1. Has anyone ever seen a baby pigeon? I mean a little fuzzy chick, like you see for other kinds of birds when Spring rolls around. I knew kids who kept homing pigeons when I was a boy, but I don’t remember ever seeing eggs hatching and little pigeon chicks. What I do notice every Spring is a lot of uniformly colorless, almost the shade of dust, smaller pigeons, suddenly trying to get their bearings, like adolescents traveling alone a little further from home than ever before. I assume they’re the new pigeons hatched sometime when I wasn’t looking and already almost fully grown.
2. Scientists comparing satellite photos of the East Coast of the U. S. taken over the past few decades to the present have determined by the moving line of green, indicating budding trees, that Spring has been arriving eight hours earlier every year for quite a few years. But anyone living in Alaska or the Arctic circle has been aware of the earlier and earlier arrival of Spring over the past few decades, and up there, scientists say, it is encroaching even more rapidly on what once was still Winter.
3. Anyone see the report that certain kinds of birds that winter in Mexico, and even further South into Central and South America, are dying off? Scientists studying the birds in their Winter habitats believe the debilitating effects of misuse of pesticides is what’s harming the birds. Another benefit of NAFTA’s lack of universal guidelines for environmental (as well a safety and labor) concerns?
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Global Warming Update
William Gray, the well-known Colorado State University hurricane forecaster, routinely uses the annual National Hurricane Conference as a platform to bash global warming. In a statement to Florida Today, Gray argued that the scientific consensus on global warming is bogus — and "a mild form of McCarthyism has developed toward those scientists who do not agree" that mankind is in danger.
"We are also brainwashing our children on the warming topic. We have no better example than Al Gore's alarmists and inaccurate movie which is being shown in our schools and being hawked by warming activists with little or no meteorological-climate background," Gray wrote.
As I responded when you first started leaving comments on my blog Jim, one of the gimmicks of the right wing is to find the exception to the rule, and pretend that outwiehgs all evidence to the contray, like the handful of scientists who question global warming despite the evidence that even lay people can comprehend. Temperatures are rising, the tundra is softening and sea levels are rising (for the first time in known human history the Medditerranean Sea is encroaching on the Nile so that its salt water is ruining farming in an area of the world that has been farming successfully since farming was first created by humans! Et-endlessly-cetera.
Please Jim, stick to your political leanings, all you want, but don't display your ignorace in these things so blatantly. There is no question that weather changes brought about by rising temperatures is real. I was a weather man for flight patterns for nuclear bombers in the service and have read and studied much about these weather patterns as well, took many classes on it, etc. certified to do this stuff, and everything I have read, and every weather scientist I respect, says it is obviously undeniable that all the eivdence concludes that temperatures are on avergae rising around the world, except where those increases are causing changes in weather patterns that are making ceertain areas temporarily colder. But that doesn't help the polar regions, nor those farmers losing their livelihoods in low-lying areas or at the mouth of the Nile or etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
The fact, that one was a weather man, is not necessarilly an endorsement of one's predictive abilities for the next day much less for the next 50-100 years. However, thank you for your service.
Weather Channel Founder: Global Warming ‘Greatest Scam in History’
By Noel Sheppard | November 7, 2007 - 17:58 ET
If the founder of The Weather Channel spoke out strongly against the manmade global warming myth, might media members notice?
If indeed the founder of the weather channel is calling global warming a myth, then he needs to see a doctor about his mental condition. If he's arguing over whether it's man made, okay, if he's arguing that it is part of a natural cycle, okay. Even though the eivdence as I read it proves both those theories wrong, they are still feasible. But there is no denying, no denying, no possible denying the facts Jim. Tempertatures around the globe and the global average have been going up for a century and moe rapidly in the past few decades and are accelerating upward even faster in the past three years. That is fact. As is the fact that the Alaskan tundra that has been frozen since the memory of humans who have lived there is now un-freezing so that people have to prop up their homes or rebuild them on firmer ground elsewhere. As it is undeniable that entire small islands in the Pacific have had to be abandoned by people whose families and ancestors have been living there since before the age of European exploration, because rising sea levels, caused by melting polar ice, has claimed their homes and homeland. Nor is it deniable that salt water from the Meditteranean, as I said in my last comment, has been leaching into the Nile for the first time in human history, because of rising sea levels, et-endlessly-cetera.
If your man wants to deny that Glacier Park will soon be a misnomer because the glacier that defined it for centuries, and looked exactly the same in paintings and photographs over those centuries, is now rapidly disappearing, or that the famous "snows of Kiliminjaro" that have existed on that African mountain as long as human memory are also rapidly disappearing, than he's an idiot, or a fool, or a liar. I doubt he is claiming any of those things Jim. I suspect he is just arguing over details and where the blame, if any, goes. That's politics. Not science. Science deals with what can be proved or disproved. Rising temperatures cannot be denied. Period. End of argument. Some call it "global warming" though that leads laymen to think it means that if they have a rough winter one year that proves otherwise, but the better term is global weather change, as seen in the increase in our own country of beach erosion, hurricane strength, numbers of tornadoes and an expansion of the terrirtory where they are experienced, earlier Springs and later starts of Winter, with longer summer weather, more severe and wider spread droughts, water depletion caused by less snowfall and moutain runoff, encroachment of Southern lattitude diseases and flora and fauna, etc. I have the feeling if a "scientist" who supports rightwing perspectives were to tell you that the sun orbits around the earth you would accept it as fact, if it served some rightwing purpose. I hope not, but your contrary response to the overwhelming scientific evidence, supported by the research and observations and statistics of last time I looked well over ninety percent of the world's scientists, seems to prove otherwise.
In your last post you have proven that the only thing rising is your Irish.
The number of skeptics is up significantly. Besides,there is no such thing as settled science, there are only theroies that are open to revision and disproof. The shame is that both party's candidates favor addressing a problem which does not seem to exist. I do favor working toward clean air and alternative sources of energy, but to think that man's tiny contribution of co2 amounting to less than .5% of the atmoshere is going to out weigh the effect of the sun and the massive co2 production of the oceans strains credablility.
http://acuf.org/issues/issue62/060624cul.asp
Global Cooling?
by Dennis Avery
The official thermometers at the U.S. National Climate Data Center show a slight global cooling trend over the last seven years, from 1998 to 2005.
source http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st308/
"Skepticism Among the Scientists. Thus it is not surprising that international surveys of climate scientists from 27 countries in 1996 and 2003 found growing skepticism over the accuracy of climate models.
PS I just noticed in your last post, you said that over 90% of the world's scientists believe that man is causing global warming. As my previous post states, I don't accept your premise, but I deem it as progress that you have dropped the percentage of scientists that support your premise from 99%.
thanks for sharing jim ...
i'm speechless ...
Jim, Facts aren't theories, it is not a theory that the earth isn't flat, it's a fact. The last comment from me on this post: scientists who live and work, and have for years, in the polar ice caps as well as Greenland and Iceland have witnessed and measured and recorded warming and its impact on glaciers, earlier Springs, longer Sunmmers, etc. The people whose houses were built on frozen tundra and are now sinking into tundra that is thawing are all facts, recordable, observable, measured facts Jim. As are sea levels rising from the melting ice of glaciers and polar ice caps. If there is a scientist that refutes these facts than he or she isn't a scientist. As for warming trends, you seem to be quoting scientists questioning computer models and not recorded temperature averages. Any scientist who says the average temperature hasn't gone up and isn't continuing to go up is not reading the data the majortiy of scientists and I have been reading of recorded temperatures around the globe over the past century and a half. We'll see whose models for the future prove to be correct. But from the factual evidence now accruing from observable data around the globe, it certainly seems prudent to plan for the worst, and pray for the best possible outcome.
Geez, I just saw your comment on my "percentages" and once again you misread what I said, which was that the last time I looked well over ninety percent of the world's scinetists (and in fact several surveys have it at over 99% Jim) believe in global warming, not that percentage believe it is man made, though close to that believe human activities are contributing to it.
Mike, I suspect that you received higher high school physics grades than Einstein, since he famously, did very poorly in school. But even Michael Lally, the man of letters originally from South Orange, NJ might give credence to the man down the road at Princeton. He was the most respected and famous scientist of the 20th century. He got a lot of things right ,but even he got some things wrong. He believed the universe was static rather than expanding (big bang theory). The difference between Einstein and many of the global warming crowd was that he invited criticism. The problem with the “man caused global warming crowd “ insist that the premise must be accepted as fact, even though an ever increasing number of scientists are skeptical. It as if one was to insist on the divinity and immortality of Christ and insist that there can be no further discussion. That is not science, it is religion. I respect Pope Benedict as a good interpreter of morality. Pope Benedict criticized the global warming crowd for their attempting a massive redirection of the world’s wealth to combat a problem that has not been proved and has been presented with dubious science. He would like to see that wealth put to work to better the human condition.
PS1 Geez, I am really disappointed about the percentages. I has hoping some scientfic objectivy was seeping in. The source is there if you are interested.
PS2 Pls refer to the slight cooling trend from 1998 to 2005. If winter 2008 is an indication, I suspect that trend is continuing. Since you are a former weather man you are most likely familiar with U.S. National Climate Data Center referenced above.
I think I talked past you a little bit. I see in your last post you said that the main point of contention is if there is man caused global warming. I agree that is the main point of contention. That being the main, but not the only difference among the scientists. The next question is if billions maybe trillions should be spent on a problem that man can have only minamal impact on. I agree that the last question is a political question.
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