posted 03-01-2004 09:07 PM               

My answer, NO, I didn't miss you at all.

I find your blatant bigotry a disgusting example of the lowest form of gutter sniping.

Bad enough the persistent denegration of an ardent environmentalist, Robert Kennedy Jr., calling him a "watermellon, green on the outside, red on the inside".

Now the pathetically desperate Eduardo Ferreyra seeks to minimize the importance of a Pentagon report prepared by Andrew Marshall, deriding him for his age. Ferreyra states, "a report prepared for an aging (82-year-old, advisor in the Dept. of Defense - and still allowed to play with his telephones and Xerox machines, photocopying secretary's derrieres in Xmas)".

Ageism is yet another form of your bigotry Ferreyra, an ugly flailing by someone drowning in their own egotism and ignorance.

The Forbes article states the following:

"A Pentagon legend, Marshall, 82, is known as the Defense Department's "Yoda"—a balding, bespectacled sage whose pronouncements on looming risks have long had an outsized influence on defense policy. Since 1973 he has headed a secretive think tank whose role is to envision future threats to national security. The Department of Defense's push on ballistic-missile defense is known as his brainchild. Three years ago Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld picked him to lead a sweeping review on military "transformation," the shift toward nimble forces and smart weapons."

Apparently Marshall is OK if he's supporting the parasitic military-industrial complex.

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

SEÑOR Eduardo Ferreyra again raises the issue of the state of glaciers throughout the world.

Let's review.

Ferreyra listed Glacier National Park in Montana as an example of an advancing glacier.

The facts:

Figure 1. Grinnell Glacier in Glacier National Park, Montana; photograph by Carl H. Key, USGS, in 1981. The glacier has been retreating rapidly since the early 1900's. The arrows point to the former extent of the glacier in 1850, 1937, and 1968. Mountain glaciers are excellent monitors of climate change; the worldwide shrinkage of mountain glaciers is thought to be caused by a combination of a temperature increase from the Little Ice Age, which ended in the latter half of the 19th century, and increased greenhouse-gas emissions.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs2-00/

Ferreyra posted a reference stating that the Nisqually Glacier in Washington was advancing.

Here's the reality:

http://glaciers.pdx.edu/MRNP/Res00.html

Figure 1 - The lower portion of Nisqually Glacier, July 2001. The white outline shows the current location of the glacier terminus. The red area shows the terminus of the glacier in 1912 (based on a photograph taken by Aashel Curtis). The estimated retreat is 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles).

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

Malaspina Glacier, Alaska

This ASTER image was acquired on June 8, 2001, and covers an area of 55 x 40 km over the southwest part of the Malaspina Glacier and Icy Bay in Alaska. The composite of infrared and visible bands results in the snow and ice appearing light blue, dense vegatation is yellow-orange and green, and less vegetated, gravelly areas are in orange. According to Dr. Dennis Trabant (US Geological Survey, Fairbanks), the Malaspina Glacier is thinning. Its terminal moraine protects it from contact with the open ocean; without the moraine, or if sea level rises sufficiently to reconnect the glacier with the ocean, the glacier would start calving and retreat significantly. ASTER data are being used to help monitor the size and movement of some 15,000 tidal and piedmont glaciers in Alaska. Evidence derived from ASTER and many other satellite and ground-based measurements suggests that only a few dozen Alaskan glaciers are advancing. The overwhelming majority of them are retreating.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/06/010605072007.htm

Source: American Institute Of Physics

New Research Shows Mountain Glaciers Shrinking Worldwide

Boston, MA (May 30, 2001) -- Mountain glaciers around the world are receding, said geophysicists today at the annual spring meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). In a finding he calls "dramatic," Dr. Rick Wessels from the United States Geologic Survey (USGS) presented research that compared new satellite data to historical records and photographs of glaciers on mountains worldwide, showing that the majority of glaciers studied have decreased in size.

Wessels is part of the Global Land Ice Measurement from Space (GLIMS) project at USGS, which is using NASA's Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) to monitor mountain glaciers around the world. ASTER is one of the instruments on the TERRA satellite, which launched in December 1999. ...more

posted 03-01-2004 09:09 PM               

URL=http://www.etsimo.uniovi.es/solar/portug/earthpr1.htm]http://www.etsimo.uniovi.es/solar/portug/earthpr1.htm[/URL]

NASA Researchers Document Shrinking of Greenland's Glaciers

Greenland's southeastern glaciers are rapidly thinning and their lower elevations may be particularly sensitive to potential climate changes, a NASA study suggests.

"The results of this study are important in that they could represent the first indication of an increase in the speed of outlet glaciers," said Bill Krabill, principal investigator at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, VA. An outlet glacier acts as a major ice drainage region for an ice sheet.

"The excess volume of ice transported by these glaciers has had a negligible effect on global sea level thus far, but if it accelerates or becomes more widespread, it would begin to have a detectable impact on sea level," Krabill said.

In the March 5 issue of SCIENCE, researchers report the glacial thinning is too large to have resulted from increased ice- surface melting or decreased snowfall. The researchers believe the thinning, as much as 30 feet over five years in some locations, is the result of increasing discharge speeds of glaciers flowing into the Atlantic Ocean.

Krabill said surface-melt water might be seeping to the bottom of glaciers. Such seepage may be reducing the friction between the ice and the rock below it, enabling the glaciers to slide with less friction across the bedrock and thus allow more ice to slip off into the ocean, according to Krabill.

"The results of this study are significant because they provide the first evidence of widespread thinning of low-elevation parts of one of the great polar ice sheets. The results also suggest that the thinning outlet glaciers must be flowing faster than necessary to remove the annual accumulation of snow within their basins," said Krabill.

"Why they are behaving like this is a mystery," said Krabill, "but it might indicate that the coastal margins of ice sheets are capable of responding quite rapidly to external changes, such as a potential warming of the climate." ...more
*******************************************

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC)

Mountain Glacier Fluctuations:
Changes in terminus location and mass balance
http://nsidc.org/sotc/glacier_balance.html

Over long periods of time, a clear picture of how glaciers respond to climate change may be seen. These photos show the retreat of the South Cascade Glacier in the Washington Cascade Mountains, photographed in 1928 and 2000.

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

DOUBLE TAKE These two photos were taken from a helicopter at exactly the same location on Alaska's North Slope, as part of Sturm's research. The photo on top taken in 1948 shows tundra with virtually no shrubs. The photo on the bottom taken in 2002 shows that the tundra has been invaded by shrubs as air and ground temperatures have increased.

*******************************************
Let's just look at what the World Glacier Monitoring Service actually says about its own data:

http://www.geo.unizh.ch/wgms/

From Glacier Mass Balance Bulletin No. 6 (1998-1999) latest available

"Present and past glacier fluctuations indeed provide important information on ranges of natural variability and rates of change with respect to long-term energy fluxes at the earth's surface. The spectacular loss in length, area and volume of mountain glaciers during the 20th century is a major reflection of the fact that rapid secular change in the energy balance of the earth's surface is taking place on a global scale. The characteristic rate of this change (on average a few decimeters ice depth loss per year or a few W/m2 for the corresponding change of latent heat) is broadly consistent with the estimated radiative forcing and changes in sensible heat as calculated with numerical climate models. The beginning of this rapid secular glacial retreat tendency was probably little affected by human activity. The observed evolution may, however, contain an expanding element of anthropogenic influence: recent shrinking of glaciers now coincides for the first time with a man-induced climate forcing which could be responsible for a large part of the additional energy flux causing the observed melt rate. Glacier fluctuations, reconstructed for historical and Holocene time periods from direct measurements, old paintings, written sources or moraines, indicate that glacier extent in many mountain regions may have varied over past centuries and millennia within a range defined by the extremes of the maximum of the Little Ice Age advance and today's reduced stage, respectively. However,the situation now appears to be evolving at a high and accelerating rate towards,or even beyond, the "warm" limit of natural Holocene variability.

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

posted 03-01-2004 09:11 PM               

Note that he cannot address the realities of the melting of permafrost in Alaska and Sweden.

Or that he casually dismisses the consequences of the distruption of the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic, documented by Robert Gagosian, Director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

Eduardo Ferreyra blows his hot air at the "“Precautionary Principle”, the Mother of All Frauds, that calls for preventive action even in the absence of definitive evidence. "

We'd just love to hear his plan for reversing such global trends if he just happens to be wrong with his evaluation.

How laughable that would be!

I feel quite comfortable casting my lot with the numerous Nobel Laureates and National Medal of Science Recipients who share a common concern about the accelerating pace, and consequences, of anthropogenic induced climate change.

http://www2.ucsusa.org/global_environment/rsi/rsirelease.html

It's a pity that such efforts must also confront those willing to distort facts to promote their own self-centered and greedy intentions.

posted 03-01-2004 10:39 PM               

What the ultimate outcome of these manoeuvrings will be for ordinary people, and for the planet, is the big question mark.

posted 03-02-2004 04:27 PM               

The Pentagon Report - "That Was Not Pentagon's and neither a Report" has driven Throatie out of his mind. Jesus! How mad he is! Such a flunk - and he was left out in the freezing cold while boasting about the "Secret Report". Yeah!

All his pasting of colorfull graphs and flawed papers, cannot wipe out the tremendous blooper made by Science's ("peer-reviewed"!) paper on the Upsala glacier. That gives you a taste of the level of seriousness demonstrated by Science magazine's peer-review process!

posted 03-03-2004 01:11 AM               

It impresses me how you reminded Sore Throat he was abandoning his 'cherished precautionary principle' when he said to me: ' "Until there is definitive proof that ChemTrails are specifically, and solely, directed as a mitigation effort against global climate change, I will not jump on the geoengineering bandwagon. Absent definitive evidence, you're welcome to believe what you wish."

By drawing Sore Throat's attention to the inconsistency between what he was saying to me on the subject of chemtrails/geoengineering and what he was saying to you on the subject of global climatic change, you helped create the political alliance which is currently burying Reynolds and will bury you next.

You also helped by accusing Sore Throat of being in cahoots with Greenpeace, so assisting him to overcome his own intense dislike of that organization.

Reynolds' invasion of Arianna's forum was similarly carried out without elementary prudence or forethought.

posted 03-03-2004 09:58 AM               

Climate change set to poke holes in ozone

Arctic clouds could make ozone depletion three times worse than predicted.

PHILIP BALL

The thinning of the ozone layer over the Arctic could be much worse than we thought, because of a side-effect of global warming.

If the upper reaches of the Arctic atmosphere get colder - a predicted consequence of climate change - then the rate of ozone depletion could be three times greater than currently forecast, according to Markus Rex of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Potsdam, Germany, and his co-workers.

"I was surprised to see these results," says Drew Shindell, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York. "We never suspected the models were this far out of whack," he says.
Rex and his colleagues studied climate conditions in the Arctic over the past ten winters to calculate how ozone destruction depends on the weather. They found a surprisingly strong relationship between ozone loss and the amount of polar stratospheric clouds, they report in Geophysical Research Letters 1.

These clouds form 20 kilometres above the ground in winter-time, and are sometimes called 'mother-of-pearl clouds' because of their shimmering appearance.

But they are not harmless things of beauty: the clouds provide reaction surfaces for chemicals eating away the Earth's protective ozone. Chemical reactions in the clouds convert chlorine from industrially produced compounds, such as the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) found in old refrigerators, into a reactive form that breaks apart ozone molecules.

The destruction of ozone allows more ultraviolet rays from the sun through to the surface of the planet, harming humans and the ecosystem close to the poles.

Colder air in the stratosphere is thought to promote the formation of these clouds and the destruction of ozone. But it has proven difficult to appreciate the scale of the problem. On average the Arctic stratosphere has cooled barely perceptibly over the past few years, but Rex and colleagues say the winter-time conditions are getting more conducive to ozone destruction. The amount of stratospheric cloud has been climbing steadily since at least the late 1960s, they say.

If Rex's findings and models prove correct, then all our predictions about future ozone depletion are under-estimates, says Shindell.

It is not all bad news: Rex points out that even if polar stratospheric clouds continue to increase in size and number, the amount of CFCs should decline as the chemicals have largely been phased out. However, they do hang about in the atmosphere for a long time, so they will continue to cause ozone depletion for several decades yet.

References:

1.Rex, M. et al. Geophys. Res. Lett., 31, L04116, (2004).

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

In his untenable position on the depletion of atmospheric ozone, SEÑOR Eduardo Ferreyra stated that polar stratospheric clouds only occur in the Antarctic.

posted 03-03-2004 11:55 AM               

Insurer warns of global warming catastrophe threat

In GENEVA item "Insurer warns of global warming catastrophe threat," please read in first paragraph ...the costs of natural disasters, aggravated by global warming, threatened... instead of ...the costs of global warming threatened... (corrects to show the threat is from all natural disasters, not global warming alone. Qualifies same in second paragraph).

A corrected version follows.

By Thomas Atkins

GENEVA, March 3 (Reuters) - The world's second-largest reinsurer, Swiss Re, warned on Wednesday that the costs of natural disasters, aggravated by global warming, threatened to spiral out of control, forcing the human race into a catastrophe of its own making.

In a report revealing how climate change is rising on the corporate agenda, Swiss Re said the economic costs of such disasters threatened to double to $150 billion a year in 10 years, hitting insurers with $30-40 billion in claims, or the equivalent of one World Trade Center attack annually.

"There is a danger that human intervention will accelerate and intensify natural climate changes to such a point that it will become impossible to adapt our socio-economic systems in time," Swiss Re said in the report.

"The human race can lead itself into this climatic catastrophe -- or it can avert it."

The report comes as a growing number of policy experts warn that the environment is emerging as the security threat of the 21st century, eclipsing terrorism.

Scientists expect global warming to trigger increasingly frequent and violent storms, heat waves, flooding, tornadoes, and cyclones while other areas slip into cold or drought.

"Sea levels will continue to rise, glaciers retreat and snow cover decline," the insurer wrote.

EXPONENTIAL RISE

Losses to insurers from environmental events have risen exponentially over the past 30 years, and are expected to rise even more rapidly still, said Swiss Re climate expert Pamela Heck.

"Scientists tell us that certain extreme events are going to increase in intensity and frequency in the future," Heck told Reuters by telephone. "Climate change is very much in the mind of the insurance industry."

Over the past century, the average global temperature has increased by 0.6 degrees Centigrade, the largest rise for the northern hemisphere in the past 1,000 years, Swiss Re said.

In the short- and medium-term, simply knowing that the planet is warming will allow society to adapt, for example, through infrastructure to cope with more-frequent floods or by instructing farmers to use drought-resistent cereals.

In other cases, governments need to restrict risk-taking, such as approving housing developments in low-lying areas, and improve catastrophe management capabilities.

In the long term, Swiss Re said, greenhouse gases widely thought to trigger global warming will need to be reduced, the use of fossil fuels cut and new energy technologies developed.

"The role of the insurance industry is through establishing risk adequate tariffs and to give the risk taker the opportunity to implement appropriate measures to reduce the chance of possible losses," Heck said.

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

Doesn't it just amaze you how many "watermellons" there are out there?

First the Pentagon, now the staid Swiss insurers.

posted 03-04-2004 12:44 AM               

Jetting Toward Climate Change

CHICAGO, Illinois, March 3, 2004 (ENS) - Commercial jet aviation has the potential to soon become the number one cause of human caused climate change, according to a professor of industrial and operations engineering at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.

The study by Dr. Katta Murty cautions that major increases in commercial flights and expansions of airports would not only add to greenhouse gas emissions, but could further harm the protective ozone layer that surrounds the Earth.

Current industry projections predict the world's air transportation industry could triple within two decades.

"It is an important problem to analyze at what altitudes additional releases of greenhouse gases will have maximum impact on global warming," according to Murty.

"This study also points out that the much more rapid melting of polar ice near the North Pole compared to that at the South Pole," she said, "may have been caused by the very large fraction of jet air flights in the world occurring over the northern polar region."

Murty says jet aircraft atmospheric damage is unique in that exhaust emissions from such aircraft are deposited not only in the lower atmosphere but also in the cloud forming troposphere and higher, where resulting contrails are formed and other chemicals remain to interact for decades.

According to Dr. David Travis, professor and chair, Department of Geography and Geology, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, research "has demonstrated that jet contrails have caused substantial increases in the high cloud coverage over the most heavily trafficked regions of the United States and Europe."

Travis says these increases in high clouds have led to suppression of the temperature range causing both daytime cooling and nighttime warming in areas where contrails are most abundant.

"During the three days following September 11th - when no commercial aircraft were flying - the skies across the United States were remarkably clear with a much wider range in temperature between day and night, giving an indication of how the U.S. climate used to be prior to the days of aviation," Travis said.

The findings of these researchers - along with the recently publicized study by consultants to the U.S. military warning of the environmental, social and political impacts of climate change - are more evidence the United States needs to rethink its transportation system, says Jack Saporito of the Alliance of Alliance of Residents Concerning O'Hare (AReCO).

"Now, more than ever, there is support and urgency to demand a U.S. moratorium on all airport expansion projects currently in the works," Saporito said. "Furthermore, there is a real need for environmental impact reviews to be taken seriously and results stringently enforced."

posted 03-04-2004 03:34 PM               

2003 Likely Europe's Hottest in 500 Years

By PAUL RECER
The Associated Press
Thursday, March 4, 2004; 2:33 PM

WASHINGTON - Last year's deadly summer in Europe probably was the hottest on the continent in at least five centuries, according to researchers who analyzed ancient temperature records. More than 19,000 people died.

Researchers at the University of Bern, Switzerland, collected and analyzed temperature data from all over Europe, including such climate measures as tree rings from 1500. They found that the climate has been generally warming and last summer was the most torrid of all.

"When you consider Europe as a whole, it was by far the hottest," said Jurg Luterbacher, climatologist and the first author of a study appearing this week in the journal Science.

Luterbacher said the study showed that European winters are also warmer now. The average winter and annual temperatures during the three decades from 1973 to 2002 were the warmest of the half millennium, he said.

Some studies have linked rising average temperatures in North America and elsewhere to global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels, but Luterbacher said his team did not attempt to make such a connection.

"We don't make any analysis of the human influence," he said. "We don't attempt to determine the cause. We only report what we find."

Other climatologists, however, say the new study agrees with models that have predicted a steady rise in global temperature as the result of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels and other sources.

Stephen Schneider, a climate expert at Stanford University and a prominent advocate for human-caused global warming, said the Luterbacher paper is consistent with what climate modelers have been predicting for 20 years.

"The data is starting to line up showing that those projections were correct," Schneider said. "We warned the world that this was likely to happen because we believed the theory, but couldn't actually prove it was happening. Now the data is coming in."

In the study, Luterbacher and his team analyzed the temperature history of Europe starting in 1500 to the present. For the earliest part of the half millennium, the figures are estimates based on proxy measures, such as tree rings and soil cores. But after about 1750, he said, instrumented readings became generally available throughout Europe.

During the 500 years, there were trends both toward cool and toward hot. The second hottest summer in the period was in 1757. That was followed by a cooling trend that continued until early in the 20th century. The summer of 1902, for instance, was the coolest of the entire record.

Starting in 1977, the record shows "an exceptionally strong, unprecedented warming," the researchers report, with average temperatures rising at the rate of about 0.36 degrees per decade.

Then came last summer.

"The summer of 2003 exceeded 1901 to 1995 European summer temperatures by around 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit)," the study said. "Taking into account the uncertainties (in the study method), it appears that the summer of 2003 was very likely warmer than any other summer back to 1500."

Record temperatures were recorded in most of the major cities of Europe last summer, with many readings over 100 degrees. Authorities have attributed thousands of deaths to the excess heat, making the heat wave one of the deadliest weather phenomena in the past century.

In France, the toll was estimated at about 14,802 dead. About 2,000 more than normal died in August in England and Wales. On Aug. 11, Britain's hottest day on record, there were 363 more deaths than average and the temperature reading reached 101.3 in Brogdale in southeastern England.

Altogether in Europe, based on official numbers collected by The Associated Press, there were more than 19,000 excess deaths in the summer months. France was hardest hit, but the average number of summer deaths increased by 4,175 in Italy, 1,300 in Portugal and more than 1,000 in the Netherlands.

The intense heat also wilted crops, caused wildfires and continued a centurylong trend of melting the continent's glaciers.

Luterbacher said some mountain glaciers have shrunk by 50 percent in the past century in Europe, and some ice fields lost 10 percent of their mass last summer alone.

In addition, he said, the long trend of warming temperatures is now melting the high altitude permafrost - the soil that usually remains frozen year-round - and that some buildings, bridges and roadways are now threatened with unstable foundations.

posted 03-04-2004 09:00 PM               

Senators Grapple With Politics of Global Warming

Source: Environment News Service
Byline: J.R. Pegg

WASHINGTON, DC, March 4, 2004 (ENS) - The burning of fossils fuels is changing the climate and this change will have profound impacts on humanity and the Earth's biodiversity, a panel of scientists told the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday. The combined testimony of the panelists demonstrated the clear scientific evidence that supports that message, but whether it is enough to convince the elected officials of the U.S. government to take action is far less certain.

"The question of how and when we deal with the threat of global warming is one of the great tests for our generation of elected officials," said Senator Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat. "The question is do we have the courage to begin to bring about the changes to protect us, our children and grandchildren?"

Wednesday's hearing was part of an ongoing effort by Arizona Republican Senator John McCain to rally more support for the climate stewardship bill he and Lieberman have coauthored.

The legislation would require some sectors of the U.S. economy to enact mandatory reductions of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Of the six most damaging greenhouse gases, CO2 is the most abundant.

The bill was defeated in the Senate last October by a vote of 53 to 44, but supporters of the legislation said the vote was a watershed moment in the U.S. debate over the issue of global warming.

It was the first action on the issue by the Senate in six years.

McCain, who is chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, said he is determined not to abandon the proposal.

"This is an issue of worldwide importance," McCain said. "We will get another vote and see if there is any temperature change in the Senate this spring."

It is the changing temperature of the Earth that has McCain and others worried. The vast majority of climate scientists note that human emissions have already caused temperatures to increase slightly. They predict that if greenhouse gas emissions are left unchecked, surface temperatures on Earth will rise between 1.7 to 4.9 degrees Celsius by 2100.

Higher temperatures caused by the increased levels of greenhouse gases are expected to result in rising sea levels, the melting of the polar ice caps, erratic and severe weather patterns, and a host of other environmental problems that could have far reaching economic and social impacts.

It is politics - not science - that is prohibiting action on global warming, said Senator Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat.

"The failure of some of those in office to acknowledge these impacts is at best myopic, at worst irresponsible," Lautenberg said. "If we ignore 30 years of scientific data, we are putting ourselves in jeopardy."

"We have to do more than study global climate change," Lautenberg said. "It is time for action."

But the Bush administration does not agree and neither do many of its Congressional allies. They have consistently questioned the validity of the science behind global warming and argued against mandatory reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.

Those who make such arguments do so despite "their lying eyes," McCain said.

Global warming skeptics should take a look at the Arctic, said Dr. Robert Corell, a senior fellow at the American Meteorological Society and the chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA).

The ACIA is an international team of 300 scientists, experts, and indigenous residents of the Arctic region who are preparing a comprehensive analysis of the impacts and consequences of climate variability and changes across the region.

"The trends are absolutely clear," Corell said. "The climate is changing in the Arctic rapidly."

In Alaska and western Canada, the average winter temperatures have increased by as much as three to four degrees Celsius over the past 60 years.

During the past 30 years, Arctic sea ice extent has decreased, on average, by about 10 percent, and this change has been 20 percent faster during the past two decades.

Continued melting of sea ice will lead to significant changes in the surface reflectivity, cloudiness, humidity, exchanges of heat and moisture, and ocean circulation, in particular along coastlines and near ice margins.

"Indigenous people have been observing these changes for some time," Corell told the Senate committee.

The cultures, livelihoods and health of the indigenous people of the Arctic are under threat from global warming, Corell said. Warmer climates could bring insects with diseases these people have never known and the species they depend upon, such as the polar bear, are unlikely to survive if global warming continues unabated.

The fate of the Arctic is as a "window into the future" and a preview for what the rest of the world is likely to see over the next generation, Corell said.

Dr. Lee Hannah, a research fellow with Conservation International, told the committee that climate change is the "major new threat to global biodiversity."

"Even a perfect conservation effort cannot save species from extinction in the face of unchecked climate change," Hannah said.

The challenge for policymakers is to figure out how to deal with the realities of global warming, according to Dr. Jerry Mahlman, a climatologist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

The viable options, Mahlman said, are mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, adaptation to the effects of climate change, or doing nothing - business as usual.

It is the third of these choices that "appears to be the unstated national and international policy," Mahlman said.

McCain questioned Mahlman about allegations that the Bush administration pressured him to tone down his message about climate change at past hearings.

"The real pressure was to make sure that I was not testifying something about the science that was embarrassing to the administration," said Mahlman, who added he avoided the concern by testifying as a private citizen.

McCain acknowledged that there is little, if any support for his bill in the U.S. House of Representatives.

"My proposal was widely touted but it is really an incredibly modest proposal," McCain said. "But we need a beginning."

McCain's bill would set a nationwide cap on industrial emissions of C02 and reduce those emissions down to 2000 levels by 2010 through an emissions trading system.

It does not address the C02 emissions from the nation's automobiles, which represent some 20 percent of the U.S. total.

By contrast, the 37 other industrialized nations that have ratified the Kyoto climate protocol are committed to reducing their CO2 emissions an average of 5.2 percent from 1990 levels during the five years from 2008 through 2012.

posted 03-05-2004 06:20 PM               

quote:

---

"I was surprised to see these results," says Drew Shindell, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York. "We never suspected the models were this far out of whack," he says.

---

quote:

---

Rex and his colleagues studied climate conditions in the Arctic over the past ten winters to calculate how ozone destruction depends on the weather. They found a surprisingly strong relationship between ozone loss and the amount of polar stratospheric clouds, they report in Geophysical Research Letters 1.

---

And it is poor Throatie the one who dares to speak about pontifications being shattered by actual facts! What about your evidence for catastrophic global warming advanced by the Pentagon? Or it was not the Pentagon who made the Report? Ha!

And the Upsala glacier that is not MELTING but merely releasing icebergs due to dynamical forces in the preglacial lake at its face!

And what about the number of Patagonian glaciers that are advancing at record pace?

Shattered claims? Throatie, now it's you who sucks! Your Green Paranoia has reached levels never attained before. Get help.

And the Lauterbach et al. paper mentioned, it is an old paper (April 2002) resurrected to put pressure on governments to ratify the Kyoto Corpse. This paper is contra productive for the IPCC claims: it has cut the IPCC's claim in half! From the 20th Century being the “warmest in a millennium” to being the warmest in little less than 500 years. It looks now that the IPCC and Mann et al's. Hockey Stick were lying!!!! And you all swallowed the lie! But you are free to believe anything you want, of course. That only reveal the amount of gullibility and the size of your brain.

BTW, yesterday the big lake facing the city of Bienne in Switzerland (or Biel, in German), northwest of Bern, froze completely for the first time in the 21st century. It froze twice in the HOT 20th Century – in 1928 and in 1961.

Of course, we must blame warming for the freezing. Jesus! How stupid can some people be!

posted 03-05-2004 08:39 PM               

Ferreyra states:

"And the Upsala glacier that is not MELTING but merely releasing icebergs due to dynamical forces in the preglacial lake at its face!

And what about the number of Patagonian glaciers that are advancing at record pace?"

Here's the reality:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16441

For the crew onboard the International Space Station daylight views of the Earth’s Southern Hemisphere offer fewer opportunities to observe and document land features with onboard cameras. However, South America’s Patagonian Ice Fields and glaciers in the far southern Andes mountains offer beautiful, dynamic features with frequent passes whenever weather conditions permit. On the afternoon of January 3, 2004, the crew took this view of the Upsala Glacier in Argentina through a 400mm lens. This is the third largest glacier of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field with an estimated area of over 800 square kilometers. This long, north-south oriented river of ice terminates in the northern arm of Lake Argentino.

A worldwide retreat of glaciers was observed during the twentieth century and most of the Patagonia’s glaciers, including Upsala were no exception. From the late 1960’s to the mid 1990’s the retreat of some parts was in excess of 4 kilometers. The glacier’s retreat appears to be continuing during the Space Station era with visible changes along the terminus noted here when compared with another taken in December 2000. The crew continues to monitor most of the principal glaciers of Patagonia as science targets for Crew Earth Observations.

For more information on the observed history of Patagonia’s glaciers please see: Historic Fluctuations of Outlet Glaciers from the Patagonian Ice Fields.

Figure 53.--"Front margins of Glaciar Upsala. The front positions of 1968 (November) and 1981 (February) were determined by vertical aerial photographs and that of 1986 (January) by Landsat Thematic Mapper (Aniya and Skvarca, 1992). The 1990 (November) position is based on observation from the east bank and the proglacial lake [Brazo Upsala], which has been modified from the front position shown by Aniya and Skvarca (1992). The 1993 (November), 1994 (December), and 1995 (December) positions of the front and the east margin were measured by conventional angle surveys from the control point (cp) on the east bank to prominent points at the terminus, as well as by Global Positioning System (Trimble Pathfinder Basic receivers) surveys at some points on the ice-rock boundary. R indicates a bare-rock ridge [extent shown by dark grey] seen along the east glacier margin in 1993, which was almost covered with ice in 1990; ch indicates a lateral water channel; and i indicates an island [extent shown by light grey] as seen in 1986 at the glacier front." Taken from Naruse and others, 1997, fig. 2, p. 39.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/prof/p1386i/chile-arg/wet/historic.html

It makes one wonder what is actually motivating Eduardo Ferreyra to make such a public fool of himself.

Can the "rewards" really be worth it?

But sure, I'll will go ahead and ask that question Ferreyra

"what about the number of Patagonian glaciers that are advancing at record pace?"

Just how many do you claim that are "advancing" as compared to how many are in retreat?

Let's see your CHERRY PICKING at work again.

You raised the issue.

I call your bluff.

Lay 'em on the table.

posted 03-06-2004 01:06 AM               

My only justification for this has been my view that the focus of chemtrail activists efforts should move away from arguing with chemtrail debunkers to engagement with the mainstream environmental movement, which many of us have tended to look down on in the past because of their avoidance of the chemtrail issue.

I am not in a position to help Sore Throat to any extent in the scientific debates he is now involved in. But all I can say is that I will do my very best to help bring about the kind of real-world linking up that can give some substance to the new approach we have started to adopt.

posted 03-06-2004 04:25 PM               

quote:

---

It makes one wonder what is actually motivating Eduardo Ferreyra to make such a public fool of himself.
Can the "rewards" really be worth it?
But sure, I'll will go ahead and ask that question Ferreyra
"what about the number of Patagonian glaciers that are advancing at record pace?"
Just how many do you claim that are "advancing" as compared to how many are in retreat?
Let's see your CHERRY PICKING at work again.
You raised the issue.
I call your bluff.
Lay 'em on the table.

---

It is not about just how many are retreating or advancing, but the size of the glaciers involved. As proved beyond any doubt, the Pio XI glacier in the Chilean Patagonia – the BIGGEST glacier in South America, grows at a rate that amazes glaciologists. If you dare, Throatie, make a search in google about the Pio XI glacier and return here with your results. Would you?

But I will save you the work. You have provided the link you need about the Pio XI glacier. It is at:
http://pubs.usgs.gov/prof/p1386i/chile-arg/wet/historic.html

At the bottom of the page is the Pio XI glacier history, (another name for the Glaciar Brüggen) where you will find the map for the advance of the Pio XI glacer, that looks like this:

and it ends with the opinion of the glaciolgist:

We made a 10 hour horseback ride to an Argentinean Army refuge at 4.500 meters altitude, spend the night there, and returned next morning, taking pictures along the way. We saw what glaciologists term “melting glaciers” in the Andes, and we, regular people would call “snow patches”. Here you can see some pictures of the trip, and the size of those “numerous melting glaciers”.

Our small expedition to the Andes. The one with the yellow jacket at the left is our geologist.

That's me riding a horse at 5.200 meters above sea level. The landscape is breathtaking.

These are examples of the “melting glaciers”. Snow patches that have become ice after an extremely cool couple of summers, and heavy snowing winters. “Scientists” call them glaciers – they are so small that they don't even have a name - just a number in a satellite database). But the number of "melting glaciers is big". It makes me laugh!

And all these “melting” glaciers are supposed to be sending their water to the seas – increasing the sea levels! Make a trip to the field and see it for yourself – and you will never again believe in all that hot air expelled by “warming scientists”.

Then, there is the Perito Moreno glacier, a huge glacier declared Mankind's Patrimony by the United Nations – although it is not “mankind's” but Argentina`s patrimony – that is also advancing and “calving” (flaking off icebergs) every four-five years, a spectacular scene that attracts thousands of tourists from all over the world around October.

But when you read the studies made on each of the retreating or advancing glaciers, one thing stands out clear: they don't know why they are retreating or advancing, and scientists can only guess which are the causes for their behavior. In some well established cases, the causes have been found – AS IN THE UPSALA GLACIER – that the retreat is provoked by the dynamical conditions found in the preglacial lake (at the glacier front), namely a huge 250 m mound in the bottom of the lake that has been found to the crucial factor for the Upsala retreat.

No warming, Throatie! NO WARMING AT ALL!

So you can post two or three website long press releases about glacier melting, but you will never post a scientific study showing the retreat of Patagonian glaciers is caused by “global warming”. What's worse, temperatures in the region have not increased in a way that could allow you to say the “melting” – you have been using the term MELTING for a retreat caused by other forces NOT RELATED TO TEMPERATURE - and this is clearly shown in temperature records in the region. Punta Arenas, in Tierra del Fuego, is about 350 kilometers away to the south, and the trend in temperature there is a COOLING one: -0.6º C since the year 1888!.

So, how can cooling temperatures can MELT glaciers? Please, Throatie, provide you readers and your new cohort, halva, with the scientific explanation for this weird observed and recorded fact.

And halva, you are right: you are in no position to help poor Throatie in anything. All your posts here and elsewhere have been utter nonsense. Your level of dignity is at its lowest. After years of being mistreated deprecated and despised by Sore Throat, now you come as a puppy licking his master ankles. It is just one web page away that your master told you:

Sore Throat's opinion. Then you shouldn't worry, halva. Just take it as where it comes from.

BTW, I have seen the hard beat Jay Reynolds have been giving you, Throatie, and others at Arianna Huffington's forum. He, like me in this forum, is battling in enemy ground, where there have lots of biased participants cheering for the guy who is trying to score the goal.

I challenge you and Sore Throat to participate in a really scientific forum as Sciforums.com, in a thread called "More Scientific Suport for Human Induced Global Warming" (http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?p=527219#post527219), and in another thread "Is Global Warming an Environmental Concern?" at http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?p=515989#post515989 , in the subject of Global Warming, ozone depletion, or your imaginary Chemtrails.

In the thread of “More Support...”, the guy who started it (David Mayes, from Australia) was banned from sciforums for reasons that will become clear once you read his final posts on http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?p=515989#post515989 (and other threads).

posted 03-06-2004 08:00 PM               

Nothing new with that though.

Sure enough, exactly as predicted, he cherry picked the EXCEPTION of the Bruggen Glacier from the reference I conveniently provided him.

Here's the accompanying data that he withheld. So much for his objectivity and integrity:
http://pubs.usgs.gov/prof/p1386i/chile-arg/wet/historic.html

US Geological Survey

Historic Fluctuations of Outlet Glaciers from the Patagonian Ice Fields

Table 11.-- Mean variation of the glaciers of the Northern Patagonian Ice Field

[Given in ha a-1=10-2 km2 a-1. Based on data from Aniya and Wakao (1997). Those marked with an asterisk (*) are not outlet glaciers of the ice field]

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

Glacier name
1945 to 1975 (top value)
1975 to 1996 (bottom value)

North side (from east to west)

Exploradores* (San Valentín east)
-0.53
-3.10

Grosse* (Circo)
-1.30
-3.00

Reichert* northeast arm
southwest arm
-2.03
-1.20
-8.43
-17.19

West side (from north to south)

Gualas north
south
-.43
-.57
-3.00
-2.86

San Rafael
-11.87
-40.19

San Quintín
-25.00
-23.57

Benito
-2.20
-4.43

HPN-1
-5.83
-6.76

HPN-2
-4.70
-8.22

HPN-3
-.73
-7.81

South side (from west to east)

Steffen
-8.07
-14.67

Piscis*
-1.63
-.10

Pared Sur*
-4.73
-1.29

Pared Norte
-3.23
-1.52

East side (from south to north)

de la Colonia
-3.23
-4.95

Cachet*
-8.93
-6.48

Nef
-4.87
-13.24

Soler
-1.27
-3.57

León
-.07
-2.44

Fiero
-.50
-1.33

Total of the NPIF
-92.9
-174.2

I'm posting data. Where's Ferreyra?

The best he can do is slander Greenpeace, without acknowledging that the information I posted is from NASA.

Why not take them on as well Ferreyra?

Instead what we see is a usual cherry picked EXCEPTION to the norm.

By the way here's the Southern Patagonia Ice Field:

Glacier name
Area in 1945
Variation from 1944-45 to 1985-86


(square kilometers)
Square kilometers
Percent

Brüggen
1,205
+59.9
+4.97

Moreno
254
+4.1
+1.61

Penguín
525
+2.5
+.48

Viedma
903
-.3
-.03

Upsala
869
-11.9
-1.37

Ameghino
80
-4.3
-5.38

O'Higgins
870
-49.6
-5.70

Jorge Montt
494
-29.6
-5.99

Greve
471
-33.3
-7.07

Lucía
218
-18.4
-8.43

Amalia
190
-33.4
-17.54

Total of the SPIF
13,500
-500
-3.70

"We made a 10 hour horseback ride to an Argentinean Army refuge at 4.500 meters altitude, spend the night there, and returned next morning, taking pictures along the way. We saw what glaciologists term “melting glaciers” in the Andes, and we, regular people would call “snow patches”. Here you can see some pictures of the trip, and the size of those “numerous melting glaciers”.

Are we really expected to believe that all of the receeding glaciers mentioned, with the already noted EXCEPTION of the Brüggen and Moreno glacier are "snow patches".

Just a further example of Ferreyra's unseemly obfuscation.

But then, that's all he has to work with.
That and his travel log pictures.

I suppose he'd call these "snow patches" as well:

In 1978, the Qori Kalis Glacier looked like this, flowing out from the Quelccaya Ice Cap in the Peruvian Andes Mountains.

http://www.acs.ohio-state.edu/units/research/archive/andespics.htm

In 2000, the view of Qori Kalis has changed dramatically with a massive 10-acre lake forming at the ice margin.

posted 03-06-2004 08:37 PM            

It’s real interesting that this thread has come to my attention. Recently I was doing some research on Yellowstone and got involved in reading on ice age cycle theories. Of course I’m also reading all the global warming information written in mainstream. Two days ago I started reading (didn’t finish yet) a most captivating article written by Zbigniew Jaworowski, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc. He believes that solar cycles and not CO2 has a direct effect on our climate. Although I find his work fascinating, I can’t imagine that global deforestation and the burning of fossils fuels is NOT having adverse effects on our planet’s climate. Could be a combination of both!?

If any of my links have previously been presented, I humbly apologize!
Here is the Jaworowski article from 21st Century Science & Technology magazine:
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202004/Winter2003-4/global_warming.pdf

Another ice cycle theorist, Robert Felix - author of Not by Fire but by Ice, was on Coast to Coast last night (3/5/04). I meant to listen in but missed it! Guess I’ll have to hit the archives. Felix’s site is full of so much info, I’m still not through it all - whew! http://www.iceagenow.com/

Here are two REAL QUICK but thought provoking articles that eventually led me to Jaworowski and Felix:
http://www.hevanet.com/kort/DIGRES35.HTM

http://www.hevanet.com/kort/ICE1.HTM

posted 03-06-2004 08:59 PM               

Interesting feature story on the ABC Evening News tonight...

The Melting of the Alps in Europe.

Not just surface snow, but also the underlying permafrost.

Increasing numbers of avalanches.

Concern that over half the ski resorts will soon be unable to operate.

Was this "Greenpeace"? Nope.

ABC News.

Go get 'em Ferreyra

But before you do, perhaps you should educate yourself a bit:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1060459.htm

Glacier melt indicates global warming changes

A team of international scientists has returned to Australia from a three-month expedition to Antarctic with some alarming findings on climate change.

The scientists discovered a key glacier at in the middle of the Southern Ocean is melting much faster than expected.

The 28 scientists and support staff have arrived back in Australia after 10 weeks on remote Heard Island.

On the north-east coast of the island, glaciologists were disturbed to find Brown Glacier is melting at a faster rate than before.

In the 50 years to 2000, the glacier consistently lost half-a-metre of ice each year.

Australian Antarctic Division Glaciologist Dr Doug Thost says in the years since then it has been melting at almost four times that rate.

"The surface has been lowering just on average about two, just over two metres every year," Dr Thost said.

"It's a four-fold increase in that lowering rate."

Dr Thost says it is an early warning sign of global warming changes that scientists can expect further south.

http://www.softcom.net/webnews/wed/cd/Qeurope-weather-alps.RhSD_Da7.html

Europe's Alps crumbling, glaciers melting in heatwave

GENEVA, Aug 7 (AFP) - Towering above the heart of Europe, the Alps are crumbling and the glaciers are melting under the assault of the record summer heatwave in Switzerland.

Like the rest of Europe, Switzerland has been smothered in heat with temperatures well above 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) for the past two months.

But the heatwave carried by winds from Africa has more devastating consequences in the mountains, shifting the freezing point to a much higher altitude and melting the ice that normally binds rockfaces together at the height of the climbing season.

On Thursday, the zero degree mark in the Alps stood at an altitude of 4,200 metres (13,860 feet), well above the more usual 3,000 or so metres (9,900 feet) in summer.

The sweltering temperatures have also highlighted the role of the Alps, like many mountain ranges with glaciers, as a barometer to assess the extent of climate change and the impact of global warming, according to experts.

"It's a really exceptional situation," Martin Funk, a glaciologist at Zurich's Federal Institute of Technology said.

Three weeks ago, 90 climbers were evacuated by helicopter from one of Switzerland's prized landmarks, the 4,478 metre high (14,777 feet) Matterhorn, following a landslide at 3,400 metres.

Wisps of steam could be seen emerging from the mountain under the beating sun and the Matterhorn was declared off-limits for several days while work was carried out to secure rockfaces.

A total of 55 people have been killed in mountain accidents in Switzerland so far this year, many because of rockfalls, compared to 27 or 28 for the same period in previous years, according to the Swiss ATS news agency.

But mountain rescue services believe that might be down to the fact that the hot weather has brought more people into the Alps and lulled them into a false sense of security.

Climatologist Martin Beniston, who works for the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warned last winter that one sign of accelerating climate change would be the melting of the permanent icecap on the Alps, permafrost.

While some degree of melting icecaps and glaciers during the summer months is normal, the swathes of flowing white ice which cover some high valleys are receding at a faster rate than usual.

"Most Alpine glaciers are in the phase of strong retreat at the moment and they have been for the last ten or 15 years," Beniston said, adding that they had been pushed back more than any time in the last 500 years.

Funk told the Swiss news agency ATS that the heatwave could bring about more unpredictable results, such as hidden pockets of water inside glaciers which could suddenly burst, causing water to crash down into valleys or triggering landslides.

Earlier this week, newly-formed lakes at the foot of a glacier in the south of the country, the Grubengletscher, were emptied as a precaution, while authorities were keeping a close watch on a growing lake on the Triftsgletscher in central Switzerland.

Climate experts monitoring the Alps warned that this summer's extremes may be the norm for the later half of this century.

Beniston and fellow scientists at the University of Fribourg forecast a 400 to 500 kilometre northwards shift in Europe's climate patterns, giving Switzerland a Mediterranean climate on a par with Tuscany.

"It's highly likely if you believe the IPCC projections of an acceleration of greenhouse gases (pollutants) in the future, and temperatures following," Beniston said.

"Vegetation is not going to follow quite as quickly. So it's going to be a rather unpleasant situation like today because the environment we live in is not geared to such drought and high temperatures," Beniston said.

Geraniums gracing Swiss chalets can always be swapped for exotic flowers, but for farmers used to milking cows and growing greens the consequences could be far reaching, according to models used by the Swiss environment ministry.

Cows are already suffering because of dried meadows, causing a milk shortage this summer, the Swiss milk producers' association said recently.

Up in the mountains, climate change will also hit the livelihoods of low to medium altitude winter resorts in 50 to 90 years time. If global warming accelerates there will simply not be enough snow to ski on, Swiss climatologists predict.

posted 03-06-2004 09:10 PM               

Apparently the editors at journals such as Nature and Science are too "politcally corrupted" to accept his manuscripts.

http://www.thewe.cc/contents/more/archive/october2003/fastest_area_of_glacial_retreat .htm

South American glaciers' big melt

The Patagonia glaciers of Chile and Argentina are melting so fast they are making a significant contribution to sea-level rise, say scientists.

They report ice was lost at a rate sufficient to push up ocean waters by 0.04 millimetres per year during the period from 1975 through to 2000.

This is equal, the researchers say, to 9% of the total annual global sea-level rise from all mountain glaciers.

The American research team reports its findings in the journal Science.

Rising temperatures

The team combined data from a space shuttle mission in 2000 and survey data gathered on the ground to study the 63 largest Patagonia ice fields.

(Note...these are hardly the "snow fields" that Eduardo Ferreyra attempts to obfuscate with above)

They compared ice loss rates between 1968 and 1975, and from 1975 to 2000. As well as the general increase in melting, the team also found accelerated ice-mass loss between 1995 and 2000.

This period saw melting sufficient to push up sea-levels by 0.1 millimetres per year.

In comparison, the team says, Alaska's glaciers, which cover an area five times larger, account for about 30% of the total annual global sea-level rise from mountain glaciers.

The researchers, led by Eric Rignot, from the US space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, believe climate change has led to the region experiencing a rise in air temperatures and decreased precipitation.

Going backwards

Still, those factors alone are not sufficient to explain the rapid thinning.

The rest of the story appears to lie primarily in the unique dynamic response of the region's glaciers to climate change, the researchers believe.

"The Patagonia ice fields are dominated by so-called 'calving' glaciers," Rignot said.

"Such glaciers spawn icebergs into the ocean or lakes and have different dynamics from glaciers that end on land and melt at their front ends.

"Calving glaciers are more sensitive to climate change once pushed out of equilibrium, and make this region the fastest area of glacial retreat on Earth," he said.

posted 03-06-2004 11:56 PM               

Edufer, I brought you to CTC so that this forum could have the experience of a different kind of debunker, not a chemtrails debunker but a climate change debunker, because I sensed that the climate change issue is the route by which an effective challenge to contrails/chemtrails/geoengineering may become possible.

So far developments have confirmed this premonition of mine.

But now, the lesson having been learned, CTC is still lumbered with you, and we have not got rid of Reynolds, the model for the older-style debunker, because we are not the moderators at Arianna's forum.

If Mech kicks you out of CTC and Arianna kicks Reynolds out of her forum, this for me will be evidence that America is capable of self-emancipation and doesn't need to be liberated from without by foreigners,
as Nazi Germany was.

But until then, we have to keep soldiering on.

posted 03-07-2004 10:11 PM               

quote:

---

Edufer, I brought you to CTC so that this forum

---

posted 03-07-2004 10:12 PM               

Scientist 'gagged' by No 10 after warning of global warming threat

By Steve Connor and Andrew Grice

Downing Street tried to muzzle the Government's top scientific adviser after he warned that global warming was a more serious threat than international terrorism.

Ivan Rogers, Mr Blair's principal private secretary, told Sir David King, the Prime Minister's chief scientist, to limit his contact with the media after he made outspoken comments about President George Bush's policy on climate change.

In January, Sir David wrote a scathing article in the American journal Science attacking Washington for failing to take climate change seriously. "In my view, climate change is the most severe problem we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism," he wrote.

Support for Sir David's view came yesterday from Hans Blix, the former United Nations chief weapons inspector, who said the environment was at least as important a threat as global terrorism. He told BBC1's Breakfast with Frost: "I think we still overestimate the danger of terror. There are other things that are of equal, if not greater, magnitude, like the environmental global risks."

Since Sir David's article in Science was published, No 10 has tried to limit the damage to Anglo-American relations by reining in the Prime Minister's chief scientist.

In a leaked memo, Mr Rogers ordered Sir David - a Cambridge University chemist who offers independent advice to ministers - to decline any interview requests from British and American newspapers and BBC Radio 4's Today .

"To accept such bids runs the risk of turning the debate into a sterile argument about whether or not climate change is a greater risk," Mr Rogers said in the memo, which was sent to Sir David's office in February. "This sort of discussion does not help us achieve our wider policy aims ahead of our G8 presidency [next year]." The move will be seized on by critics of Mr Blair's stance over the Iraq war as further evidence that he is too subservient to the Bush administration. It will also be seen as an attempt to bolster the Prime Minister's case for pre-emptive strikes to combat the threat of international terrorism, which he outlined in a speech on Friday.

Sir David, who is highly regarded by Mr Blair, has been primed with a list of 136 mock questions that the media could ask if they were able to get access to him, and the suggested answers he should be prepared to give. One question asks: "How do the number of deaths caused by climate change and terrorism compare?" The stated answer that Sir David is expected to give says: "The value of any comparison would be highly questionable - we are talking about threats that are intrinsically different."

If Sir David were to find himself pushed to decide whether terrorism or climate change was the greater threat, he was supposed to answer: "Both are serious and immediate problems for the world today." But this was not what Sir David said on the Today programme on 9 January when the Science article was published.

Asked to explain how he had come to the conclusion that global warming was more serious than terrorism, Sir David replied that his equation was "based on the number of fatalities that have already occurred" - implying that global warming has already killed more people than terrorism.

The leaked memo came to light after a computer disk was discovered by an American freelance journalist, Mike Martin, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Seattle, where Sir David gave a lecture.

"The disk was lying on the top of a computer in the press room and I popped it into the machine to see what was on it," said Mr Martin, whose own article is published on the ScienceNow website, an online service operated by Science.

Mr Rogers' memo, written a few days before the Seattle conference, was aimed at limiting his exposure to questions from US and British media. While in Seattle, Sir David sat on a panel of scientists at one carefully stage-managed press conference, but his press office said he was too busy to give interviews afterwards to journalists.

Lucy Brunt-Jenner, Sir David's press officer, said she could not comment on internal government documents but said it would be wrong to suggest that Sir David was in any way muzzled. "Sir David had a press conference and he was available to the media at three times," Ms Brunt-Jenner said.

posted 03-07-2004 11:50 PM               

He has also other articles on Nuclear energy (a report on what really happened at Chernobyl, the Hormesis effect, the truth about leaded fuels and lead in the environment, etc). His articles are translated into Spanish, so it wouldn’t be of much help. But if solar cycles and motions are interesting for you, our website has plenty of material (in English) – scientific papers by astrophysicist Dr. Theodor Landscheidt (a good friend of mine) that has predicted successfully the occurrence of the last El Niño with 3 years anticipation. Dr. Jaworowski cites Dr. Landscheith in the references of his article. You can find his papers in our index of “climate change” subjects: http://mitosyfraudes.8k.com/Warming.html