OT: Global Warming? New Data Shows Ice Is Back

I don't know how accurate the following is, but it's interesting.
--
Judson McClendon       judmc@sunvaley0.com (remove zero)
Sun Valley Systems     http://sunvaley.com
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."

 ========================================
==
Global Warming? New Data Shows Ice Is Back

Tuesday, February 19, 2008 11:55 AM

By: Phil Brennan

Are the world's ice caps melting because of climate change, or are the
reports just a lot of scare mongering by the advocates of the global
warming theory?

Scare mongering appears to be the case, according to reports from the
U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that reveal
that almost all the allegedly "lost" ice has come back. A NOAA report
shows that ice levels which had shrunk from 5 million square miles in
January 2007 to just 1.5 million square miles in October, are almost
back to their original levels.

Moreover, a Feb. 18 report in the London Daily Express showed that
there is nearly a third more ice in Antarctica than usual, challenging
the global warming cruers and buttressing arguments of skeptics who
deny that the world is undergoing global warming.

The Daily express recalls the photograph of polar bears clinging on to
a melting iceberg which has been widely hailed as proof of the need to
fight climate change and has been used by former Vice President Al
Gore during his "Inconvenient Truth" lectures about mankind's alleged
impact on the global climate.

Gore fails to mention that the photograph was taken in the month of
August when melting is normal. Or that the polar bear population has
soared in recent years.

As winter roars in across the Northern Hemisphere, Mother Nature seems
to have joined the ranks of the skeptics.

As the Express notes, scientists are saying the northern Hemisphere
has endured its coldest winter in decades, adding that snow cover
across the area is at its greatest since 1966. The newspaper cites the
one exception - Western Europe, which had, until the wend when
temperatures plunged to as low as -10 C in some places, been basking
in unseasonably warm weather.

Around the world, vast areas have been buried under some of the
heaviest snowfalls in decades. Central and southern China, the United
States, and Canada were hit hard by snowstorms. In China, snowfall was
so heavy that over 100,000 houses collapsed under the weight of snow.

Jerusalem, Damascus, Amman, and northern Saudi Arabia report the
heaviest falls in years and below-zero temperatures. In Afghanistan,
snow and freezing weather killed 120 people. Even Baghdad had a
snowstorm, the first in the memory of most residents.

AFP news reports icy temperatures have just swept through south China,
stranding 180,000 people and leading to widespread power cuts just as
the area was recovering from the worst weather in 50 years, the
government said Monday. The latest cold snap has taken a severe toll
in usually temperate Yunnan province, which has been struck by heavy
snowfalls since Thursday, a government official from the provincial
disaster relief office told AFP.

Twelve people have died there, state Xinhua news agency reported, and
four remained missing as of Saturday.

An ongoing record-long spell of cold weather in Vietnam's northern
region, which started on Jan. 14, has killed nearly 60,000 cattle,
mainly bull and buffalo calves, local press reported Monday. By Feb.
17, the spell had killed a total of 59,962 cattle in the region,
including 7,349 in the Ha Giang province, 6,400 in Lao Cai, and 5,571
in Bac Can province, said Hoang Kim Giao, director of the Animal
Husbandry Department under the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and
Rural Development, according to the Pioneer newspaper.

In Britain the temperatures plunged to -10 C in central England,
according to the Express, which reports that experts say that
February could end up as one of the coldest in Britain in the past
10 years with the freezing night-time conditions expected to stay
around a frigid -8 C until at least the middle of the w. And the
BBC reports that a bus company's efforts to cut global warming
emissions have led to services being disrupted by cold weather.

Meanwhile Athens News reports that a raging snow storm that blanketed
most of Greece over the wend and continued into the early morning
hours on Monday, plunging the country into sub-zero temperatures. The
agency reported that public transport buses were at a standstill on
Monday in the wider Athens area, while ships remained in ports, public
services remained closed, and schools and courthouses in the more
severely-stricken prefectures were also closed.

Scores of villages, mainly on the island of Crete, and in the
prefectures of Evia, Argolida, Arcadia, Lakonia, Viotia, and the
Cyclades islands were snowed in.

More than 100 villages were snowed-in on the island of Crete and
temperatures in Athens dropped to -6 C before dawn, while the coldest
temperatures were recorded in Kozani, Grevena, Kastoria and Florina,
where they plunged to -12 C.

Temperatures in Athens dropped to -6 C before dawn, while the coldest
temperatures were recorded in Kozani, Grevena, Kastoria and Florina,
where they plunged to -12 C.

If global warming gets any worse we'll all freeze to death.

On Thu, 21 Feb 2008 20:31:29 -0600, "Judson McClendon" <judmc@sunvaley0.com>
 wrote:


>Global Warming? New Data Shows Ice Is Back
>
>Tuesday, February 19, 2008 11:55 AM
>
>By: Phil Brennan
>
>Are the world's ice caps melting because of climate change, or are the
>reports just a lot of scare mongering by the advocates of the global
>warming theory?

Obviously Phil Brennan beleves the latter. The giveaway is emotionally loade
d phrases like
scare mongering.

>Scare mongering appears to be the case, according to reports from the
>U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that reveal
>that almost all the allegedly "lost" ice has come back. A NOAA report
>shows that ice levels which had shrunk from 5 million square miles in
>January 2007 to just 1.5 million square miles in October, are almost
>back to their original levels.

It's not news that the  North Pole ice cap melts every summer.

>Moreover, a Feb. 18 report in the London Daily Express showed that
>there is nearly a third more ice in Antarctica than usual, challenging
>the global warming cruers and buttressing arguments of skeptics who
>deny that the world is undergoing global warming.

The South Pole icepack has been increasing for decades. It's hard to define 
usual or
average during a trend. If they use, say a twenty year average as the norm, 
OF COURSE this
year is above the norm.

The issue is GLOBAL warming. Antarctica doesn't represent the globe.

>The Daily express recalls the photograph of polar bears clinging on to
>a melting iceberg which has been widely hailed as proof of the need to
>fight climate change and has been used by former Vice President Al
>Gore during his "Inconvenient Truth" lectures about mankind's alleged
>impact on the global climate.

Newspaper reporters are not scientists, they pander to what the public wants
 to see. Just
like Sports Illustrated are not experts on swimsuits or female pulchritude. 
At best,
pictures are anecdotal evidence; at worst, they're non-verbal lying.

>Gore fails to mention that the photograph was taken in the month of
>August when melting is normal. Or that the polar bear population has
>soared in recent years.

That's because some countries, such as Norway and Russia, banned or imposed 
limits on the
"harvest" (killing) of polar bears. The US is notable for its absence.

>As winter roars in across the Northern Hemisphere, Mother Nature seems
>to have joined the ranks of the skeptics.

Investing Mother Nature with a personality appeals to emotion, not reason.

>As the Express notes, scientists are saying the northern Hemisphere
>has endured its coldest winter in decades, adding that snow cover
>across the area is at its greatest since 1966.

What does that prove? Here in the northern US we're getting cold air called 
Siberian
Express. It originates in Siberia, travels across the north pole, through Ca
nada, and hits
us with sub-zero Farenheit. It is possible that a colder north pole in previ
ous years
stopped the cold air from traveling across it. I don't know; I'm not a clima
te expert. It
just seeems to me that colder temperatures is a SIMPLISTIC interpretation to
 deny global
warming.

I'm neutral on whether global warming is real and whether it's caused by hum
an activity.
My bullshit detecting radar perks up when I hear appeals to emotion such as 
pictures of
polar bears and cute baby seals.We've heard it too many times before. This t
ime, they'll
have to produce real scientific evidence.

"Robert" <no@e.mail> wrote in message
 news:qetur39hfh6feio890e2e9sdlfkb1caktv@
4ax.com...
> On Thu, 21 Feb 2008 20:31:29 -0600, "Judson McClendon"
> <judmc@sunvaley0.com> wrote:
>
> 
>
> Obviously Phil Brennan beleves the latter. The giveaway is emotionally
> loaded phrases like
> scare mongering.
>

Which is quite distinct, of course, from emotionally-loaded phrases like
"global warming."

"Robert" <no@e.mail> wrote:
>
> Newspaper reporters are not scientists, they pander to what the public wants to se
e.

So, when newspapers report that the economy is down, or that the home
team lost, they do that because the public wants to hear that the economy
is down or that the home team lost? Can we spell "d-u-m-b?"

Newspapers report on *what people are interested in* not just *what they
want to see*.
--
Judson McClendon       judmc@sunvaley0.com (remove zero)
Sun Valley Systems     http://sunvaley.com
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."

In article <qetur39hfh6feio890e2e9sdlfkb1caktv@4ax.com>,
Robert  <no@e.mail> wrote:

[snip]

>I'm neutral on whether global warming is real and whether it's caused by
>human activity.

To borrow a bit of logic reported by Freud - 'There is no global warming,
humans have not caused it and it has been detected on Mars so it must be a
natural phenomenon.'

DD

In article <G_Tvj.80911$Mu4.74723@bignews7.bellsouth.net>,
Judson McClendon <judmc@sunvaley0.com> wrote:

[snip]

>Newspapers report on *what people are interested in* not just *what they
>want to see*.

A commercial medium (newspapers/radio/television) will report on what will
sell column-inches/air time to advertisers; they are in business to make a
profit.

(this 'dirty little secret' has been given a bit more air over the past
decades; try finding before, say, 1980, statements like 'it should be
noted that Engulf-and-Devour is the sole owner of the Daily Fishwrap'.)

DD

<docdwarf@panix.com> wrote:
> Judson McClendon <judmc@sunvaley0.com> wrote: 
>
> A commercial medium (newspapers/radio/television) will report on what will
> sell column-inches/air time to advertisers; they are in business to make a
> profit.

True. Which is why they report on what people are interested in. *What*
they report about those things is a mixture of facts and how their personal
and/or coorperate worldview interprets them.

Of course, you also have the likes of The National Inquirer, which are
almost entirely fiction, with maybe a tiny grain of distorted fact.
--
Judson McClendon       judmc@sunvaley0.com (remove zero)
Sun Valley Systems     http://sunvaley.com
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."

In article <fpp962$4gv$1@reader2.panix.com>,
docdwarf@panix.com () writes:
> In article <G_Tvj.80911$Mu4.74723@bignews7.bellsouth.net>,
> Judson McClendon <judmc@sunvaley0.com> wrote:
>
> [snip]
> 
>
> A commercial medium (newspapers/radio/television) will report on what will
> sell column-inches/air time to advertisers; they are in business to make a
> profit.

And a scientist will report what will bring in the next million dollar
research grant.  No one ever got a grant by reporting, "There is nothing
here worth investigating."

bill

--
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999@cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>

In article <gkWvj.101102$N67.50454@bignews5.bellsouth.net>,
Judson McClendon <judmc@sunvaley0.com> wrote:
><docdwarf@panix.com> wrote: 
>
>True. Which is why they report on what people are interested in.

... or what they believe people can be made to be interested in; sometimes
it works, sometimes it doesn't.

'You supply the pictures, I'll supply the war.' - attributed to Hearst.

>*What*
>they report about those things is a mixture of facts and how their personal
>and/or coorperate worldview interprets them.

Assuming that the corporation controls the means of production then it
might well be concluded that nothing gets printed without the
corporation's (at the very least) tacit approval; the corporation's
'worldview' is, as stated above, to sell column-inches/air time.

As my Sainted Paternal Grandfather - may he sleep with the angels! - used
to say, 'Ain't *nobody* in business for your good health... even the drug
companies have to show a profit.'

>Of course, you also have the likes of The National Inquirer, which are
>almost entirely fiction, with maybe a tiny grain of distorted fact.

For a good many years there have been markets for both fiction and
non-fiction works, aye.

DD

In article <62at3uF22mo6iU3@mid.individual.net>,
Bill Gunshannon <billg999@cs.uofs.edu> wrote:
>In article <fpp962$4gv$1@reader2.panix.com>,
>	docdwarf@panix.com () writes: 
>
>And a scientist will report what will bring in the next million dollar
>research grant.  No one ever got a grant by reporting, "There is nothing
>here worth investigating."

I'm not sure what you are calling 'a scientist' here, Mr Gunshannon, but
it would not be very difficult at all to imagine a situation where one
study generates a conclusion that '(product) has (negative effects)' and a
manufacturers' consortium provides grants to folks who report 'there is
nothing here worth investigating'.

DD