posted 11-18-2003 03:33 PM               

MEA CULPA

I acknowledge I made a statement that turned out to be partially wrong - when it is intepreted out of the context it was given.

There are vineyards in England nowadays, but the idea I was conveying was that the ancient vineyards brought by the Romans during the Climatic Optimum of 800-1350 in England, disappeared with the onset of the Little Ice Age, about 1400 AD, and the vineyards were replanted again around 1968, meaning the climate in England had been too cold for vineyard activities until the 1960s.

A careless remark from my part, "there are not more vineyards in England", should have being interpreted inside the context it was expressed. So I insist that my statement still conveys the idea that the climate in England was too cold, and still is for a succesful commercial competition with other great wine producers in the world, as France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Argentina, Chile, and the US.

*********************************************************

This is a "copy & paste" from your link on future wines in Scotland. Of course, it is another of your usual shots in your own foot:

quote:

---

Using computer models, the scientists at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, in Bracknell, say Britain will enjoy rising temperatures within the next five decades, possibly up by 2ºC, making it possible for viticulturists to develop vineyards north of the Border." ..."Presently, there are 330 vineyards in England with some 800 hectares under vine contributing £10 million to the economy. The most northerly vineyard is Leventhorpe, a small estate just outside Leeds. Developed by George Bowden, a former chemistry teacher, it produces a variety of dry white wines." ... "Ms Liddell says: "Even if global warming continues, I don’t think temperatures will rise anymore than in Germany." ... "While Dr Jones acknowledged there was still a lot of uncertainty about the rate and magnitude of climate change, he offers his report as a wake-up call of sorts."

---

As usual, you post links to articles that you have not read throughly, or don't understand its meaning. Those lines in the quote above are the heart of the article:

1) The Hadley Center used computer models (it is famous for that) for predicting something that cannot prove, (and besides don`t care a bit if real climate, 50 years from now, shows them to be dead wrong, because they are going to be quite dead by then), and say "possibly up to 2ºC" (what happened to their previous predictions of 4, 6, and 8ºC increase?. Those 2ºC increase wiil take us right to the same temperature occurring durnig the Medieval Warm Period, that proved not to be catastrpohic - hence Climate Optimum as it is also know by climatologists. Unfortunately, from the year 2020 a double Gleissberg Minimum will develop in the Sun, to the same extent as both Maunder and Spoerer Double Minima, that plunged Earth into the Little Ice Age. So there will go those tiny British vineyards back to extinction.

2) 800 hectares for 330 vineyards means 2,4 hectare by single vineyard. That kind of area is considered in Argentina and Chile as not suitable for a succesful commercial enterprise. it is a good area for a "family-size" vineyard, but forget of making good money with it.

3) Dr, Jones knows about what he's talking. So does Ms. Liddel. So do I.

quote:

---

You got that? Eduardo Ferreyra claims that the only reason these vineyards can exist is becuase they are being heated by cities. ...and this based on a SINGLE day of weather data!

---

Eppur si muove, as Galileo said (not comparing myself with him!). Indeed, it is the only reason these tiny vineyards manage to survive. One of them, as told in my previous post, planted in 1991, suffered a severe frost and they had to delay their actual production until 1999. go ahead and say I am lying.

Then comes your utterly absurd claim that I based my claims on a SINGLE day of weather data. Please, people, go the British MET website and you'll find in their database maps just like that, for every day of the year, every year for a long time back. And in each of them you will the same thermal lines following the same pattern, with insignificant variations. In every one of those maps the clear image of the "urban heat island" jumps to your face. So my claim is based on a very, very long list of weather maps, curiously made by one promoter of the catastrophic warming hypothesis!

If you keep shooting at your own feet, you soon will need a wheelchair.

*****************************************************
A short digression: Regarding wines, The amount produced by British wineries in one year is produced in one month by our province of Cordoba, by about 100 small vineyards in Colonia Caroya, 50 km north of Córdoba city - a province not known in Argentina as an important wine producer as Menoza, San Juan, and La Rioja and, to a lesser extent, Catamarca, Neuquén, Río Negro (this two in Patagonia), Tucumán, Salta and Jujuy.

The $2.00 a bottle Argentinian wine you find in your local supermarket is sold in Argentina for $0,25 the bottle, and is used only by very poor people who cannot afford other good Argentinean wines costing in average from $5 to $15 dollars the bottle. If you want to try an excellent wine, ranked as one of the top 10 in the world, then try to buy the Rutini Cabernet Sauvignon, that costs here $150.00 the bottle. In April 2003, I sent a box of this wine to an American brother-in-law I have in Los Angeles, and he gave a party just to invite his friends with it. There are some good California wines that I tasted when in LA, but they rank in a lower level than most French, Chilean and Argentinean wines. Excellent grade California wines are for the private use of the owners of wineries, and sometimes are provided to the US Diplomatic Service and the White House.
******************************************************

About having inherited my fortune, of course is not my fault (as you imply, showing a bit of resentment) but my grandfather's and my father's hard work - and by their love for the future generations. We kept the familiy's tradition and progressed on our own, alas, in December 2001 we went broke with the political and economic catrastrophe we experienced. We lost our lime factory to Swiss companies (HolderBank cement holding) but still have the land. We started from scratch. The palace cannot be sold or employed for commercial purposes because it is a national Monument, a White Elephant we are stuck with - we must keep paying taxes for something we cannot give a use. Even so, our corn and soybean crops (genetically modified, of course) provides us with the money we need to live a decent life.

quote:

---

Have you forgotten just who brought a discussion of Napoleon Bonaparte to this thread?

---

No, I have not. In fact, you did. Mentioning a Napoleon's saying is not bringing him into the discussion, while making a fuss about it really is bringing him into the discussion. Clearly, this tactic of yours of trying to enrage me making outlandish accusations will not work. But, I wont' interrupt you while you are making mistakes.

You have a "tunnel vision" that prevents you from seeing the other side of the coin. And at the end of that tunnel, you have a bright neon sign blinking: "Kill the bastard!, Humilliate him, make him look an arrogant fool!".

Mentioning a remark by a famous character in history, it does not mean I am comparing myself with that person. I wonder if had I said "Love Thy neighbour" would have been interpreted by you as I was comparing myself with Jesus. I guess you would do it, as you claimed I was comparing myself with Napoleon by repeating one of his famous sayings.

SUMMING UP

Rewiewing all posts some things stand out clear:

1) My position is that "catastrophic global warming" and "depletion of the ozone layer" theories are wrong, and is quite possible they are grave scientific and political hoaxes.

2) I claim that "warming of the Earth" has occurred naturally, as a result from the natural variances of the climate induced by the solar activity.

3) Your position is that "global warming" will be catastrophic to mankind.

4) That the ozone layer is being destroyed by CFC, halons, methane, fumigants as methyl bromide, etc., and this will have catastrophic effects on mankind, and the general environment, animals, plants, phytoplankonts et al.,

Do you agree with this analysis? In case you do, then we can keep discussing these issues, as they are basic to your belief of the Deep Shield program and Chemtrails hypothesis, that could be possible (by all means) but need stronger evidence to be proved beyond doubt. Both catastrophic warming, and global ozone depletion - aalong with the "antropogenic origin" must also be proved beyon reasonable doubt. And ,as the debate is "arming up", serious doubt remain about the vailidity of tose hypothesis.

The basic assumption of the Deep Shield project is that "they" are doing it to protect and restore the ozone layer and retard or reverse "global warming". Am I right? Please correct me if I am wrong.

Assuming I am right in this primary analysis, it follows that if ozone layer depletion and catastrophic warming are hoaxes, and "they" know it ("they" are not stupid"), then the question is "Why are they doing it? - in case they are doing it". A secondary element has other problems:

a) If it turns out the Deep Shield is unexistant,
b) Catastropic warming and ozone depletion are unexistent,

Then your religious belief in Deep Shield and Chemtrails will be shattered. This forum will cease to exist, as it would have lost its main purpose, ie,: proving Deep Shield program exists and is going on.

Have a nice business tip, Sore. I mean it.

posted 11-18-2003 08:38 PM            

I have been closely following a great deal of the literature of the atmospheric and marine research communities vis a vis climate change for going on four years now and would respectfully submit that it's not so much the research community that is generating the confusion here as it is the Running Dog, status quo-supporting print and broadcast media.

In my very strong opinion, the term "global warming" is a misnomer, the persistent use of which I am not unconvinced is being perpetuated *intentionally* in order to sustain public confusion regarding an increasingly serious - and increasingly observable - set of events.

A more accurate characterization of what we are witnessing is "pollution-driven regional climatic instability."

As long as the media keep referring to it as gLoBaL wArMiNg, people will be arguing that point forever and NOTHING will ever get off the ground in the direction of acknowledging and dealing with the actual reality of the situation.

posted 11-19-2003 12:42 PM               

There is no such thing as "global" warming, and you are so right as qualifying it as "regional" warming, whichever its cause may be.

That is the reason why glaciers and retreating and advancing in different parts of the world, at the same time, and I think that, showing a large number of retreating glaciers, or advancing ones, is no proof that the Earth is either warming or cooling - although 56% of advancing glaciers worldwide, against 44% of retreating, also worldwide, should make us wonder the reason behind it. nd after lots of research we may ending up that each one of those melts and advances are caused by regional changes, that indeed exist.

If not, why a glacier recedes or advances? There is a reason for it. Glaciers don't do it "just because". In the meanwhile, we are not sure about anything, and speculations (either wild or feasible) are just that: speculations.

I agree with you that pollution can contribute to warming, (as it contributes both to acidic or alkaline rains), and at the same time it can contribute to cooling, as NASA's James Hansen explained back in 2001, regarding the fine particulate (soot) content in clouds.

There is so many uncertainties in the climate issue, and there are so many things that are still ignored (what we ignore overwhelms our knowledge - on any field you like to try), that basing bans, restrictions and international treaties that can play havoc of mankind, is really an insane thing to do.

Most (not all) these bans and regulations imposed on substances and technologies during the last 30 years, were based on the Precautionary Principle, a philosophy I find extremely dangerous and contrtaproductive. It ignores completely the demonstrated capacity of man to solve problems he has created before, and insists in applying restricting actions on anything "suspicious", driven by a pathologic fear of the unknown. Had our ancestors applied the precautionary principle, we would still be wandering on the tree tops.

And, of course, it stops cold many attempts of needed development in areas as nuclear energy, health issues (as lifting the irrational and unscientific ban on DDT for controlling malaria, a disease that kills a person every 10 seconds, or the review of the old and obsolete "linear no-threshold" theory in toxicology and radiation protection regulations. But these are other issues not directly related to global warming and ozone layer. However, they must be seen within the context of a geopolitical agenda at very high levels. Of course, a matter for another discussion, in other forums.

posted 11-21-2003 03:25 PM               

It seems there are not people out there that seem able to provide a simple answer to some very elementary questions about the weather and the climate, although they are eager to argue and discuss a matter that requires more than a secondary level knowledge of the subject. So I will post my questions again and hope there is someone in Chemtrails forums that has the will to give a simple “yes” or “no” answer, and a brief explanation.

So, while we wait for Sore Throat’s return from his spiritual retirement to the discussion (I hope he dares to provide his answers to these simple questions), I would like to remind you of what Mark Twain said about trends, now wthat we are in an age where trends seem to be soooo crucial:

"In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore ... in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period the Lower Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long... seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long... There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."

When we hear some scientists talking about “trends” and warning us about impending catastrophes – as the ozone hole trend – I wonder if they ever read Mark Twain. Yes, Tom Sawyer, of course, but he wrote a lot more. I like most is phrase, "such a trifling investment of fact."

posted 11-22-2003 12:44 AM               

"such a trifling investment of fact."

Not surprising that this is his favorite, as he obviously relishes acting in this manner.

Before proceeding, let's just review from the prior thread.
http://www.chemtrailcentral.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/001752-2.html

I asked the question, "Have you forgotten just who brought a discussion of Napoleon Bonaparte to this thread?"

The impeccably precise SEÑOR Ferreyra responded,

"No, I have not. In fact, you did."

Those following this thread should review to see if this statement is true.

Let's try another one, when I documented that there are in fact 330 vineyards in England, the honorable SEÑOR Ferreyra contends "I acknowledge I made a statement that turned out to be partially wrong - when it is intepreted out of the context it was given."

Let's remember the original statement made by SEÑOR Ferreyra:""Right now, there are no vineyards in England, even with the horrid summer "heat wave" because the winters are still too cold for the activity."

Consider that these coexisting statements come from the mouth of the same man that stated, "Half Truths are Whole Lies".

It seems that the Honorable SEÑOR Ferreyra has difficulty practicing what he preaches. All is fair game when he is attempting to defend his point of view.

In response to the advancing glacier data that SEÑOR Ferreyra has provided, I offer the following information (perhaps unintentionally overlooked by the distinguished researcher):

"Central Asia: Melting Glaciers Could Affect Millions In Region"

Research in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas all point to the same conclusion: climate change is causing the world's glaciers to melt at an increasingly rapid pace. It is a phenomenon that may prove catastrophic for the millions of people in the world who depend on ice melt for their fresh water supply, for instance in large parts of Central Asia. The issue is likely to be among the topics discussed at this month's World Conference on Climate Change in Moscow.

Prague, 11 September 2003 (RFE/RL) -- Glaciologists agree that warmer temperatures and below-average snowfalls are causing most of the Earth's 160,000 glaciers to shrink or disappear altogether.

In the short term, the phenomenon may help increase the world's supplies of fresh water. But in the long run, the shrinking of the glaciers will mean a significant decline in fresh-water supplies from ice melt, leaving river levels entirely dependent on rainfall.

Reynald Delaloye is a research assistant at the Institute of Geography in Fribourg, Switzerland: "Except several exceptions, glaciers are withdrawing. This trend started approximately 150 years ago. But we observed in the past 15 to 20 years an acceleration of this withdrawal in many mountain ranges around the world."

In the Alps, the combination of warmer summers and drier winters, meaning less snow to feed the glaciers, is responsible for the glaciers disappearing.

"The Alpine glaciers in Switzerland have lost approximately 40 percent of their length [at their base] since 1850. During the same period their loss in volume are estimated at 50-60 percent. About 10-15 percent of the withdrawal has occurred in the past 15-20 years. For big glaciers, differences are often measured in kilometers," Delaloye says.

In the Alps, Delaloye notes, temperatures have risen by 1-1.5 degrees Celsius since 1850, and possibly two degrees in some regions.

There is little reason to be optimistic about the Alpine glaciers' future, as the emission of greenhouse gases by industrialized countries, which is held primarily responsible for the global warning phenomenon, is expected to grow further."

...more
http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2003/09/11092003180201.asp

Excessive heat takes toll on Swiss Alpine glaciers

ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE: Glaciers that feed some of Europe's biggest rivers have been shrinking since the 1850s. But the ice has recently begun melting even faster

REUTERS , SION, SWITZERLAND
Thursday, Aug 21, 2003,Page 6
Greyed by the heat and riven with deep cracks, Switzerland's mighty Alpine glaciers are shrinking at a record rate in this summer's sizzling sun.

Scientists may disagree over some of the causes of the heat wave which has sent temperatures soaring in Europe and about how much people are contributing to global warming, but the effects high in the Alpine valleys are visible.

The Alpine glaciers, source of some of Europe's biggest rivers, have been in retreat for more than a century, but the loss of ice has speeded this year as temperatures have soared.

"The rate of ice melt is some three or four times the usual amount," said Charly Wuilloud, head of the department of natural dangers at the Valais state forestry department."

...more
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2003/08/21/2003064615

"Europe's largest glacier shrivels under global warming"

RIEDERALP, Switzerland, Aug 17 (AFP) - Switzerland's Aletsch glacier, the largest in the Alps, is imposing enough to generate a wind of its own, but the 23-kilometre long (14-mile) river of ice is visibly shrivelling under the impact of global warming.

"In the last 140 years it has moved back three kilometres (two miles)," Laudo Albrecht, a Swiss nature conservation expert said, standing on a ridge above the sweating glacier.

He was clutching a graph which also shows that the ice flow has melted faster in the past decade or two, and this summer's heatwave is likely to deepen the trend.

The Aletsch and the immediate area were designated a World Heritage site in December 2001, not only because of the spectacular nature of the landscape of rocky peaks, wooded slopes, meadows and glaciers, according to UNESCO.

The UN's Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation also explained that "the global phenomenon of climatic change is particularly well illustrated in the region".

Albrecht pointed across the valley to a contrasting band of colour along the opposite slope, like a trace of grime on an emptied bath. It shows that the Aletsch has lost about 200 metres (660 feet) in depth along most of its length since the 1860s."

...more
http://www.haveeru.com.mv/english/news_show.phtml?id=2040&search=&find=

Let's remember that it was the Honorable SEÑOR Ferreyra who provide the Silvretta Glacier in Switzerland as an example of an advancing glacier, and it was the Honorable SEÑOR Eduardo Ferreyra who so emphatically stated, "Half Truths are Whole Lies".

To that I would provide the old adage, "If the shoe fits, wear it".

SEÑOR Ferreyra also cites Glacier National Park in Montana as an example of an advancing glacier.

Once again, let's consider the accuracy of SEÑOR Ferreyra's assertions:

Glacier Park on Thin Ice
The national preserve's namesakes offer a highly visible omen of climate change: Ice dating to the Stone Age will soon vanish.

MANY GLACIER, Mont. — When naturalists first hiked through Glacier National Park more than a century ago, 150 glaciers graced its high cliffs and jagged peaks. Today there are 35. The cold slivers that remain are disintegrating so fast that scientists estimate the park will have no glaciers in 30 years.

Boulder Glacier, once massive enough to contain a human-dwarfing ice cave, was gone by 1998. Grinnell Glacier, beloved by tourists and scientists alike, has lost 90% of its volume since 1850.

The dwindling glaciers amid the deeply chiseled landscape of this national park offer the clearest and most visible sign of climate change in America. It is an omen even a child can grasp in an instant: Ice that has lasted in these high alpine valleys since the end of the Stone Age will soon vanish.

"It's not just going to happen in my lifetime," said Dan Fagre, a 49-year-old ecologist who leads the U.S. Geological Survey team working to chronicle climate change in this park known as the Crown of the Continent. "It's going to happen during my career."

The unexpected speed of the demise of the glaciers has left scientists racing against time. They have only decades left -- nothing at all in geological time -- to understand these ancient frozen beasts before they disappear. "The scariest thing to me is realizing how fast these things are happening," said Blase Reardon, 39, an avalanche expert who has worked in the park for the last two years. "Being here is like having a front row seat at the Indianapolis 500."

The melting here is being mimicked around the world, from the snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania to the ice fields beneath Mt. Everest in the Himalayas. Experts predict that glaciers in the high Andes, the Swiss Alps and even Iceland could disappear in coming decades as well.

In contrast to these more remote, high-altitude areas, the accessibility of Glacier National Park gives scientists a chance to get the most intimate view possible of a dying glacier."

...more

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-glacier18nov18,0,7342429.story

Remember now, it was SEÑOR Eduardo Ferreyra who chose Glacier National Park as an example of an advancing glacier

Let's watch him say that I am taking this "out of context".

Let us also consider, despite SEÑOR Ferreyra's contention to the contrary, that there is unprecedented melting at both the North and South Pole:

Polar ice cap melting at alarming rate

"The polar ice cap is melting at an alarming rate due to global warming, according to NASA scientists, with satellite images showing the ice cap has been shrinking by 10 percent per decade over the past quarter century." ...more
http://cooltech.iafrica.com/science/280851.htm

'Fingerprints' of melting ice caps point to global climate change

Sea levels are rising, on average, by about 1.8 mm per year

Global climate change is having a direct impact on the Earth's sea level and a group of scientists led by two U of T geophysicists is providing the sea level "fingerprints" of polar ice sheet melting to prove it.

See the graphs of sea-level changes here
Rates of sea level change over the last century vary widely from one geographic location to another even after these rates have been corrected for known effects. The question has always been, why? What is causing these significant variations? Jerry Mitrovica, U of T's J. Tuzo Wilson Professor of Geophysics, is lead author of a paper to appear in the Feb. 22 issue of Nature that claims to have discovered the answer. And it is an answer that has an important impact on the debate over global climate change." ...more

CLIMATE CHANGE: Polar Ice Cap Could Disappear, Report Claims

The Arctic ice cap could disappear entirely every summer beginning in 50 years, causing dramatic impacts worldwide, according to an article in the latest issue of the Norwegian science journal Cicerone.
Researchers at the University of Bergen's Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center are the first to predict the northern ice cap's possible complete disappearance, although climatologists have warned for years of its retreat.
"The changes we've seen have been much faster and more dramatic than most people imagine," said Tore Furevik, who co-authored the article.
The predictions are based on submarine data and on last year's discovery by Ola Johannessen, director of the Bergen research center, that hard-core, year-round ice is shrinking twice as quickly as the overall winter perimeter.

In Antarctica:

letters to nature
Nature 350, 328 - 330 (1991);
Rapid disintegration of the Wordie Ice Shelf in response to atmospheric warming

C. S. M. Doake & D. G. Vaughan

THE breaking up of ice shelves around the Antarctic Peninsula has been cited1 as a "sign that a dangerous warming is beginning in Antarctica". Here we present satellite images showing the disintegration of the Wordie Ice Shelf, which lies off the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula (Fig. 1). Fracture, either in the form of surface crevasses or rifts extending to the bottom of the ice shelf, has been responsible for iceberg calving and weakening the central region of the ice shelf. These fracture processes, which led to retreat of the ice front, were apparently enhanced by the presence of increased amounts of melt water, resulting from a warming trend recorded in mean annual air temperatures in Marguerite Bay. If this warming trend continues, other nearby ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula may be at risk. But substantial additional warming would be required before similar processes could initiate breakup of the Ross and Filchner–Ronne ice shelves, which help stabilize the West Antarctic ice sheet.

http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/j ournal/v350/n6316/abs/350328a0.html&dynoptions=doi1069482938

16.2.2. Changes around the Antarctic Peninsula

At least five meteorological records from scientific stations on the Antarctic Peninsula show marked decadal warming trends (King, 1994; Harangozo et al., 1997; King and Harangozo, 1998; Marshall and King, 1998; Skvarca et al., 1998). Although the periods and seasons of observations have been different, the records show consistent warming trends—as much as 0.07°C yr-1, considerably higher than the global mean.

...more
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg2/601.htm

Having present a documented, and opposing, point of view on accelerated planetary warming, let me just touch on a few other of your assertions, which I will return to in greater depth in following posts.

Antarctic Ozone:

http://www.bas.ac.uk/Key_Topics/The_Ozone_Hole/zoctozone.gif

measurements by the British Antarctic Survey

********************************************

The reasoned SEÑOR Eduardo Ferreyra states, "Had our ancestors applied the precautionary principle, we would still be wandering on the tree tops.

And, of course, it stops cold many attempts of needed development in areas as nuclear energy, health issues (as lifting the irrational and unscientific ban on DDT for controlling malaria, a disease that kills a person every 10 seconds, or the review of the old and obsolete "linear no-threshold" theory in toxicology and radiation protection regulations. "

While it is he that is initiating an off topic distraction, these are so preposterous that a rebuttal is warranted.

Nuclear Power

Given the costs and environmental risks, Germany is phasing out all of its nuclear power plants:

German nuclear energy phase-out begins with first plant closure
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20031114/sc_afp/germany_nucl ear_031114133334

Japan govt admits dangers of nuclear power
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/10274/newsDate/28-Mar-2001/story.htm

Disaster at Davis-Besse
http://www.unplugsalem.org/20031118-db-what-might-have-been.pdf

Blocked drains caused leaks at Salem
Carper expresses concern at delay in reporting escape of radioactivity
http://carper.senate.gov/newspaper/The%20News%20Journal%20-%20 Blocked%20drains%20caused%20leaks%20at%20Salem.htm

The Dangers of Nuclear Power:
http://www.ccnr.org/open_letter.html

Exelon says no plan to restart closed Illinois nuke
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/0203/msg00563.html

Flight Ban Underscores Dangers of Nuclear Power Plants ....Nov.02.2001
http://www.cipherwar.com/news/01/public_citizen_nuke_plants.htm

Of course, we must assume theat SEÑOR Ferreyra has complete amnesia when contemplating the well known disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

*****************************************

DDT

SEÑOR Ferreyra criticizes an "irrational and unscientific ban on DDT" as promoting deaths by malaria. What he doesn't acknowledge is that climate change is believed to be a factor in a substantial spread of malaria, as well as other formerly tropical diseases.

As far as the contention that DDT is safe and non-toxic,SEÑOR Ferreyra choses to overlook the fact that DDE, a persistent breakdown product of DDT, accumulates in the fat of living organisms and has been implicated in the shell thinning of birds high on the food chain such as the peregrine falcon, bald eagle, California brown pelican, etc.

Effects of DDT on Birds
http://www.environmentalreview.org/vol01/anderson.html

Endocrine Disrupters and Bald Eagles: A Response
http://www.umich.edu/~esupdate/library/98.05-06/risebrough.html

To make this information easily available to you SEÑOR Ferreyra, the next source is available in Spanish:

MIDWEST PEREGRINE FALCON RESTORATION, 1998 REPORT
http://www.raptor.cvm.umn.edu/content.asp?espanol=y&page=2011

DDT and Birds
http://www.stanfordalumni.org/birdsite/text/essays/DDT_and_Birds.html

Use of PCB Congener Analysis in Ecological Risk Assessments

(Includes the story of massive DDT contamination of the Southern California Bight by the Montrose Chemical Company)
http://www.darcnw.noaa.gov/mon0127c.pdf

SEÑOR Ferreyra doesn't address the fact that rapidly breeding insects such as mosquitoes can mutate to product highly resistant populations. This is very analogous to the over perscription of antibiotics and the emergence of drug resistant bacteria.

What is needed is far more creative approaches to the problem, such as:

"GM mosquito could prevent spread of malaria "
http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2002/05/22/gm_mosquito020522

"Integrated Mosquito Management: No New Thing"
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol7no4/rupp_letter.htm

Coastal Mosquito Control in Your Neighborhood
http://users.rcn.com/ncmcp/imm.pdf

Unfortunately such an approach doesn't pad the pockets of the energy, oil and chemical companies whose profits SEÑOR Ferreyra seems so concerned in protecting.

******************************************

And finally:

"So, while we wait for Sore Throat’s return from his spiritual retirement to the discussion..."

Why yes SEÑOR Ferreyra, there was a spiritual aspect to my transcontinental trip. While waiting for my return flight at the Dulles Airport, I caught the glace of a passing Tibetan monk.

We smiled at each other.

It was a golden moment.

posted 11-22-2003 01:08 PM               

quote:

---

I asked the question, "Have you forgotten just who brought a discussion of Napoleon Bonaparte to this thread?" The impeccably precise SEÑOR Ferreyra responded, "No, I have not. In fact, you did." Those following this thread should review to see if this statement is true.

---

Had I known for sure your were into that kind of crap, I‘d give a second thought before entering a “scientific” discussion here. Because, up to now, all you have provided to this board is a classical example of “copy and paste” of press releases and news briefs published in the web and some newspapers – and an obsolete letter to the editors of Nature dating back to 1991. This kind of “science by press releases and media reports” is just that: manipulated misinformation. Reports by the media are written by journalists and editors than lack the scientific knowledge to judge de veracity of what scientists are telling them in their press releases and interviews. And they just pass along the information to the readers believing it is for real, and that has been thoroughly checked and accepted by the scientific community.

And this has never happened. There is no such thing as a “general consensus” in any scientific field. And that has been the Golden Rule for centuries.

I have pointed you to very few links, because I know they are boring and most people won’t go there, or would not understand the meaning of its content. If that is your wish, I can provide this board with that kind of links that show a very different picture about global warming, DDT, nuclear power, ozone hoax, etc. In fact, I have written an entire book on that, adding to the huge library of such books debunking pseudo-scientific hoaxes and media hype. it would fill many pages of this board (not their content, just the one-line URL links). It would also add lots of unknown facts to the issues. On the other hand, if I give you links to scientific papers, most people would not understand what is explained there.

BTW, You should try to take a course in “discussions and negotiation”, and find which is the meaning of “ad hominem attacks” (and why you should avoid them at all costs), circular logic, Occam’s razor, etc.

So let us try to keep this exchange of opinions on a scientific level, away from Gaia or Tibetan religions. I would like to show the way scientific papers are accepted by the media, and used as proof that the global warming is induced by man, trying to push the Kyoto Protocol. This was sent to me by our Australian collaborator John Daly, and the full article is published in his website at: http://www.john-daly.com/smoking.htm . For the sake of uninterested readers of this board, I won’t post the entire article here, as you like to do, instead I will give the media headlines and the conclusions of the extensive analysis made by Daly. The article by John Daly has all graphs and charts (the originals) and will be enlightening.

HEADLINES

Conclusion

From the foregoing, we can safely disregard the media hysteria about this paper's findings. At face value it proves little that we did not already know. The `increase' in the greenhouse effect claimed was mostly caused by a real or imagined change in the methane spike at wave 1300, not by CO2.

The instruments themselves are so different as to make some variation between the two data streams inevitable. It should be no surprise therefore that some slight differences are present. The climatic states of the two years in question were very different. 1970 was during a solar maximum with a weak La Niña in progress, while 1997 was a solar minimum year with a powerful El Niño starting. Both these features would cause differences to occur in infra-red profiles from the very part of the world most affected by the sun and El Niño/La Niña - the tropics in the western Pacific.

And even if we accept the `statistical significance' of the two gases identified as showing the greatest effect, namely methane and the CFCs, neither gas can be considered as problems at the present time. Methane has now stopped increasing, while CFCs are already in decline due to the restrictions of the Montreal Protocol.

The primary gas at the centre of the greenhouse controversy - CO2 - gives only weak indications in this study, well within the range of instrument error between two very different instruments separated by technologies 27 years apart.

This study is in no way a `smoking gun' as hoped for by the industry. It's more a smoking pea-shooter.

As for your links to the British Antarctic Survey, I must remind you they are the people that took credit for “discovering”(!) the infamous Ozone Hole back in 1985 – when the “hole” was first discovered in 1957 by George Dobson - simultaneously with French scientists at the Dumont D’Urville station on the other side of the Antarctica. Dobson called it “the Southern Anomaly”, and correctly recognized it as a natural phenomenon. British Antarctic Survey are well known data manipulators, and have been exposed too often in their manipulations. Not a good and reliable source of information.

Well. My next replies to your unsubstantiated claims and blunders against me will have to wait until you demonstrate this board your deep knowledge on atmospheric sciences. We need not your “cut and paste” techniques here, but you to show your thoroughly understanding of basic physical and atmospheric principles. In order to do that you must answer the simple set of questions I have posted in my previous message – if you want this board to stay alive and in good health.

But I guess that is the last thing you’d like: that I keep posting here.

Either answer those questions or throw the towel.

posted 11-22-2003 01:54 PM               

Here is an extremely short list of interesting articles on the subject on global warming that show there is not such consensus among scientists on what’s going on.

“Is the North Pole Turning to Water?”

Testing the Waters: A Report on Sea Levels

Page full of links to all kind of organizations related to climatic change and global warming – pros and cons.

Variations in CO2 Growth Rate Associated with Solar Activity by Dr Theodor Landscheidt (Germany) (21 Sept 03). Solar activity and solar motion variations are found to explain much of the variability of CO2 growth over the last several decades. The average annual increase over the last 10 years was 1.66 ppmv/yr, which is less than half that assumed by climate models.

Heat Wave in Europe: The Mystery Unveiled by Eduardo Ferreyra (Argentina) (21 Sept 03). The recent heat in Europe made headlines in the media and was used as evidence that "global warming" is a fact. Guess what: human activities had nothing to do with it. See an excellent explanation of how meteorology, not global warming, was responsible for the heat wave.

Decadal-Scale Variations in El-Niño Intensity by Dr Theodor Landscheidt (Germany) (20 May 2003). Where does El Niño and La Niña go from here? Using his solar motions analysis (which successfully predicted the last La Niña and the recent El Niño), Dr Landscheidt looks 80 years into the future and finds La Niña more dominant.

El Niño Forecast Revisited (19 March 02) by Dr Theodor Landscheidt (Canada). Dr Landscheidt reviews his prediction made over 3 years ago on this website of the El Niño now developing, and describes his method in layman's terms for the benefit of non-expert readers.

A `Trace' of Snow in Butte, Montana (4 Jan 2002) by Tony Bergantino. When does a dump of snow become merely a `trace' of snow? As this article by Tony Bergantino of the Office of the Wyoming State Climatologist shows, the `surface record' of anything is not always what it seems. The linked article below is both self-explanatory and highly disturbing for the credibility of the Historical Climate Network.

Enough to keep chewing on until my return.

posted 11-22-2003 04:39 PM               

Note that he cannot, will not, acknowledge that he was wrong about his post on the state of glacier retreat at Glacier National Park in Montana or the predominant state of glacier activity in Switzerland (but instead cites a single example of an advancing glacier).

What does he do instead? he criticizes my sources of information and means of conveying them, i.e., "cut & paste and yet is unable to refute the actual content of the information transmitted.

SEÑOR Eduardo Ferreyra is critical of legitimate scientific researchers who use any aspect of a conditional word drawing conclusions from their data.

Examples of quotes from SEÑOR Ferreyra:

"Possibly" does not mean "for sure". Apparent correlations does not mean there is a "cause and a consequence".

But the constant use of the "potential tense" in their conclusions (may, might, possible cause, is likely, etc) only show they are not sure of their own conclusions.

“I made it very clear that "Possibly" does not mean "for sure". Apparent correlations does not mean there is a "cause and a consequence".. Furthermore, I pointed out later that: "(may, might, possible cause, is likely, etc only show they are not sure of their own conclusions.)”

“I have highlighted in red examples of what I insist is purley "wild guessing" in science, a shot in the darkness, "possible mechanisms, most likely cause, could emerge, if, etc, that prove nothing, and only reveals great "uncertainties in the theory (just theories, keep that in mind). What is frigthening for educated people is these uncertainties are the basis for instilling a severe psychosis about the environment,”

------------------------------------------
Apparently only SEÑOR Eduardo Ferreyra is allowed intrepret scientific data with absolute certainty.

This comes from the same man that said:

"It has been proved, beyond nay (sic) doubts or specualtions, that the sun's magnetic cycles have a decisive influence over important climatic events as the El Niño/ENSO, the amount of cosmic rays entering Earth's atmosphere (which determines de(sic) formation of clouds), and other vital things as the North Atlantic Oscillation. All these powerfull factors, interacting within a very complex system as the atmosphere, makes the rol(sic) of CO2 as the main driving force behind the global warming, each day more insignificant and meaningless."
http://mitosyfraudes.8k.com/Calen2/jet.html
____________________________________________

Thus, it has become abundantly clear that SEÑOR Eduardo Ferreyra's only displayed consistency is his own hypocrisy and inconsistency.

Let's look at a few more of his statements:

"“There is no such thing as "scientific consensus" on anything. Scientists have NEVER HAD ANY CONSENSUS ON ANYTHING.”

"“I have never denied there has been a warming in the last 140 years, starting about 1860. That is something everybody knows and accept.”

"I claim that "warming of the Earth" has occurred naturally, as a result from the natural variances of the climate induced by the solar activity."

"There is no such thing as "global" warming, and you are so right as qualifying it as "regional" warming, whichever its cause may be."

---------------------------------------------

This is a sick puppy, who claims to have ardent admirers, but so did Jim Jones, and we are all aware of the tragedy of Jonestown.

There will always be those, unable or unwilling to think for themselves, who will eagerly drink the Koolaid on command.
---------------------------------------------

Apparently SEÑOR Eduardo Ferreyra has no hesitancy to display his limited knowledge of atmospheric sciences.

“But, cloud formation from airplane traffic? My God, I forgot I am in a Chemtrail forum.”

It's usually a good thing not to forget where you are SEÑOR Ferreyra.

Let me help you out.

If you look at the top of your computer screen you will see the name "Chemtrail Central".

As far as aircraft generating clouds, please refer to the following:

Remote Sensing of Contrails and Aircraft Altered Cirrus Clouds
http://www-pm.larc.nasa.gov/sass/pub/conference/Rabi.ONERA.abs.pdf

“Aviation, Aerosols, Contrails and Cirrus Clouds”
http://www.aero-net.org/a2c3/a2c3_summary.pdf

The cause of concern for people visiting this site is whether the government is promoting a clandestine project to enhance the formation of high altitude clouds by altering the emissions from aircraft.

These issues have been detailed at the web site maintained by Clifford Carnicom.

SYNTHETIC CLOUDS REVEALED

http://www.carnicom.com/sf0622.htm
http://www.carnicom.com/contrails.htm

The "Deep Shield" post that initiated this thread,
http://www.chemtrailcentral.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/001752.html

proports to be made by an insider with knowledge of the rationale for this spraying operation as being a mitigation for global warming and ozone depletion

Is there any way to know if this is true... of course not. The Deep Shield post may be a complete ruse.

One area where SEÑOR Eduardo Ferreyra and I appear to be in total agreement is a distrust of the American government.

There is a long history of deceit, denial and deception about programs which have ultimately been disclosed decades later and shown to have caused death or injury to an unsuspecting population. Often the justification is based on a claim of "national security".

The current war in Iraq highlight the extent to which the ruling Bush junta is willing to lie to the population.

This is why we are here SEÑOR Ferreyra, and this is why many of us have persisted with this investigation for years.

Once again, if you have any doubt as to where you are, please look at the top of your computer screen.

And this just in...Cal 28, Stanford 16.

posted 11-22-2003 07:51 PM            

.....Deborah, I take my hat off to you. You have absolutely hit tha nail on its head.

There is no such thing as "global" warming, and you are so right as qualifying it as "regional" warming, whichever its cause may be.....

What I said, exactly, was this:

.....A more accurate characterization of what we are witnessing is "pollution-driven regional climatic instability.".....

Please note that I did not say "regional warming."

I said "regional climatic instability."

posted 11-22-2003 10:21 PM               

For the sake of brevity, I suggest we should ignore our unintentional typos, because the (sic) adds nothing to the discussion. As your statement says (just after your (sic) mark to may “nay” instead of “any”) “Thus, it has become abundently (sic!) clear that SEÑOR Eduardo Ferreyra's only displayed consistency is his own hypocrisy and inconsistency.”

If somebody has a fame of hypocrisy in some boards is precisely you. I am beginning to see you have a well deserved fame. And I have never ignored in which board I am at, but my opinion is :it just does not matter in which board you are, is the content of what you say what counts.

quote:

---

Note that he cannot, will not, acknowledge that he was wrong about his post on the state of glacier retreat at Glacier National Park in Montana or the predominant state of glacier activity in Switzerland (but instead cites a single example of an advancing glacier).

---

Your quote the state of Swiss glaciers with "Europe's largest glacier shrivels under global warming" RIEDERALP, Switzerland, Aug 17 (AFP) - Switzerland's Aletsch glacier, the largest in the Alps, is imposing enough to generate a wind of its own, but the 23-kilometre long (14-mile) river of ice is visibly shrivelling under the impact of global warming. “

Good. I mentioned the Silvretta glacier as one example, and you mentioned the Aletsch glacier as another. So? And you did it in your customary “cut and paste” of news briefs by news agencies, in this case by Associated France Press. Both in Switzerland, that would suggest a “regional” or “local” effect as I stated. I cannot be more consistent in saying there are regional and local advances or retreat. But in your own inconsistency, you forgot that statistics from the World Glacier Monitoring database speak of 65% of glaciers advancing in the world. Then count those in “stationary” state – How many are left in “retreat”?

Now go to this link: http://mitosyfraudes.8k.com/glacier_inventory.htm and you will find the glaciers listed in the World Glacier Monitoring database for the Andean region of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. You can do same for any region of the world and you’ll similar results.

It is long list of glaciers that I have uploaded to our website server for you to check. The big glaciers have a name, and the small ones only a number in the database. I have not counted them all, but must be well over 3,500 glaciers.

Look at the “tongue activity” number at the far right of the columns: if it is “1” has a marked retreat. ”2” denotes a “slight retreat”, “3” indicates they are “stationary”, and “0“ denotes uncertain. About 98% are “0”. Just a few are “2” (slight retreat), and as many are marked “3” (stationary) and “4” (slight advance). There are many entries in this database that has no number for the tongue activity, (so they put "-9999")

The World Glacier Monitoring say 65% of glaciers are advancing. But you insist they are melting all over the world. I beg your pardon, but I trust the World Glacier Monitoring words more than your boasting.

Sorry if don’t care to comment on the rest of your news agencies reports. I am trying to be more scientific and accurate than your “yellow press” media sources.

Then, see what is happening at Mt. Saint Helens, right in your own backyard. http://www.glaciercaves.com/html/anewgl_1.HTM According to the “International Glaciospeleological Survey (IGS) © "IGS Crater Team Scientists", there has been a great accumulation of snow that has created an enormous glacier that increases in size very fast. They post this graph showing the ice accumulation along the years:

You can call this a TREND!

My answers to your Polar ice will come in future posts – but they will have to wait for your responses to my 7 questions on basic weather and atmospheric physics, that you obviously will avoid answering because you know nothing about physics, weather and climatology.

posted 11-23-2003 12:16 AM               

He goes on to state:

"The World Glacier Monitoring say 65% of glaciers are advancing. But you insist they are melting all over the world. I beg your pardon, but I trust the World Glacier Monitoring words more than your boasting."

It should be obvious to all that it is not "my boasting" but rather a scientist in Switzerland who appears to differ with the position stated by SEÑOR Ferreyra.

From my post above,

Reynald Delaloye is a research assistant at the Institute of Geography in Fribourg, Switzerland: "Except several exceptions, glaciers are withdrawing. This trend started approximately 150 years ago. But we observed in the past 15 to 20 years an acceleration of this withdrawal in many mountain ranges around the world."

In the Alps, the combination of warmer summers and drier winters, meaning less snow to feed the glaciers, is responsible for the glaciers disappearing.

"The Alpine glaciers in Switzerland have lost approximately 40 percent of their length [at their base] since 1850. During the same period their loss in volume are estimated at 50-60 percent. About 10-15 percent of the withdrawal has occurred in the past 15-20 years. For big glaciers, differences are often measured in kilometers," Delaloye says."

How is it that this Swiss researcher can be so completely wrong?

Well let's check with SEÑOR Eduardo Ferreyra, he certainly seems to have all the answers.

".....All these scientists working in official organizations as the NASA, NOAA, Scripps Institute, Woods Hole, etc, live from government grants and subsidies for investigating something that they know it does not exist. The only way to keep the money flowing in is by scaring ignorant people (like politicians) to urge them to give the money to "save the planet" from destruction....."

(Letter to Bruce Holmstead from Eduardo Ferreyra, President of FAEC [Argentinean Foundation for a Scientific Ecology])

or another quote from he who knows all:

"The mentioned study is not a fact, it is merely a research that will stand scrutiny from other scientists and probably, as usual, will be shown flawed, as many of the work coming from NASA and the NOAA. "

While you denigrate the premier oceanographic institutions in the United States on one hand, you also state "I have colaborators who did it as Dr. Robert B. Gagosian, President and Director of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (seee his article in my website: Triggering Abrupt Climate Changes."

One can only wonder what Dr. Gagosian feels about your slandering of WHOI.

Let's consider what other agengies have to say about the state of the world's glaciers...something that SEÑOR Eduardo Ferreyra would lead you to believe wasn't true.

Landsat 7 Glacier Inventory
http://www.emporia.edu/earthsci/gage/glacier7.htm

"Glaciers and ice caps have experienced negative mass balances and have been retreating since the end of the Little Ice Age in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This is a general condition for glaciers of all types in nearly all geographic locations, with the possible exception of Antarctica."

Land-Atmosphere-Ice Interactions(LAII)
http://nsidc.org/arcss/projects/laii.html

"Land-Atmosphere-Ice Interactions (LAII) research seeks to understand interactions between land, atmosphere, and ice in the Arctic. LAII research, focusing primarily on Alaska, constitutes a major contribution of land-based data to U.S. global change research in the Arctic.

Most of the Arctic has warmed dramatically in the last 30 years. Clearly, the Arctic responds sensitively to changes in the global climate system through its biota, soils, and sediments, its hydrological and biogeochemical cycles, and its permafrost, glaciers, and ice sheets. These changes are likely to cause feedbacks to the global climate system via changes in trace gas fluxes, water and energy exchange, and thermohaline circulation."

The National Snow and Ice Data Center
How do glaciers reflect climate change?
http://nsidc.org/glaciers/questions/climate.html

"Since the early twentieth century, with few exceptions, glaciers around the world have been retreating at unprecedented rates. Some scientists attribute this massive glacial retreat to the Industrial Revolution, which began around 1760. In fact, some ice caps, glaciers and even an ice shelf have disappeared altogether in this century. Many more are retreating so rapidly that they may vanish within a matter of decades. Scientists are discovering that production of electricity, along with coal and petroleum use in industry, affects our environment in ways we did not understand before. Within the past 200 years or so, human activity has increased the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere.

The 1991 discovery of the 5,000 year-old "ice man," preserved in a glacier in the European Alps, fascinated the world (see National Geographic, June 1 1993, volume 183, number 6, for an article titled "Ice Man" by David Roberts). Tragically, this also means that this glacier is retreating farther now than it has in 5,000 years, and no doubt other glaciers are as well. Scientists, still trying to piece together all of the data they are collecting, want to find out whether human-induced global warming is tipping the delicate balance of the world's glaciers."

How could it be that all these researchers wrong?, and that it is SEÑOR Ferreyra alone who is correct.

By the way, I challenge SEÑOR Ferreyra to provide the quote from the World Glacier Monitoring that states that 65% of glaciers in the world are advancing.

posted 11-23-2003 08:04 AM               

The 65% advance in glaciers is derived from the WMGS data, and quoted by climatologist Prof. Fred Singer from a paper published in Science magazine. I will provide the link later, if it does not emarrass OUSTANDING and DISTINGUISHED MISTER SORE THROAT.

I will quote Professor Singer on "human induced warming":

“The IPCC arrived at the ambiguous conclusion that "the balance of evidence suggests there is a discernible human influence on global climate," based on "fingerprints" in the climate record, i.e., an increasing correlation (with time) between observed and calculated global temperature patterns [IPCC, 1996, Figure 8.10, p.433].

However, this positive trend in correlation depended entirely on the arbitrary choice of the time interval 1940-1990, during most of which temperatures were actually decreasing. A different choice of interval could have produced a zero or even a negative trend. Another piece of evidence cited in the IPCC report to support a human influence depended on showing an increasing temperature trend in the middle troposphere of the Southern Hemisphere [IPCC, 1996, Figure 8.7.c., p.428]. Again, this is related entirely to the particular choice of time interval [Michaels and Knappenberger, 1996]; more complete data sets give a contrary result - a greater warming trend in the Northern Hemisphere.”

Following the publication of the IPCC report in 1996, an increasing number of researchers have adopted the view that much or most of the pre-1940 warming is due to natural causes and represents a recovery from the Little Ice Age. Some would assign a substantial portion to greenhouses gases [Wigley, Jones, and Raper, 1997]. Others claim that most of the temperature increase is caused by solar variability [Soon et al., 1996]. If one applies the "fingerprint" criterion used by the IPCC, then it can be seen from their Figure 8.10 [IPCC, 1996, p.433] that the pattern correlation has a negative trend during the major warming between 1900 and 1940, thereby denying the existence of an appreciable human contribution.

Perhaps the strongest argument against an appreciable human contribution comes from the observed cooling between 1940 and 1975 and the lack of warming since 1979 (in the weather balloon and satellite data).

S. Fred Singer
The Science & Environmental Policy Project
1600 South Eads Street, Suite #712-S
Arlington, VA 22202-2907
Tel/Fax 703-920-2744
Email: singer@sepp.org WWW: http://www.sepp.org

The writer, an atmospheric physicist, is professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and president of the Fairfax-based Science & Environmental Policy Project, a non-profit policy institute. He has held several academic and governmental positions, including as the first director of the US Weather Satellite Service.

Excerpts from Fluctuations of Glaciers,
By World Glaciar Monitoring Service (WGMS) http://www.geo.unizh.ch/wgms/fog/fogaa.pdf

PAKISTAN

Panmah (PK00007) glacier surge

Data by K. Hewitt, WLU

The 15.5 km long Chiring tributary surged between 1994 and 1996. It advanced 2.5 km from its 1993 position and carried a lobe of ice 3.2 km2 into the main glacier. The Chiring flows north then west from a watershed with Sarpo Laggo and Baltoro Glaciers, has its highest elevation at 6200 m a.s.l. and meets the main glacier at 4260 m a.s.l. The surge transferred 1–1.5 km3 of ice from the upper to the lower glacier and into the main glacier valley. The “Maedan” tributary, which joins the Chiring near the junction with the main glacier advanced 1.7 km between 1993 and 1996, and may be surging. References/most important data sources: Hewitt (1997).

Bualtar (PK00004) glacier surge

Rapid advance of terminus between 1989 and 1991 was associated with the second surge in an episode of major disturbance commencing in 1986. Severe crevassing of the lower ice tongue, formation and sudden drainage of ice margin lakes were observed. The terminus advanced approximately 2 km.
References/most important data sources: Gardner and Hewitt (1991).

Aling (PK00035) glacier surge / flood

The surge of the “Lokpar” tributary massively disturbed the main glacier and triggered an advance of the terminus 2 to 3 km. The surge occurred between 1989 and 1993. The Lokpar tributary descends in steep ice falls from the south bank, in a NE direction to join the Aling near its terminus.

In 1992, a glacier lake outburst flood, apparently triggered by the surge destabilizing a large ice-margin lake, destroyed the “Gweh-Aling” summer village.
References/most important data sources: Hewitt (1997).

Sarpo Laggo (PK01002) glacier surge

Some time between 1992 and 1996 the Moni tributary of Sarpo Laggo surged, advancing a lobe of ice about 1.5 km2 across the main ice stream. The Moni is a right/east bank tributary that drains NE from the Mustagh Tower (7260 m) and the Baltoro Glacier watershed. References/most important data sources: Hewitt (1997).

Baltoro (PK00006) glacier surge

Between 1992 and 1996, the Liligo tributary surged, advancing 2.5 km to join the main glacier. The Liligo is a left/south bank tributary, which flows NNE to the Baltoro, 10 km above its terminus. Explorers’ and mountineers’ reports since 1861 seem always to place the Liligo terminus 1–3 km away from the main glacier. No previous surge is recorded. References/most important data sources: Hewitt (personal communication based on LANDSAT imagery). References/most important data sources: Hewitt (personal communication).

Karambar (PK00028) glacier surge

Beginning in March 1993, a rapid advance of the terminus was observed. The glacier is severely crevassed, ice margin ponds quickly formed and drained. In June 1993, the rate of terminus advance was about 12 m per day. Total advance by summer 1994 was about 3 km, reaching and interfering with Karambar River, but not damming it (as in 1905, surge and glacier lake outburst flood). References/most important data sources: Hewitt (personal communication).

THOMPSON GLACIER, CANADA

(Aerial Photogrammetric Map)

Institute of Cartography, ETH Zuerich

Thompson Glacier is an advancing outlet of the Fritz-Mueller Ice Cap (former McGill Ice Cap) in Axel Heiberg Island, Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The mean width of the main stream measures about 3 km. The front of the glacier is rimmed in the center and on the east side over a distance of about 2 km by the push moraine and on the west side by an ice-cliff 30 to 50 m high. The valley filling consists, at least on the surface, of permanently frozen fluvioglacial sediments. The snout of the Thompson Glacier is bulldozing the frozen detritus to a push moraine. On the map the push moraine appears as a halfmoon shaped bulge, subdivided into ridges running roughly transversely to the glacier. The definition of a push moraine is given by Chamberlin (1890): “A glacier pushes matter forward mechanically, ridging it at its edge, forming what may be termed push moraine”. A push moraine system consists of three parts: the glacier, the underlying material and the push moraine, the latter being the result of an interaction of the two former elements. The glacier is superimposing a variable stress field on the underlying material.

The stresses exceed the strength properties of the material involved. Thus we can understand the push moraine as a failure zone. This phenomenon is certainly not restricted to the observable part; it is bound to extend underneath the glacier (adapted from Kaelin, 1971).

The Thompson Glacier push moraine was surveyed every summer from 1959 onwards. In cooperation with the Canadian National Research Council’s Photogrammetric Research Section a detailed topographical map at the scale 1:5000 was prepared in 1960, and an orthophoto map with contour lines overlayed at the same scale for the 1967 situation.

This was the basis laid for the quantitative analysis of the mechanics of the push moraine process by Kaelin (1971) under the supervision of the late Prof. F. Mueller, then at the Institute of Geography, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zuerich. The present orthophoto map is based on aerial photographs by the Royal Canadian Air Force of August 1977 and was produced by the Institute of Cartography, ETH, Zuerich.

STORSTRØMMEN, NORTHEAST GREENLAND

Recent velocity fluctuations of Storstrømmen indicate surge-type behaviour (Reeh et al. 1994), further evidence is presented by Weidick et al. (1996), who describes changes in the glacier extent during the Holocene. For the Storstrømmen Glacier front, called Bredebrae, three positions are shown in the map: the 1978 ice front, the year of the aerial survey, the 1912/13 ice front as described by Koch and Wegener (1930, 1911), and the 1984 ice front as seen by LANDSAT MSS image, the foremost position documented in recent time. The period 1978–1980 was the most active phase of the glacier with ice velocities at the front of up to 4035 m/a (Jung-Rothenhäusler, in press). Obviously, the advance had come to an end in 1984 and since then a retreat of the ice front can be observed.

The total increase of the glacier area between 1978 and 1984 was 118.6 km2. Storstrømmen may presently be described as being in the recovery phase, which began 1988 and is ongoing.

AMUNDSENISEN, SVALBARD

The Paierlbreen, the Torellbreen and the Recherchebreen have been described as surge type glaciers. Distinct changes of the Paierlbreen surface topography were observed in April 1994. New fields of wide crevasses, shear zones along the contact zone of the glacier and the valley slopes and high undulations of the glacier surface occurred. These features point to the development of the active phase of a new surge.

NIGARDSBREEN, NORWAY

The famous Nigardsbreen Glacier is a 48 km2 outlet from the largest ice cap in Norway, Jostedalsbreen (487 km2). It drains from the highest point of the ice cap (1952 m a.s.l.) down to the Nigardsvatn in the Jostedalen valley. The glacier tongue is presently at about 350 m a.s.l. but has recently started to advance down the valley.

During the “Little Ice Age” the glacier had a larger extent than today, but since the advance around 1750, when it completely destroyed a farm, it has been receding almost continuously. Only small re-advances, forming minor end moraines, occurred in the 19th century.

CHAPTER 9: GENERAL COMMENTS AND PERSPECTIVES FOR THE FUTURE

The observation period documented in the present report reflects continued glacier melting. Mass balance records for the period 1980–1995 from 33 glaciers in North America, Eurasia and Africa even point to losses at an accelerated rate (IAHS(ICSI)/UNEP/UNESCO 1991, 1993b, 1994, 1996).
...
The mean of all 33 considered glaciers, however, is strongly influenced by the great number of Alpine and Scandinavian glaciers.
...
The cumulative mass balances reported for the individual glaciers not only reflect regional climatic variability but also marked differences in the sensitivity of the observed glaciers.
...
An extensive data base on topographic glacier parameters is being built up in regional glacier inventories (IAHS(ICSI)/UNEP/UNESCO 1989). Scaling relationships from continuum dynamics of ice can be used to link the distribution of surface areas to global and regional distributions of other properties such as glacier volumes or characteristic thicknesses, flow velocities or response times (Bahr 1997). Based on this approach, Meier and Bahr (1996) estimated the total number (160,000), area (680,000 km2), volume (180,000 km3) and sea-level equivalent (0.5 m) of glaciers worldwide.

An excerpt from New Zealand glaciers.
Irrelevant data is omitted.

Codes: +X = advancing, -X = retreating , ST = stationary SN = uncertain

NEW ZEALAND

No. - Glaciar Name - Survey Year - 1991 – 1992 - 1993 - 1994 - 1995

455 ABEL, 1989, + X, ST, - ST
456 ADAM, 1987, -X, - X, + X
457 ALMER, 1989, ST, + X, + X
458 ANDY, 1987, ST, - X, + X
459 ASHBURTON, 1989, + X, + X
460 BALFOUR, 1985, + X
461 BARLOW, 1989, - X, - X, + X
462 BLAIR, 1989,- X, + X, + X
463 BONAR, 1987, + X
464 BREWSTER, 1989, - X, + X, - X, ST
465 BURTON, 1989, ST, ST
466 CAMERON, 1988, - X, + X, ST
467 CLASSEN, 1989, - X, ST
468 COLIN CAMPBELL, 1988, + X
469 CROW, 1988, + X
470 DART, 1980, - X, + X, - X
471 DONNE, 1987, - X
472 DOUGLAS (KAR.), 1987, ST, ST
473 DOUGLAS (RAK.), 1989, SN, SN, SN, SN
474 EVANS, 1988, ST, ST
475 FITZGERALD, 1984, - X, + X
476 FOX, 1989, + X, + X, + X, + X, + X
477 FRANZ JOSEF, 1989, + X, + X, + X, + X, + X
478 GLENMARY, 1989, + X, ST
479 GODLEY, 1989, - X
480 GREYAND MAUD, 1989, - X, ST
481 HOOKER, 1985, - X, - X, - X
482 HORACE WALKER, 1987, + X
483 IVORY, 1989, - X, - X, - X, ST
484 JACK , 1989, + X, + X, SN
485 JACKSON, 1989, ST
486 JALF, 1989, SN, - X, SN
487 KAHUTEA, 1989, + X
488 KEA, 1989, SN, SN, SN
489 LA PEROUSE, 1985, ST
490 LAMBERT, 1989, ST, + X, - X
491 LE BLANC, 1985, - X, + X
492 LINDSAY, 1989, SN, SN, SN
493 LYELL, 1989, - X
494 MARCHANT, 1986, ST
495 MARION, 1989, - X, ST, + X
496 MARMADUKE DIXON, 1989, + X, SN
497 MC COY, 1985, + X
498 MUELLER, 1989, - X, - X, - X
499 MURCHISON, 1989, - X, ST
500 PARK PASS 1, 1989, + X, + X
501 POET, 1986, + X
502 RAMSAY, 1983, - X
503 REISCHEK, 1989, - X
504 RETREAT, 1989, SN, SN, SN,
505 RICHARDSON, 1987, + X, + X
506 RIDGE, 1989, ST, SN
507 ROLLESTON, 1989, SN, SN, SN
508 SALE, 1993,+ X
509 SIEGE, 1989, - X, SN, ST, SN
510 SINCLAIR, 1985, + X
511 SNOW WHITE, 1987, - X - X
512 SNOWBALL, 1987, ST, ST, ST
513 SPENCER, 1989, + X, + X, + X
514 STRAUCHON, 1986, - X ST
515 TASMAN, 1989, - X, - X, - X,,- X, - X
516 THERMA, 1987,+ X
517 THURNEYSON, 1989, + X, + X
518 TORNADO, 1986, - X
519 UNNAMED, 1989, SN, SN
520 UNNAMED, 1989, SN, SN, SN, + X
521 UNNAMED, 1989, SN, SN
522 UNNAMED, 1989, + X, SN, SN
523 UNNAMED, 1989, SN, SN, SN, SN
524 UNNAMED, 1989, SN, SN, SN
525 UNNAMED, 1989, + X, + X, + X
526 UNNAMED, 1989, ST, ST, ST
527 UNNAMED, 1989, SN, SN, SN
528 UNNAMED, 1980, ST
529 UNNAMED, 1989, SN, SN, SN
530 VICTORIA, 1989, + X
531 WHITBOURNE, 1988, - X
532 WHITE, 1989, + X, + X
533 WHYMPER, 1980, A - X
534 WIGLEY, 1989, - X, - X
535 WILKINSON, 1989, ST
536 ZORA, 1986, + X

Does the board really wants that I post the entire WGMS database here? Please spare me the boring work, and spare yourselves the boring reading. There are advancing glaciers, there are retreating glaciers, and there are stationary glaciers. This means the phenomenon is regional, NOT GLOBAL

Mentioning individual glaciers, as scientists quoted by Sore Throat do, adds doodle-squat to the “global melting glaciers” claim.

posted 11-23-2003 08:53 AM            

Re: the semantics debate vis a vis the term "global warming" - I'm not going to get into that. I've expressed my opinion of the current situation which I, to repeat, think is best characterized by the descriptor "regional pollution-driven climatic instability."

If you wish only to debate the credibility of the term "global warming" I will have to decline as I think I've already answered your question.

posted 11-23-2003 10:38 AM               

To the Readers of This Forum

When I was invited to this forum (or defied) by David G. Stewart, to “stand up for my ecological convictions”, I was aware he would throw a pack of wolves against me. And I was prepared to receive strong attacks from them. To my surprise, two Chihuahuas started gnawing at my heels. One of those Chihuahuas has being doing so in an autistic, almost catatonic manner, focusing only on a presumed “hypocrisy” and “inconsistency”, while relentlessly trying to keep a sarcastic mood in his posts.

In scientific issues, sarcasm does not work. On the contrary, it reveals a lack of a solid argumentation, and poor factual evidence. His evidence is comprised only by links to news briefs, press releases, journalist’s interpretation of some scientists speaking about individual subjects, and referring to a presumed “consensus” among scientists, trying to show me as the “only one that opposes” this supposed general consensus. “How could all these scientists can be wrong?, said Chihuahua # 1.

Then, Chihuauhua # 1 has stubbornly refused to answer the questions I posed him, in order to check his scientific background – not with question at graduate level, but on science found at high school grade. He failed to do so. He showed he’s scared stiff to answer them because he knows doodle-squat (as Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. used to say) about meteorology and climatology.

Nonetheless, he keeps on presenting himself as a knowledgeable person, an expert on global warming and climate change. Though, I must reckon he is an expert on “copy and paste” techniques, but that does not make him an expert in climatology.

So, if the readers of this board really want to keep this discussion alive and try to find something that looks like the truth, then try to convince Sore Throat to answer just three of the questions I posted. In case he dodges the issue (and he is quite skilled at dodging difficult situations), then this discussion will reach an end and will be buried in infamy because Sore Throat refused to show his knowledge in meteorology and atmospheric physical phenomena.

posted 11-23-2003 10:55 AM            

.....Deborah, I knew you were going to come along with the old "industry-paid-liars" argument.....

You must be psychic. Or is it that you're entrenched in your own preconceived idea of who I am and what I think?

The above-posted comment re: Singer is a point of fact. I'm not pulling "arguments" out of a hat here. I like to know about my sources before I even read their information let alone disseminate it.

I think the problem here is more a matter of incompatible values than anything else. You have your values and I have mine.

So be it.

What is, is, and what will come of that will come. Truth's most valuable ally is Time.

posted 11-23-2003 05:22 PM               

Singer is also a director of The Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy, a group founded by the Unification Church in 1982, and an Adjunct Fellow of "Frontiers of Freedom"

(http://www.ff.org/about/staff.html).

_____________________________________

The Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) was founded in Fairfax, Virginia in 1990 by S. Fred Singer. It presents arguments against the global warming theory, and argues that the media and other institutions have shown bias in reporting on the global warming controversy.

SEPP strongly rejects the claim that a "scientific consensus" exists regarding the global warming hypothesis. In a series of articles, Prof. Singer contends that supporters of the Kyoto Protocol vastly overstate the degree of scientific certainty on climate change. In particular, Singer claims that the United Nations panel on climate change (IPCC) has produced misleading summaries of the work of scientists whose results did not support the IPCC's preordained conclusions.

According to the Harvard University Center for the Environment, "The Science and Environmental Policy Project site is primarily an outlet for the views of S. Fred Singer, Distinguished Research Professor at George Mason University. It provides access to Singer's congressional testimony, articles, and reprints of related newspaper stories."

Grist magazine says that Professor Singer, SEPP's founder, "maintains a steady drumbeat of op-eds in the Washington Times and Wall Street Journal, among other publications, disputing the scientific consensus on issues such as ozone depletion and climate change."
SEPP's board of directors and advisers is, according to Grist, "made up primarily of retired scientists no longer active in the field, and many of whom are also on the board of the closely linked George C. Marshall Institute."

So who are you going to trust on such matters?

SEÑOR Eduardo Ferreyra and his mentor S. Fred Singer, supported by oil companies and the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, or...

F. SHERWOOD ROWLAND, who won the 1995 Noble Prize in Chemistry for incontrovertibly demonstrating that human actions were damaging the Ozone layer.

http://www.nobel.se/chemistry/laureates/1995/press.html

For a further insight on how pseudoscientists and political commentators of the likes of Rush Limbaugh are attempting to sway public opinion on such critical issues, I encourage you to read the following:

TROUBLE IN THE OZONE

http://www.wmich.edu/environmental-studies/Writings/swords1.html

Here's a sample:

Here I owe a debt to Science magazine (the organ of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the largest mainstream science organization in the world). They were apparently just as boggled by all this, and did their own sleuthing around. Ray has read two "authorities" on the subject: Rogelio Maduro and S. Fred Singer. Now we are surely getting somewhere. Who are these folks and what do they know?

Maduro is a popular science writer with a B.S. in geology, and not engaged in any of the relevant areas of research. He is the author of The Hole in the Ozone Scare, published by a magazine 21st Century Science and Technology for which he works. It is an organ of the Lyndon LaRouche political movement. The book is well written and, to some, persuasive. The value lies in the research it is based upon, of course. The leadership of the AAAS have analyzed this for us. AAAS president Sherwood Rowland says that Maduro has done "a good job of collecting all of the bad papers in one place" and has "systematically ignored all the massive research which debunks elements of their theory". Sad.

-------------------------------------------

Exxon Backs Groups That Question Global Warming

The New York Times, May 28, 2003

ExxonMobil has publicly softened its stance toward global warming over the last year, with a pledge of $10 million in annual donations for 10 years to Stanford University for climate research.

At the same time, the company, the world's largest oil and gas concern, has increased donations to Washington-based policy groups that, like Exxon itself, question the human role in global warming and argue that proposed government policies to limit carbon dioxide emissions associated with global warming are too heavy handed.

Exxon now gives more than $1 million a year to such organizations, which include the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Frontiers of Freedom, the George C. Marshall Institute, the American Council for Capital Formation Center for Policy Research and the American Legislative Exchange Council.

The organizations are modest in size but have been outspoken in the global warming debate. Exxon has become the single-largest corporate donor to some of the groups, accounting for more than 10 percent of their annual budgets. While a few of the groups say they also receive some money from other oil companies, it is only a small fraction of what they receive from Exxon Mobil.

"We want to support organizations that are trying to broaden the debate on an issue that is so important to all of us," said Tom Cirigliano, a spokesman for Exxon. "There is this whole issue that no one should question the science of global climate change that is ludicrous. That's the kind of dark-ages thinking that gets you in a lot of trouble." He also noted, "These are not single-agenda groups."

The organizations emphasize that while their views align with Exxon's, the company's money does not influence their policy conclusions. Indeed, the organizations say they have been sought out in part because of their credibility.

"They've determined that we are effective at what we do," said George C. Landrith, president of Frontiers of Freedom, a conservative group that maintains that human activities are not responsible for global warming. He says Exxon essentially takes the attitude, "We like to make it possible to do more of that."

Frontiers of Freedom, which has about a $700,000 annual budget, received $230,000 from Exxon in 2002, up from $40,000 in 2001, according to Exxon documents. But Mr. Landrith said the growth was not as sharp as it appears because the money is actually spread over three years.

The increase corresponds with a rising level of public debate since the United States withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, some of the groups said. After President Bush rejected the protocol, a treaty requiring nations to limit emissions of heat-trapping gases, many corporations shifted their attention to Washington, where the debate has centered on proposals for domestic curbs on the emissions.

"Firefighters' budgets go up when fires go up," said Fred L. Smith, the head of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Myron Ebell, an analyst from the institute, spoke at last year's Exxon shareholders' meeting, where he criticized a renewable energy resolution proposed by a group of shareholders.

Exxon's backing of third-party groups is a marked contrast to its more public role in the Global Climate Coalition, an industry group formed in 1989 to challenge the science around global warming. The group eventually disbanded when oil and auto companies started to withdraw. As companies were left to walk their own path, Exxon shifted money toward independent policy groups.

"Now it's come down to a few of these groups to be the good foot soldiers of the corporate community on climate change," said Kert Davies, a research director for Greenpeace, which has tried to organize an international boycott of Exxon.

Exxon's publicly disclosed documents reveal that donations to many of these organizations increased by more than 50 percent from 2000 to 2002. And money to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group that works with state legislators, has almost tripled, as the policy debate has moved to the state level.

The gifts are minuscule compared with the $100 million, 10-year scientific grant to Stanford, which is establishing a research center that will focus on technologies that could provide energy without adding to greenhouse gases linked by scientists to global warming. Nevertheless, the donations in the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars are significant for groups with budgets ranging from $700,000 to $4 million.

Critics say that Exxon and these groups continue to muddle the debate even as scientific consensus has emerged, and as much of the industry has taken a more conciliatory stance toward the reality of global warming. As Exxon has become isolated from its peers, it has faced increasing pressure from shareholders and environmentalists. BP, Shell and ChevronTexaco have developed strategies that incorporate renewable energy, carbon trading and emissions reductions.

Among the initiatives that Exxon's money has helped is the Center for Science and Public Policy. The two-month-old center is a one-man operation that brings scientists to Capitol Hill on two issues: global warming and the health effects of mercury.

"We don't lobby, we educate," said Bob Ferguson, head of the center, who spent 24 years working as a Republican Congressional staff member. "We try to be nonpolitical and nonpartisan and nonideological."

-------------------------------------------

EXXONMOBIL EMERGES AS MAJOR FUNDER OF "GREENHOUSE SKEPTICS"

ExxonMobil has become a major funder of the most visible "greenhouse skeptics", most of whom who have traditionally been funded by the coal industry -- including S. Fred Singer, Patrick Michaels, Robert Balling and Sherwood Idso.

ExxonMobil is the world's third largest corporation with annual profits of about $17 billion. The company is using some of those profits to confuse the public discussion of global climate change. ExxonMobil is sabotaging the work of more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries by funding the most visible "greenhouse skeptics" -- one of whom, S. Fred Singer, publicly denied receiving oil industry money as recently as February, 2001.

According to 1998, ExxonMobil documents, the company directly funds:

S. Fred Singer's institute, The Science and Environmental Policy Project as well as another foundation that promotes Singer's activities; and,

Craig Idso, Keith E. Idso and Sherwood Idso's institute: The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.

ExxonMobil grants have indirectly funded Patrick Michaels and Robert Balling.

In its own documents, ExxonMobil is quite clear about why it funds the tiny handful of dissenting "greenhouse skeptics": "ExxonMobil provides support to selected organizations that assess public policy alternatives on issues with direct bearing on the company's business operations and interests."

S. Fred Singer:

On Feb 12, 2001, Singer wrote a letter to The Washington Post in which he denied receiving any oil company money in the previous 20 years when he had consulted for the oil industry.

According to ExxonMobil documents, the company gave a 1998 grant of $10,000 to Singer's institute, the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP). It gave another $65,000 to the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, Fairfax, Virginia which promotes Singer's work.

In its web page, "Atlas invites other institutes to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the proximity of SEPP. The organization's founding president, Dr. S. Fred Singer, is a well-known physical scientist who has been an active contributor in the battle against the 'politicization' of science. Singer, along with a handful of other prominent scientists, have dared to challenge claims of environmental apocalypse from global warming Fortunately for those who believe that public policy should be based on sound science, Dr. Singer offers a wealth of information, credibility, and encouragement."

In his letter to The Washington Post, Singer wrote: "My connection to oil during the past decade is as a Wesson Fellow at the Hoover Institution; the Wesson money derives from salad oil."

In 1998, ExxonMobil gave $135,000 to the Hoover Institution -- the same year Singer published an article in the institution's publication, The Hoover Digest.

Singer's falsehood about industry funding in The Washington Post is the latest in a series of fabrications and untruths.

In 1997, Singer told the press that former IPCC Chairman Dr. Bert Bolin has changed his mind about climate change. According to Singer, Bolin had dismissed the connection between atmospheric warming and extreme weather events and was distressed that the Clinton Administration was taking measures to reduce emissions.

Bolin subsequently denied making the statements. Bolin said it was "scientifically accurate" to note that extreme weather effects "are consistent with the predicted effects of climate change.

Referring to Singer's attribution of bogus statements to Bolin, the Swedish physicist dismissed them as "inaccurate and misleading."

Singer followed that misrepresentation with an attack on the integrity of the entire IPCC process in an interview last January in The New American, the magazine of the ultra-conservative John Birch Society.

Singer is also on the staff of the ultra-conservative Frontiers of Freedom institute. According to its mission statement, Frontiers of Freedom "is the antithesis to the Sierra Club and Vice President Al Gore's Earth in the Balance. Frontiers works to advance States' rights, protect property rights, privatize Social Security, defend first amendment civil liberties, and among other efforts to reform the federal tax code, the Endangered Species Act, and the Food and Drug Administration."

...more from
http://www.heatisonline.org/main.cfm

Frontiers of Freedom is funded by ExxonMobil among others, according to the Wall Street Journal.

While Singer loudly touts himself as an accomplished scientist, he has been unable to publish his work in any peer- reviewed scientific journal for at least 15 years, except for one technical comment.

posted 11-23-2003 06:41 PM               

Dr. Haroun Tazieff was a multidisciplianry scientist, whose expertise was on volcanology. He was Minister of Natural Emergencies and the Environment of France. What he said about the 1995 Nobel Prize of Chemistry being awarded to Rowland, Molina and Crutzen was a tremendous shock to the scientific community that congratulated him - overwhelmingly.

posted 11-23-2003 07:08 PM               

Fact: NASA has proved it beyond all reasonable doubt.

Summary

There is overwhelming scientific evidence that man-made chemicals are destroying the ozone layer -- Nobel prizes have already been awarded for the research. Rush Limbaugh argues that humans are safe, because volcanic chlorine has been working on the ozone layer longer than man-made chlorine, and yet we're still here. But this argument is false. Volcanic chlorine is water soluble, and rained harmlessly out of the atmosphere. Human CFCs are insoluble, and can therefore rise to the ozone layer where they can do their damage.

Argument

Do man-made chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) destroy the ozone layer? There are no longer any skeptics left at NASA, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, or the World Meteorological Organization. In fact, the three scientists who first sounded the alarm in the early 80s -- F. Sherwood Rowland, Paul Crutzen and Mario Molina -- received the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work.

In 1991, NASA launched the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) in an attempt to determine once and for all if humans were responsible for causing this serious damage to the atmosphere. The data relayed back to NASA clinched the matter beyond all reasonable doubt. "There is a very clear link between man-made chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and destruction of the ozone layer," says Dr. Aidan Roche, the Lockheed scientist whose team analyzed the satellite data for years. (1)

In one paragraph, the process works this way. The ozone layer is a thin, protective layer of the stratosphere, which rises 12 to 15 miles high. It shields the earth from the sun's ultraviolet rays, which are deadly to most life forms. Unfortunately, ozone can be destroyed by chlorine radicals. The earth naturally produces chlorine radicals, especially from volcanic eruptions, but because they are water soluble they are safely rained out of the atmosphere. However, man-made CFCs are not water soluble. CFCs are free to rise all the way to the top of the stratosphere, where they break down, releasing their chlorine radicals. The reaction is complex, involving many different chemicals, but the result of these reactions is that the CFC is recreated, allowing it to continue wreaking havoc. Other processes are at work to remove CFCs from the ozone layer, so these reactions really can't continue indefinitely, but scientists expect the CFC's already present to remain there for the next century. In fact, recent measurements show that the level of CFCs is already declining, thanks to international treaties banning their production. (2)

The banning of CFCs is a triumph of both science and international diplomacy. In the early 80s, scientists working in the Antarctic noticed that there was a hole in the ozone layer over the South Pole. Preliminary research pointed to CFCs as the culprit. In October 1987, the world's nations signed the Montreal Protocol, pledging to cut CFC production in half over the next ten years. Subsequent scientific evidence suggested the threat was worse than realized, and the Protocol was strengthened twice - once in London in 1990, and again in Copenhagen in 1992. The Copenhagen agreement moved up the complete ban of CFCs to January 1996. Today, they are completely outlawed, although they can still be found on the black market.

And speaking of markets, one might presume that the chemical industry fought the ban tooth and nail. Actually, the industry's response was mixed. When the evidence was still preliminary and debatable, the chemicals companies furiously resisted any notion of a ban. But as the scientific evidence grew stronger, the industry reasonably concluded that it could not be seen defending profits from a product that threatened to destroy all life on the planet. In fact, Dupont proposed a global ban of CFCs before the governments of Europe and the United States did. (3) There was a self-interested motive in this, however; a global ban of CFC's would create a global need for a replacement, and Dupont was the best positioned to develop and market the first one. Even so, many find industry's rapid agreement to the ban heartening, although some watchdog groups, like Ralph Nader's Public Citizen, have chronicled many cases of industrial foot-dragging.

Interestingly, the greatest opposition to the scientific evidence came not from industry, but from the party of industry: the Republicans. During the 1992 presidential campaign, President George Bush contemptuously referred to Al Gore as "ozone man." Vice-president Dan Quayle called Al Gore's environmental bestseller, Earth in the Balance, a "strange manifesto." But perhaps no one has carried the ideological war to the atmospheric scientists quite like Rush Limbaugh. His is probably the most infamous factoid of the ozone debate: the volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo.

In The Way Things Ought to Be, Limbaugh wrote:

Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines spewed forth more than a thousand times the amount of ozone-depleting chemicals in one eruption than all the fluorocarbons manufactured by wicked, diabolical, and insensitive corporations in history. So much so that respected scientists now say that a 4 percent to 6 percent ozone loss could -- could, but may not -- occur over the Northern Hemisphere in the next two or three years... volcanoes have been doing this for 4 billion years. And guess what? We still have a healthy ozone layer! (4)
Of course, anyone familiar with the CFC process described above knows the flaw in this argument -- the chlorine spewed from volcanic eruptions is water soluble, and washed harmlessly out of the atmosphere. No scientist worth his salt would have made such a mistake, and no national news network with even a rudimentary system of scientific review would have allowed this fractured fact to be aired.

But Rush is -- all legal smoke and mirrors aside -- an employee of ABC, and in its efforts to promote him, ABC arranged for Rush to appear on Ted Koppel's Nightline to debate then-senator Al Gore on the environment. Rush scored a clear victory in the debate with the following unfactual surprise: "If you listen to what Senator Gore said, it is man-made products which are causing the ozone depletion, yet Mount Pinatubo has put 570 times the amount of chlorine into the atmosphere in one eruption than all of man-made chlorofluorocarbons in one year." Notice that Rush couldn't even keep his story straight; 1,000 is not 570, and "ever in history" is not one year. Researchers checking up on his confused story found that neither version was correct.

A look into Rush's sources quickly revealed a series of sloppy reporting and fabricated evidence. (5) One of Rush's sources turned out to be a magazine published by the followers of Lyndon LaRouche, the eccentric cult-leader who often runs for president of the United States, and who believes the Queen of England is masterminding a genocidal plot under the guise of environmentalism.

The "570" figure apparently comes from Dixy Lee Ray's book, Trashing the Planet, an anti-environmental diatribe which Rush calls "the most footnoted, documented book I have ever read." (Rush may be impressed by multiple footnotes, but professional scientists find them unremarkable, even routine). At any rate, Dr. Stephen Schneider, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, states that Ray's book "was wrong on nearly everything." (6)

But when it came to using Ray's arguments, Rush misquoted her. Ray did not say it was Mount Pinatubo that poured 570 times the chlorine into the air, but Mount Augustine, a volcano that erupted in Alaska in 1976! Furthermore, a check into Ray's sources revealed that she, too, had misquoted her source. Her source was apparently a 1980 Science magazine article, but that piece talked about an unimaginably powerful eruption that had occurred in California 700,000 years ago. Clearly, Rush didn't have the foggiest clue what mountain he was talking about.

The NASA satellite experiments permanently laid to rest any idea that the chlorine ravaging the ozone layer was volcanic in origin. NASA scientist Mark Schoeberl announced at a press conference: "The detection of stratospheric fluorine gases, which are not natural, eliminates the possibility that chlorine from volcanic eruptions or some other natural source is responsible for the ozone hole." (7)

Return to Overview

Endnotes:

1. Don Bane, "Lockheed Scientist Sees 'Clear Link' Between CFCs And Ozone Destruction," September 23, 1993, Press Release, Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratories.

2. Ibid. See also description in Lester R. Brown et al. (eds.) Vital Signs 1994 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1994), p. 64; also Steven Rendell, Jim Naureckas and Jeff Cohen, The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error, (New York: The New Press, 1995), p. 12.

3. Richard Benedick, Ozone Diplomacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 1991.

4. Rush Limbaugh, The Way Things Ought to Be, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), pp. 155-6.

5. The following section on Mount Pinatubo is based on The Way Things Aren't, pp. 12-13.

6. Quoted in The Way Things Aren't, p. 14-15.

7. Robert Jackson, "Ozone Hole: NASA Puts It Squarely on Us; Satellite Data Cites Synthetic Chlorine," San Jose Mercury News, December 20, 1994, p. 9A.

posted 11-23-2003 08:06 PM            

.....What? Is Dr. Tazieff speaking about Sore and Deb? Our watermelons in the forum? GREEN in the outside, RED in the inside?.....

Oh, Christ - this is too much!

posted 11-23-2003 11:08 PM               

"Oh, Christ - this is too much!"

I find quite disturbing – and extremely revealing - that a person, supposedly concerned about ethics and scientific responsibility, is shocked by being exposed as a watermelon, and not about the public statement by a world renown and respected personality as Dr. Tazieff calling the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry a scandal, and categorizing the ozone theory as a scientific fraud.