary to develop climate models that will help scientists make more accurate predictions about the probabilities of sea level increases, drought conditions and other perilous environmental changes caused by global warming."
This is a clear admission by the LV Sun that the models are very suspect, in particular they do not account for the suns solar fare cycle, manmade carbon dioxide is not statistically a factor, and the model confidence level is well outside the error band for acceptable science.
A common criticism of global climate models, particularly for predicting the coming decade, has been that they only include factors, such as solar radiation, atmospheric aerosols and greenhouse gases, which are affected by changes from outside the climate system [while neglecting] internal climate variability that arises from natural changes within the system, like El Nino, fluctuations in ocean circulation and anomalies in ocean heat content. This internal variability could lead to short-term changes, especially regionally, that are quite different from the warming predicted to occur over the next century by global climate models.
I love Youtube: Because English Programs that challenge the Al Gore Global Warming hysteria can be freely viewed and differing opinions than that of the Global Warming Industry can be heard. Also film of Mt. Rainer, Washington State, from 1947[you know, Kenneth Arnold and the flying saucers} can be readily viewed by those with two eyes. The snow leve on Rainier, in July1947 is at least 2000 feet higher than July 2008. Hows that for global warming?
I see it coming.
5 years from now, they will be blaming global cooling as being man-made.
I have a simple solution to help the situation my global warming solution can capture a cities emissions and lock them away for ever using old proven technologies combined with one of my innovations, combined with this solution I have another one that will save a owner of a building over 50% of the buildings heating and cooling bill with a similar percent reducing emissions after several years of savings the cost of doing so is paid for and goes on for many more years to do more of the same,this is really a no brainer this saves you money lots of money, the money saved could be used for my solution as there are not very many states or provinces like texas and alberta that have thousands of defunct oil and gas wells for storing emissions, in the end the system will cost the taxpayer nothing.
The problem here is the lack of interest to do something by our leaders other than talk.
Sirs
Underlying the article and the subjective comments provided are the dogmas prevalent in a fraudulent science called Geology. Such, as supported by the religious sects, show on the surface as :
1) The stability of Earth on Ecliptics since birth ( either accretion or creation miracles by banging planetoids or divine legerdemain) and until Judgment day.
2) The founding of theories relative to water based on the Vitellius cycle or apparent cycle of water, without considering indeed the very origin of such.
3) + another 100s idiocies peddled by the Universities of the world such a Glaciations, mountain wrapping genesis etc BUT which are not relevant to the discussion at hand.
Now, what can be observed is a continuous depletion of aquifers through the world & the destruction of the tree cover, the invasion of sea water by seeping through porous strata up to 150 miles inland as in Australia, as a result of the lower head of water of such aquifers... and all the above are part of the Vitellius cycle indeed, and as a consequence of Mankind bad stewardship of the Earth resources we have rivers not able to even reach their mouth.
The Global Warming trend dire results are not to take lightly as a cyclic epiphenomena, with possibility of return to case one, but a head long pursuit of a drift on Ecliptics accelerated by present conditions. The other visible aspect of such view are the De Coriolis forces increasingly leading to more powerful tangential speed of met vortex ( tornadoes up to 600Km/h & Cyclones up to 350Km/h ), the loss of moisture in outer space & the finally the lower pressure of deep continental fresh water feeding the aquifers which you know ( Great Plains 75ft loss in 10 years, Texas 100ft loss in 10 years etc )
The solution then ? No solutions indeed but a control of unchecked population growth especially in Africa, Mexico, Australia since facing more & more marginal resources in term of stable & sustainable rains. Growth, the master word of the last century must be replaced by Awareness, to wit that pulling the rope too tight will bring soon famines of immense magnitude affecting all. We are all indeed on the same boat... and any bombing anywhere in the world is pushing the planet further away on the Ecliptics as Universities tunnel vision scientists at large ignore indeed, since this is a knowledge proper to the True Geology approach
Yours faithfully
Jean-Paul Turcaud
Australia Mining Pioneer
Discoverer of Telfer Mine ( Australia largest Copper & Gold MIne)
Nifty (Cu) & Kintyre (U, Th) Mines, all in the Great Sandy Desert
Exploration Geologist & Offshore Consultant
Founder of the True Geology
~ Ignorance is the Cosmic Sin, the One never Forgiven ~
for background info.
True Geology Foundation document :
http://www.americanchronicle.com/article...
The sky is falling! The sky is falling!