Global Warming

“Yogi...JPL thats the same bunch of wizards who miscalculated a freaking spacecraft's weight and so crashed Billions of dollars of equipment into Mars..RIGHT?

So Yogi, my question is this.

We destroy our nation as a lead nation (we are going to be talking thrid world status with all the taxes and destruction of wealth) but the real producers of CO2 who don't give a flying RIP about the environment (China, India etc) are going to be allowed to run rampant?

READ KYOTO..its not about controlling CO2 its about CONTROLLING American success.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/07/01/us_will_suffer_so_dems_can_save_the_planet_97264.html

The recently passed House bill on global warming is a 1,500-page political sucker punch that could give family finances a bloody nose and ultimately flatten the economy while proponents pretend it will save the planet.

In and of itself, it won't do an inch of good. Assume if you want that all the talk of unperturbed greenhouse gases finally frying us is true and that the bill would slowly reduce carbon emissions in the United States to roughly the level of 100 years ago. The impact of holding down an increase in world temperatures by the end of this century would still be something utterly unnoticeable.

That's right, all the current sound and fury would signify nothing unless the rest of the world joined in, especially China and India, which probably won't do any such thing. As we all know, those two countries are growing like crazy, but still remain fundamentally poor and will stay poor if they should sign on to really, truly serious efforts to phase out fossil fuels before markets and entrepreneurs come up with efficient, cost-effective alternatives beyond the capacity of central planners to devise.
last edited: 7/02/09 7:09:28 AM”

“typical... responding to science with politics.

jpl... dude you are soooo off based with that comment. these are the guys that brought us the robotic mars exploration program. you know, the little robots (spirit and opportunity) that were intended to run for a few months around mars (an amazingly harsh environment) and have run over 5 years?”

“Again, When lobbyist rule, the prez will be a fool. Please try to keep up children so we can have a whole summer to improve our consumption skills.”

“OKAY....http://www.globalwarminghype.com/upld-book403pdf_.pdf

Well if what I am saying is pure politics...THEN FREAKING EXPLAIN IT.

Come on there Yogi you are the expert, why is it that only the "free nations" are getting nailed in the keester while the third world nations (wanna talk Environmental Disaster) that are Socialist are getting a walkaway?

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM?
last edited: 7/02/09 7:29:47 AM”

“So when did Xlax pass the bar? He's never 'tried' a case in his entire life. He's the Expert Witness when Billy-Joe-Jim-Bob sets the trailer on fire.


Dubya made it Cool to be a Fool and they carry on the fight.

I don't think they're going to like where they wind up, though. But that's alright... they'll be gone, most likely, and like the National Debt it will most likely be someone else who has to pick up the tab.”

“OH..the cute little graph from 650,000 years ago...LOL thats like a BLIP in Geologic History.”

“LOL
last edited: 7/02/09 8:16:41 AM”

“"BLIP in Geologic History"

wtf would you know about geological history?

the geological record shows (as the quote from JPL indicated) that there is overwhelming evidence that dramatic climate changes occur quickly (decades) and are sustained for very long periods of time.

i'll post it again because CLEARLY you didn't read it you simply replied with a politically driven response:

* The heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases was demonstrated in the mid-19th century.2 Their ability to affect the transfer of infrared energy through the atmosphere is the scientific basis of many JPL-designed instruments, such as AIRS. Increased levels of greenhouse gases must cause the Earth to warm in response.

* Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that the Earth’s climate responds to changes in solar output, in the Earth’s orbit, and in greenhouse gas levels. They also show that in the past, large changes in climate have happened very quickly, geologically-speaking: in tens of years, not in millions or even thousands.”

“yogi, the problem i see with your map, and I bet the jpl scientist understand this, is that the line on that chart is 3000 years wide. Those measurement back 1000's of years ago weren't based on year by year measurements, they were based on data covering many thousands of year spans contained in ice. Then you tack onto the end of that chart an actual real time measurement made with calibrated equipment. I am willing to bet that if we had that same equipment working over that 450,000 year span you would see single year/decade measurements that would make that one on the end look miniscule.”

“This graph, based on the comparison of atmospheric samples contained in ice cores and more recent direct measurements, provides evidence that atmospheric CO2 has increased since the Industrial Revolution. (Source: NOAA)

hyway, the analysis comes from looking at ice core samples recently taken at various places on the planets surface. it's like looking at the rings in a tree. measurements at the bottom of the ice core (older) and the top of the ice core (newer) are all made with the same modern instruments.”

“I want argue this point with you, but I find it doubtful that the measurements they get from the ice from the last few years is the same as the one they get from 400,000 years ago.

I am not sure what all this means, but this is what I am talking about

This data set includes a time scale for the Vostok ice core, retrieved from Vostok Station on the East Antarctic Plateau. This chronology is derived by orbitally tuning to molecular oxygen to nitrogen (O₂/N₂) ratios in occluded air for depths deeper than 1550 m (greater than 112,000 years old), and by gas correlation to the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2) chronology for the ice core section that is shallower than 1422 m (less than 102,000 years old). Because of poor gas preservation in air bubbles in shallower depths, investigators could only constrain the Vostok chronology for the section deeper than 1550 m by O₂/N₂. Thus for the shallower section of the core, they synchronized the Vostok delta oxygen-18 (δ¹⁸O) and methane (CH₄) measurements to those of the GISP2 to obtain the chronology (see Bender, et al. 2006). Note, CH₄ data are not included in this data set.

Investigators analyzed the O₂/N₂ and the δ¹⁸O record ratios for approximately the past 115,000 to 400,000 years in the Vostok ice core. They combined new measurements for O₂/N₂ and δ¹⁸O with data from Bender (2002) and Petit, et al. (1999), respectively.”

“You know, when other scientists show DEFINITIVELY that Solar Change has MUCH more effect ever note how the libbies pshaw the evidence....”

“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation

The scientific consensus is that solar variations do not play a major role in determining present-day observed climate change. [43] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment Report states that the measured magnitude of recent solar variation is much smaller than the effect due to greenhouse gases. [44] In 2002, Lean et al.[45] stated that while "There is ... growing empirical evidence for the Sun's role in climate change on multiple time scales including the 11-year cycle", "changes in terrestrial proxies of solar activity (such as the 14C and 10Be cosmogenic isotopes and the aa geomagnetic index) can occur in the absence of long-term (i.e., secular) solar irradiance changes ... because the stochastic response increases with the cycle amplitude, not because there is an actual secular irradiance change." They conclude that because of this, "long-term climate change may appear to track the amplitude of the solar activity cycles," but that "Solar radiative forcing of climate is reduced by a factor of 5 when the background component is omitted from historical reconstructions of total solar irradiance ...This suggests that general circulation model (GCM) simulations of twentieth century warming may overestimate the role of solar irradiance variability." More recently, a study and review of existing literature published in Nature in September 2006 suggests that the evidence is solidly on the side of solar brightness having relatively little effect on global climate, with little likelihood of significant shifts in solar output over long periods of time.[11][46] Lockwood and Fröhlich, 2007, find that there "is considerable evidence for solar influence on the Earth’s pre-industrial climate and the Sun may well have been a factor in post-industrial climate change in the first half of the last century," but that "over the past 20 years, all the trends in the Sun that could have had an influence on the Earth’s climate have been in the opposite direction to that required to explain the observed rise in global mean temperatures."[47]
last edited: 7/02/09 11:38:15 AM”

“(translation: you lose)”

“What Can Building Retrofits Achieve?
Posted by Michael Shellenberger on April 10, 2009 at 11:51 PM


Over the last few years we've heard a lot about how if just invested in efficiency, like retrofitting old homes, we would save huge amounts of energy and massively reduce our emissions (not to mention create millions of jobs, reduce inner-city poverty, stimulate the economy, etc.). This was the subject of an op-ed in the New York Times on Monday.

But today, the Times ran an interesting correction on the op-ed page:

An Op-Ed article on Monday, about renovating older houses to save energy, included an incorrect figure for the number of homes that would need to be retrofitted every year to save 200 million barrels of oil over a decade. The figure is 300,000, not 3,000.

I went and looked up some of these numbers. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Americans consumed over 20 million barrels of petroleum per day in 2007. About half of that petroleum is in the form of gasoline and the rest is heating oil, industrial distillates, kerosene, jet fuel, etc.

Few houses, of course, are heated by petroleum, so the comparison is inexact. Moreover, I doubt the assumptions embedded recognize that people tend to use more electricity when efficiency lowers the total monthly bill.

The numbers provided by the Times offer a sobering view of how little retrofits will actually do. Here's what we find: If we were to retrofit 3 million homes over the next decade, we would only consume 10 days less petroleum (.27% less). If we were to retrofit 10 times as many homes, 30 million, (which is almost certainly not possible to do in 10 years), we would save just 100 days of oil over a 10 year period (2.7% less).

If these numbers are basically right, then it's safe to conclude that building retrofits will not contribute significantly to reducing overall global emissions. They might be good for other reasons, but they are hardly the basis for a strategy to mitigate warming.”

“Democrats’ Cap-and-Trade Bill Creates ‘Retrofit’ Policy for Homes and Businesses
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
By Matt Cover



(CNSNews.com) – The 1,400-page cap-and-trade legislation pushed through by House Democrats contains a new federal policy that residential, commercial, and government buildings be retrofitted to increase energy efficiency, leaving it up to the states to figure out exactly how to do that.

This means that homeowners, for example, could be required to retrofit their homes to meet federal “green” guidelines in order to sell their homes, if the cap-and-trade bill becomes law.

The bill, which now goes to the Senate, directs the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to develop and implement a national policy for residential and commercial buildings. The purpose of such a strategy – known as the Retrofit for Energy and Environmental Performance (REEP) – would be to “facilitate” the retrofitting of existing buildings nationwide.

“The Administrator shall develop and implement, in consultation with the Secretary of Energy, standards for a national energy and environmental building retrofit policy for single-family and multi-family residences,” the bill reads.

It continues: “The purpose of the REEP program is to facilitate the retrofitting of existing buildings across the United States.”

The bill leaves the definition of a retrofit and the details of the REEP program up to the EPA. However, states are responsible for ensuring that the government’s plans are carried out, whatever the final details may entail.

“States shall maintain responsibility for meeting the standards and requirements of the REEP program,” the bill says.

States may contract with private agencies to oversee the retrofitting and measuring of improved efficiency and environmental friendliness of houses and other buildings, making sure that private citizens have a variety of choices for retrofitting their homes.

“States and local government entities may administer a REEP program in a manner that authorizes public or regulated investor-owned utilities, building auditors and inspectors, contractors, nonprofit organizations, for-profit companies, and other entities to perform audits and retrofit services,” reads the bill.

It further says, “A State or local administrator of a REEP program shall seek to ensure that sufficient qualified entities are available to support retrofit activities so that building owners have a competitive choice among qualified auditors, raters, contractors, and providers of services related to retrofits.”

In fact, individual homeowners are even allowed to retrofit buildings themselves. The bill gives specific protection to individual owners’ rights to choose who inspects and retrofits their property.

“Nothing in this section is intended to deny the right of a building owner to choose the specific providers of retrofit services to engage for a retrofit project in that owner’s building.”

Even though Congress says the states are responsible for carrying out the retrofits, the EPA and the Department of Energy will establish the guidelines and rules for doing so.

“The Administrator, in consultation with the Secretary of Energy, shall establish goals, guidelines, practices, and standards for accomplishing the purpose stated in subsection (c) [the retrofits],” the bill says.

The program would involve a system of certified auditors, inspectors, and raters who inspect homes and businesses using devices such as infrared cameras (which measure how much heat a building is giving off) to measure their energy efficiency.

The results of these energy audits would then be used to determine what retrofits need to be performed. The audits would examine things like water usage, infrared photography, and pressurized testing to determine the efficiency of door and window seals, and indoor air quality.

Those retrofits would be performed by licensed retrofit contractors using government-approved methods and resources including roofing materials that reflect solar energy.

“[B]uilding retrofits conducted pursuant to a REEP program utilize, especially in all air-conditioned buildings, roofing materials with high solar energy reflectance,” the legislation states.

After the retrofitting is complete, the government – state, local, or federal – will come back and re-inspect the house to determine how much energy has been saved and whether the retrofit is up to federal government standards.

“Determination of energy savings in a performance-based building retrofit program through — (A) for residential buildings, comparison of before and after retrofit scores,” the proposal states.

To help pay for the cost of these retrofits, states and localities may provide loans, utility rate rebates, tax rebates, or implement retrofit programs on their own. In fact, the government will even pay up to 50 percent of the cost of a retrofit through financial awards to individual home and building owners.”

“July 1, 2009
U.S. Will Suffer So Dems Can 'Save the Planet'
By Jay Ambrose

The recently passed House bill on global warming is a 1,500-page political sucker punch that could give family finances a bloody nose and ultimately flatten the economy while proponents pretend it will save the planet.

In and of itself, it won't do an inch of good. Assume if you want that all the talk of unperturbed greenhouse gases finally frying us is true and that the bill would slowly reduce carbon emissions in the United States to roughly the level of 100 years ago. The impact of holding down an increase in world temperatures by the end of this century would still be something utterly unnoticeable.

That's right, all the current sound and fury would signify nothing unless the rest of the world joined in, especially China and India, which probably won't do any such thing. As we all know, those two countries are growing like crazy, but still remain fundamentally poor and will stay poor if they should sign on to really, truly serious efforts to phase out fossil fuels before markets and entrepreneurs come up with efficient, cost-effective alternatives beyond the capacity of central planners to devise.

Of course, the House bill is not really, truly serious. Although disastrous consequences can be discerned deep in its long-term intentions, political observers have noted that the Democrats played all kinds of games so that very little that is either nasty or meaningful transpires until the 2010 elections are past and that, even then, carbon emissions from coal burning could continue to increase for a decade before decreasing.

Before long, however, the Senate will have its say, and no one is sure whether it will soften things up more (further aggravating environmental groups already peeved), toughen things up (further imperiling the general welfare) or simply pass this time around. If it does do something, there is one thing you can count on: We will have cap-and-trade, which is to say, we the people will suffer.

Cap-and-trade refers to a system with emission limits that allows industries to barter with each other about who emits how much. Advocates refer to it as free enterprise, but there is nothing free about it - it would be a government-mandated, bureaucratic monstrosity. It hasn't worked to solve much of anything in Europe, and economist William Nordhaus of Yale fears it could cost trillions more to implement than whatever warming damage it might prevent.

The main reason for the thing is that most of those discussing it do not call it a "tax," which is a word voters do not like. A straightforward carbon tax would be preferable to cap-and-trade many on both the left and right believe, but there's that ugly, awful word. The obvious truth is that cap-and-trade is in effect a tax, and depending on how it is carried out, could be a very steep one for industries that would pass the cost on to consumers. Utility bills could go up by thousands of dollars in constant dollars for a family of four as the decades pass, some analysts believe.

Meanwhile, rescue for an economy increasingly squeezed by the politics of warming alarmism is supposed to come in the form of "green jobs," only it won't. Various researchers are figuring out that we could lose more manufacturing and other jobs than we would gain, and that many of these green jobs as currently outlined would be non-productive and subsidized.

The capper of cap-and-trade is that the globe hasn't been warming lately and, according to one study, may undergo more cooling for another decade or more. Despite all the talk about sure-enough, catastrophic, human-induced warming, the number of doubting Thomases in the sciences is growing, as are some interesting ideas of relatively inexpensive means of saving ourselves if reliable evidence develops that the worst possibilities are almost certainly true.

Congress, spare us.”

“It's funny how they repeat whatever the suckers on the company payrolls say. It doesn't matter whether it's Climate or pollution from mercury, heavy metals, mountaintop removal.... It's whatever the people spreading around the money want to have spread. The thing that amazes me is how they're following the same playbook the tobacco companies used: simply trying to discredit the science for as long as they can, sandbagging regulators so the companies can squeeze out more profit (quarter-to-quarter) before they have to concede to the inevitable.

And they can always find people to help them do it for free.”

“Some of them are real dumb suckers for the corporate shills.”

““(translation: you lose)”
Yogisan
2:52:58 PM
7/02/09

Yogi, how do I lose. I said that the data from the ice in the top layers has no resemblance to the data from teh ice in the deeper layers. That's a fact. The study only used results from 115000 years back to 450000 years and used their study along with other ones and current measurement to interpolate the earlier ones. fact again.

Not to mention the fact that my post said nothing about teh accuracy of teh current readings, just that if this same method was around to measure yealy reading over the past 400000 years there would most likly be plenty of spikes much bigger than the one at the END of the cycle
last edited: 7/02/09 12:29:17 PM”

“that wasn't posted in response to your post hyway.”

“oops, ok.”

“i don't think that's totally right, hyway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core
[img]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok-ice-core-petit.png[/img]
Graph of CO2 (green), reconstructed temperature (blue) and dust (red) from the Vostok ice core for the past 420,000 years


The red and green lines are core measurements... period. 100% empirical. The temperature data is extrapolated, of course, because one can't measure temperature directly from an ice core... you have to calculate it. So it's "extrapolated" in much the same way someone would "extrapolate" the age of something using carbon dating.

your statement ("if this same method was around to measure yealy reading over the past 400000 years there would most likly be plenty of spikes much bigger than the one at the END of the cycle") is clearly just speculation. Since nobody was around 400k years ago to make this measurement your theory that the temps would have "plenty of spikes much bigger than the one at the END of the cycle" can't be evaluated or tested.”

“your chart is CO2 levels, not temperature. The report itself says "Because of poor gas preservation in air bubbles in shallower depths" meaning that the data wasn't the same as that at deeper depths, thus the results for the shallower depths aren't sufficient on their own and must be determined using models built from other data.

What I am saying is that I don't think they have year by year data for CO2 all the way back to 450,000 years ago. I've read elsewhere, and maybe it wasn't these cores, that the data is an average for a very wide spread of time similar to the 40 day moving average used for tracking stocks. what I am saying is that what they are doing is using a moving average scale then at the end sticking on a 1 day average score.”

“there are multiple groups in different locations that collect cores. they ALL show the same result. some go further back than 400k years.

per the wiki:

The GRIP and GISP cores, each about 3000 m long, were drilled by European and US teams respectively on the summit of Greenland. Their usable record stretches back more than 100,000 years into the last interglacial. They agree (in the climatic history recovered) to a few metres above bedrock. However, the lowest portion of these cores cannot be interpreted, probably due to disturbed flow close to the bedrock.[27] There is evidence the GISP2 cores contain an increasing structural disturbance which casts suspicion on features lasting centuries or more in the bottom 10% of the ice sheet.[28] The more recent NorthGRIP ice core provides a undisturbed record to approx. 123,000 years before present. The results indicate that Holocene climate has been remarkably stable and have confirmed the occurrence of rapid climatic variation during the last ice age.

The NGRIP drilling site is near the center of Greenland ( [show location on an interactive map] 75°06′N 42°19′W / 75.1°N 42.32°W / 75.1; -42.32 (NGRIP drilling site), 2917 m, ice thickness 3085). Drilling began in 1999 and was completed at bedrock in 2003.[29] The NGRIP site was chosen to extract a long and undisturbed record stretching into the last glacial. NGRIP covers 5 kyr of the Eemian, and shows that temperatures then were roughly as stable as the pre-industrial Holocene temperatures were.

Up to as of 2003[update], the longest core drilled was at Vostok station. It reached back 420,000 years and revealed 4 past glacial cycles. Drilling stopped just above Lake Vostok. The Vostok core was not drilled at a summit, hence ice from deeper down has flowed from upslope; this slightly complicates dating and interpretation. Vostok core data are available.[30]

The EPICA core in Antarctica was drilled at [show location on an interactive map] 75°S 123°E / 75°S 123°E / -75; 123 (EPICA core) (560 km from Vostok) at an altitude of 3,233 m, near Dome C. The ice thickness is 3,309 +/-22 m and the core was drilled to 3,190 m. Present-day annual average air temperature is -54.5 °C and snow accumulation 25 mm/y. Information about the core was first published in Nature on June 10, 2004. The core went back 720,000 years and revealed 8 previous glacial cycles.

Two deep ice cores were drilled near the Dome F summit ( [show location on an interactive map] 77°19′S 39°42′E / 77.317°S 39.7°E / -77.317; 39.7 (Dome F), altitude 3,810 m). The first drilling started in August 1995, reached a depth of 2503 m in December 1996 and covers a period back to 320,000 years. The second drilling started in 2003, was carried out during four subsequent austral summers from 2003/2004 until 2006/2007, and by then a depth of 3,035.22 m was reached. This core greatly extends the climatic record of the first core, and, according to a first, preliminary dating, it reaches back until 720,000 years.

The West Antarctice Ice Sheet Divide (WAIS Divide) Ice Core Drilling Project began drilling over the 2005 and 2006 seasons, drilling ice cores up to the depth of 300 m for the purposes of gas collection, other chemical applications, and to test the site for use with the Deep Ice Sheet Coring (DISC) Drill. Sampling with the DISC Drill will begin over the 2007 season and researchers and scientists expect that these new ice cores will provide data to establish a greenhouse gas record back over 40,000 years.”

“again, nothing to do with what I am saying.

Even the scientist who did these surveys say that the shallow layers give bad data, and the last post adds that the deep ones give good data except the bottom 10% at bedrock.

I am not sure how to make this any clearer, so this will be my last try. I've read that the line that forms charts like the one you posted aren't based on specific single years, but rather on ranges of years like in the 1000s and that higher and lower peaks (like the one at the end of the chart) are rounded out by the process of time so that what you are seeing is the approximate CO2 level for time span.”

“On XL's "evidence"

I really don't have time to be a flyswatter - but I do get tired of all kinds of out of context stuff posted and mass circulated by opponents of global wamring.

Lets take the Polar bears: XL's cut and paste deals with a very small sub-population of polar bears. Conservationists have been clear that some populations of polar bears are decreasing and some are increasing and some seem stable. The main threats of global warming are pending according to advocates. No big refutation here.

Also, the guy from the EPA who XL cites with quotes providing his supposed refutation of scientific claims about global warming is, as the article notes near the end of the cut and paste is an economist.”

“typical”

“http://carlineconomics.googlepages.com/

Education

Ph.D., Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA

B.S., Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA

The man is both a Scientist and a Economist. So I would think he was within his skill set to comment on climate change studies.”

“i have a bs in physics as well and it doesn't incline you to listen to anything i say...”

“We cannot allow them to open a Cartoon Gap!!”

““i have a bs in physics as well and it doesn't incline you to listen to anything i say...”
Yogisan
9:59:43 PM
7/02/09

Really, I thought i was listening to what you say. Or are you like my wife and don't consider it listening unless agreeing comes along with it :).

But I see my point was ignored again. Pedxing wants to discount everything the man says, as well as what XL says, because the man is an economist. And you appeared to agree with that assertion. It took me about 30 seconds to find the link that shows the man is a scientist as well.”

“Hyway a BS in physics don't make a scientist, that only gives you the piece of paper to wipe a scientist's butt ..... matter of fact a BS in anything don't make for a scientist.”

“So, can we all be happy by just saying, 'No one really knows squat about 'Variable Earth Climate Change'? can we start concentrating on the things within the scope of our abilities to understand our environment and leave the religion to the circus troop that'll keep track of the after life environmental issues?”

“A friend of mine living in Knoxville had a BS in physics, and he was a UPS warehouse worker.
A BS in physics is as valuable as a BA in English.”

“I used to have a boss, the top dawg boss, at a fiber optics plant who was a jerk. It didn't help much that more often than not he was an idiot too. He had a BS in physics, and at meetings would refer to himself as a physicist, I just wanted to kick him in jewels every time I heard him say that. Unfortunately I never got the chance to tell him otherwise when I left, the Yank had gone back to his motherland in PA to our parent company for some extended reason.”

“The guy has a physics degree and he works at the EPA. The EPA allowed him to work on this report so someone in his chain of command must have considered it within his skill set. The issue here isn't whether or not his paper is accurate. The issue is that it was rejected simply because it didn't support the message the President ordered the EPA to promote.”

“According to XL's article:


"It was something that he did on his own," the official said. "Though he was not qualified, his manager indulged him and allowed him on agency time to draft up ... a set of comments."

The comments weren't incorporated into the report. It doesn't sound like he was being muzzled and people are waving this issue around as if the EPA is trying censor findings of one of its researchers. A BS in physics for an EPA economist hardly suggests that he should be over-ruling the scientists in the program. Now if an environmentalist on the EPA wanted to over-rule his analysis of the economic impact of some regulation, I would take notice.”

“Even a PhD in physics wouldn't qualify someone as having any expertise in discussing current state of knowledge on climate change. Heck, I aced all my college physics and nothing I learned there would prepare me to comment on climate change.”

“The wackos are getting desperate indeed.”

“Damn EPA needs a cleaning up if they just go around indulging their employees to do what ever they want. I highly doubt this was a cowboy effort. And if you quote the article quote this ...
"The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision," he wrote, according to the e-mails released by CEI. "I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office." ”

“Turns out a lack of dust storms is what's causing the Atlantic to be warmer. I thought #43 was to blame.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090707/sc_livescience/hugeiraqduststormseenfromspace”

“I'm sure that is all that influenced it.”

“
July 7, 2009

Steve Cole
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0918
stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov

Alan Buis
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-0474
alan.buis@jpl.nasa.gov

RELEASE: 09-155


NEW NASA SATELLITE SURVEY REVEALS DRAMATIC ARCTIC SEA ICE THINNING

WASHINGTON -- Arctic sea ice thinned dramatically between the winters
of 2004 and 2008, with thin seasonal ice replacing thick older ice as
the dominant type for the first time on record. The new results,
based on data from a NASA Earth-orbiting spacecraft, provide further
evidence for the rapid, ongoing transformation of the Arctic's ice
cover.

Scientists from NASA and the University of Washington in Seattle
conducted the most comprehensive survey to date using observations
from NASA's Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite, known as ICESat,
to make the first basin-wide estimate of the thickness and volume of
the Arctic Ocean's ice cover. Ron Kwok of NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., led the research team, which
published its findings July 7 in the Journal of Geophysical
Research-Oceans.

The Arctic ice cap grows each winter as the sun sets for several
months and intense cold ensues. In the summer, wind and ocean
currents cause some of the ice naturally to flow out of the Arctic,
while much of it melts in place. But not all of the Arctic ice melts
each summer; the thicker, older ice is more likely to survive.
Seasonal sea ice usually reaches about 6 feet in thickness, while
multi-year ice averages 9 feet.

Using ICESat measurements, scientists found that overall Arctic sea
ice thinned about 7 inches a year, for a total of 2.2 feet over four
winters. The total area covered by the thicker, older "multi-year"
ice that has survived one or more summers shrank by 42 percent.

Previously, scientists relied only on measurements of area to
determine how much of the Arctic Ocean is covered in ice, but ICESat
makes it possible to monitor ice thickness and volume changes over
the entire Arctic Ocean for the first time. The results give
scientists a better understanding of the regional distribution of ice
and provide better insight into what is happening in the Arctic.

"Ice volume allows us to calculate annual ice production and gives us
an inventory of the freshwater and total ice mass stored in Arctic
sea ice," said Kwok. "Even in years when the overall extent of sea
ice remains stable or grows slightly, the thickness and volume of the
ice cover is continuing to decline, making the ice more vulnerable to
continued shrinkage. Our data will help scientists better understand
how fast the volume of Arctic ice is decreasing and how soon we might
see a nearly ice-free Arctic in the summer."

In recent years, the amount of ice replaced in the winter has not been
sufficient to offset summer ice losses. The result is more open water
in summer, which then absorbs more heat, warming the ocean and
further melting the ice. Between 2004 and 2008, multi-year ice cover
shrank 595,000 square miles -- nearly the size of Alaska's land area.

During the study period, the relative contributions of the two ice
types to the total volume of the Arctic's ice cover were reversed. In
2003, 62 percent of the Arctic's total ice volume was stored in
multi-year ice, with 38 percent stored in first-year seasonal ice. By
2008, 68 percent of the total ice volume was first-year ice, with 32
percent multi-year.

"One of the main things that has been missing from information about
what is happening with sea ice is comprehensive data about ice
thickness," said Jay Zwally, study co-author and ICESat project
scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
"U.S. Navy submarines provide a long-term, high-resolution record of
ice thickness over only parts of the Arctic. The submarine data agree
with the ICESat measurements, giving us great confidence in
satellites as a way of monitoring thickness across the whole Arctic
Basin."

The research team attributes the changes in the overall thickness and
volume of Arctic Ocean sea ice to the recent warming and anomalies in
patterns of sea ice circulation.

"The near-zero replenishment of the multi-year ice cover, combined
with unusual exports of ice out of the Arctic after the summers of
2005 and 2007, have both played significant roles in the loss of
Arctic sea ice volume over the ICESat record," said Kwok.

For images of the Arctic sea ice decline, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/icesat-20090707.html


For more information about ICESat, visit:

http://icesat.gsfc.nasa.gov


For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov


-end-




So far, no members of the research team have been discovered to be economists.

”