Lake Water Levels Down

[DeepFrz]

Xort, do you have a reference to the closing of the ozone hole?

Deep

[chad.lawie]

Originally Posted by xort

The science said that the global currents (conveyor belts) would come to a sudden halt because of global warming and cause a sudden cooling. This was a highly regarded theory until this year when it was proven wrong. Ooops, never mind. Forget we ever mentioned that one. Kind of silly actually but don't stop believing all our other stuff.

The sky is falling, the sky is falling.

Xort,
I agree with you, science can be a flimsy thing. But you depend upon scientific theories every day. airplanes, cars, computers. Gravity is a theory.
just because one turns out wrong doesnt mean they are all wrong.
some theories are more credible than others.

Heat abosrbing gasses in the atmosphere is not a theory. it is measured.

the theory of global warming is that if you increase heat absorbing gasses then the temperature will rise.

well the gasses have increased. but maybe the atmostphere is better at dealing with those gasses than scientists think. who knows.

In the mean time I would prefer to stop emiting CFCs and other gasses we think are harmful to the atmostphere. but thats just my theory.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by xort

... The 'conveyor belt' theory was just posited in the 1990's ... This was a highly regarded theory until this year when it was proven wrong. Ooops, never mind ... The sky is falling, the sky is falling.

I suspect your reasoning may be wrong; but I'm certain your argument is (wrong).
You cannot argue an alternate proposition with mere declaration.
Respectfully,

[sluissa]

I don't know either way... personally I'm more of a pessamist and I will just assume we're all gonna die. I mean, we will, eventually of old age if nothing else. (I'm also assuming that nobody will invent a way to live forever in the lifetime of anyone currently alive, and even if they did, there would be no way to sustain a population full of people still reproducing but who never die.)

In any case, nature has somethings that go on within it normally anyway, for a long time people lived on those things. Fire mostly. I've got no problem with fire, or fossil fuels, they were all in the system at one point, it shouldn't hurt to put them all back in again. The problem I see is when we start introducing chemicals and things which don't occur in nature. There is no way to see how those things will effect the planet 50 or 100 years from now.

As for scientists, don't listen to any of them. Do the research yourself if you want, but people can pay scientists to say whatever they want them to say. I've seen it happen here locally and I have no doubt it happens elsewhere too and for this global warming thing too. Both sides probably are paying scientists to spout technobabble for them.

Now granted, if forced to make a choice... I'd have to go for the side that says global warming is happening. If you ask me why, I wouldn't quote you any statistics. I would just say, What do the treehuggers have to gain from this? Maybe the occasional bit of grant money, but definately not as much as the big pollution spewing corporations do.

[GordMay]

Scientific assessments have shown that human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels, are changing the natural composition of the atmosphere through the increase of gases such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane. Comparison of past CO2 concentrations, retrieved from air bubbles in glacial ice cores, with current measurements of the chemical composition of the atmosphere within the context of WMO's Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW), indicates that the present atmospheric concentration of CO2 was never exceeded over at least the past 420,000 years. Additionally, the measurements show that more than 50% of this increase has occurred since 1950. The Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) released the Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage in September 2005*. The IPCC's comprehensive Fourth Assessment Report on Climate Change (published every six years) is due in 2007.

*IPCC Special Report on Carbon dioxide Capture and Storage
IPCC Special Report on Carbon dioxide Capture and Storage

More (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - IPCC):
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

WMO Statement on the Status of Global Climate in 2006
www.wmo.ch/web/Press/PR_768_English.doc
http://www.eird.org/eng/globalclimate2006.pdf

“Water, a shared responsibility” ~ The 2nd United Nations World Water Development Report: '
WWAP | The 2nd UN World Water Development Report

[shellback]

Amazing how a simple notation regarding Lake Michigan water levels can fuel a conversation about global warming, but hey , nothing wrong with that I suppose. I'm more interested in knowing my boat won't hit run aground due to the datum and charts I have for the Bay of Green Bay and Lake Michigan will be off due to all those aforementioned variables due to solar, climate, earth and man-made contributions.

In simple thinking, we're but a blink of an eye when it comes to Mother Nature and Earth existence. No matter what happens - a new ice age or global warming, shifting of the poles or ice melt, it's a natural part of our Earth's existence.

thanks to all those posting. Love this plant while we're here! We don't know when our lease is up!

There are plenty of skeptics regarding global warming out there. Here are a few of them; David Deming, University of Oklahoma, Richard Lindzen, MIT meteorology professor and member of the National Academy of Sciences, William M. Gray, professor of atmospheric science and meteorologist, Colorado State University,Tim Patterson, paleoclimatologist and Professor of Geology at Carleton University in Canada. Professor Patterson has this to say: "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years. On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"
Professor Lindzen of MIT has publicly lamented the intimidation used to silence scientists by "global warming alarmists." http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220
Here is an article by Petr Chylek, Professor of Physics and Atmospheric Science at Dalhousie University in Halifax in which he states, "The fact that the temperature started to go up around 1890, when man-made production of CO2 was neglidgible, indicates that forces other than increasing CO2 were responsible for the heating..." And he concludes, "...it is highly probable that global average temperature will go up and down in the coming years, decades, and centuries regardless of what we do." http://www.heartland.org/pdf/2329bo.pdf

I was wrong about the ozone hole over the antartic. It has not gone away but has shrunk over the last 5 years.
Most parts of antartica are cooling but only the small area that is warming gets highlighted.

[shellback]

This year, yes we're expecting another year of Great Lakes water level to be down. Snowfall, and weather have not given much opportunity so far for any rise in Lake Michigan.

As for the very intense discussion unfolding about global warming, I fully understand all sides of the spectrum. Now, are human beings contributing to it? Maybe so. However; in the great picture of things, human presence on this earth is merely a blink of a eye when it comes to how long this plant began. Of the millions of years, the earth has gone through warming, cooling, warming and cooling, over and over again without human's messing it up or even existing at that time. Magnetic poles have shifted, ice ages and dark ages have come and gone. They will continue, no matter how much we put in the atmosphere. Mother Nature has a way of always cleaning things up and starting new.

Human beings are reckless creatures as a whole, but individually, we're smart enough to respect this earth we're on. Besides, we're only on a long term lease with this plant, who knows what'll come next! Enjoy the blue planet while we can.

My simple, 2 cents worth I suppose.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by shellback

... As for the very intense discussion unfolding about global warming, I fully understand all sides of the spectrum ...

I stand in awe of your encyclopaedic knowledge and panoptic understanding.

Right now, Superior, Michigan & Huron are only 6" below long term average. I believe the range is about 6' from the highest to the lowest. So 6" isn't all that much in the grand scheme of things. It is when you clip a rock though!
I recently read of the fact that the St Clair River was dredged out some time back and that has increased the flow out of the upper great lakes. Seems that wing dams on the St Clair River could return that river to it's 'normal' flow rate. But it would take a hell of a lobbying effort by a lot of folks in the upper basin to get them to do the study, get all approvals and then fund it. But it would seem to be a good idea to retain fresh water in the upper basin. It would only restore the old rate of flow, not create some new standard.
Any super lobbyists around here?

[pjbsailing]

xort - From September 21-30, 2006 the average area of the ozone hole was the largest ever observed, at 10.6 million square miles (27.5 million square kilometres). This image, from September 24, the Antarctic ozone hole was equal to the record single-day largest area of 11.4 million square miles (29.5 million square kilometres), reached on Sept. 9, 2000. Satellite instruments monitor the ozone layer, and we use their data to create the images that depict the amount of ozone. The blue and purple colors are where there is the least ozone, and the greens, yellows, and reds are where there is more ozone. Click image to enlarge. Credit: NASA -- NASA - NASA and NOAA Announce Ozone Hole is a Double Record Breaker

[GordMay]

Global Warming and Obesity

For a World of Woes, We Blame Cookie Monsters
By GINA KOLATA (New York Times - October 29, 2006)

”... the list of ills attributable to obesity grew: fat people cause global warming.

An article by Sheldon H. Jacobson of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana* and his doctoral student, Laura McLay, published in the current issue of The Engineering Economist, calculates how much extra gasoline is used to transport Americans now that they have grown fatter.
The answer, they said, is a billion gallons a year. ...”[/i]

Goto the NY Times article:
For a World of Woes, We Blame Cookie Monsters - New York Times

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ews release highlighting the impact of the obesity epidemic on fuel consumption (October 24, 2006):

Weight Gain of U.S. Drivers has Increased Nation’s Fuel Consumption
Goto:
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/shj/www/20...esity_Fuel.pdf

[GordMay]

IPCC Report ~ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its strongest warning yet, that human activities are heating the planet.

The IPCC predicted more severe rains, melting glaciers, droughts, heatwaves and rising sea levels.

"Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely* due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (human) greenhouse gas concentrations," the text said.

* Very Likely means a probability of more than 90 percent. This is a toughening from the last report, in 2001, when the IPCC said the link was "likely", or 66 percent probable.

The 21-page Summary of Scientific Findings for Policy Makers outlines wrenching change such as a possible melting of Arctic sea ice in summers by 2100 and says it is "more likely than not" that greenhouse gases have made tropical cyclones more intense. Goto: http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

The report also projects a rise in sea levels of between 18 and 59 centimetres (7 and 23 inches) in the 21st century - and said that bigger gains could not be ruled out, if ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland thaw.

[Amgine]

I remember that discussion of the 60s, Xort! It came from the physicists, who had proved (turned out incorrect) that we were in a solar reduced energy activity period, akin to Maunder's Minimum.

In other words, we should have been experiencing a dip in average temperatures, or possibly a mini-ice age.

But even then the oceanographers and climatologists were reporting a measurable increase in global temperatures. A very different field of endeavour, climatology has been even more disputatious than most areas of science because the number of variables are very high and mutually exclusive theories can be supported by the available data. Yet this field is amazingly homogenous in its view regarding climate change among currently practicing and published researchers.

Over 1200 scientists have signed onto the IPCC report. This represents nearly every active climatologist in the world. There simply is no scientific argument over this topic. Where there is dispute is what it will mean in the future, not over if it is happening or if it is due to human intervention.

Anyone who says otherwise is lying. And I'm willing to say that in press.

It is interesting to note that the American Enterprise Institute attempted to fund researchers to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the IPCC report. They were offering $10,000 cash for a critique of the methodology, which from my perspective in research (health sciences, not climatology) is a huge sum for a lit review. And they could not get any takers even from their collection of scientists. [CBC.ca interview with Kenneth Denman, Steve Schroeder, and AEI's Kenneth Green]

It's perfectly within your right to not believe the assembled science of the world regarding this topic. There is, after all, a Flat Earth Society, and let's not forget the tobacco industry's scientific campaign whose researchers question the link between smoking and cancer, and a range of others. But don't expect your view to be respected.

Personally, I know I cannot change the fact of global warming; I don't think anyone can. The results are already catastrophic, if you look at the numbers out of Bangladesh since 1950. Humans will adapt; it will just cost a few million or billion lives. Maybe I won't be one of them. Maybe my kids and grandkids won't be some of them.

[Benny]

How about this - instead of arguing endlessly over which belief is correct pertaining to global warming, why don't all humans decide to move towards a 'burn free' existance within a real time frame. Kyoto was supposed to accomplish this but the here and the now governments bent on keeping the fossil fuel status quo have made it unsubstantial and basically unenforcable. It would seem to me that many new technologies will create employment and wealth opportunities for all concerned if adopted as the only solution within a realistic time frame for implementation. Countries like China, Russia and the US have now and could develop more - technologies to accomplish this while slowly focusing their economies to adapt to nonfossil fuel energy production and consumption. Problem is, human nature being what it is, our leaders, ( here I mean the multinatiional corporations) want to show an ever increasing profit and therefor an ever increasing payout to it executives and shareholders (the Matrix that Sean speaks of) and while there is oil in the ground, this will not stop. As well, land clearing and coal burning releasing alot of carbon to the atmosphere and also the oceans All these activities will continue to raise global temperatures until there is a monumental catastrophe aka it's too late now to do anything to stop it -and our socio-economic system will not be changed except by emergency management - something like Venice, New York City and several other worldwide coastal cities being flooded permanantly.

The human race is very versitle and adaptive but if this situation goes the way MOST experts predict, the present human existance will be eradicated from the earth in it's present form and eventually replaced by a future one. This could be sooner than we think but even if not, we know that the way we are polluting our world is not right and all of us should do what we can to change this for the better. We owe it to ourselves and future generations.