Death Toll from Earthquake at 79,000
 

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan - Two strong aftershocks from South Asia's deadly earthquake shook the devastated region Wednesday, unleashing landslides and setting off another wave of panic among survivors of the Oct. 8 disaster. A new tally from regional officials pushed the death toll to 79,000.

The new toll would make the quake one of the deadliest in modern times.

Despite brisk sorties of helicopters delivering aid to quake victims, an estimated half-million survivors, many of them in Pakistan's portion of Kashmir, have yet to receive any help since the monster 7.6-magnitude quake leveled entire villages. Thousands need urgent medical care.

The situation is the most dire in the estimated 1,000 settlements outside the main cities and towns, said regional U.N. disaster coordinator Rob Holden.

"Many people out there, we are not going to get to in time," Holden said. "Some people who have injuries don't have a chance of survival."

On Wednesday, Asif Iqbal Daudzai, information minister for Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, said 37,958 people died in the province and at least 23,172 were injured, the vast majority of them in Mansehra district. He said the figures were based on reports from local government and hospital officials, and that the toll was likely to rise.

The prime minister of neighboring Pakistani-held Kashmir, Sikander Hayat Khan, said at least 40,000 people died in that region. India has reported 1,360 deaths in the part of Kashmir that it controls.

Those tallies would push the death toll to 79,318 from the quake.

A senior Pakistani army official estimated that 75,000 to 80,000 people died. He said his estimate was based on an assessment from the ground and air of the destruction, and casualties counted so far across the quake zone. The official did not want to be identified because he was not authorized to comment on the death toll.

Pakistan's central government has said the death toll from North West Frontier Province and Pakistani-held Kashmir was a total of 42,000, and expected to rise. The central count has lagged behind the local count since the early days of the disaster.

The disaster is surpassed only by the 1976 quake in Tangshan, China, that killed about 240,000 people and one in 1923 in Japan that killed about 140,000.

Last year's deadly quake and tsunami across the Indian Ocean region killed more than 174,000 and left another 106,000 missing.

Wednesday's 5.8-magnitude aftershock struck 80 miles north of Islamabad, near the epicenter of the main quake, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It was followed by another in the same area about 45 minutes later that registered 5.6.

The first aftershock caused a landslide in Balakot, one of the cities hardest hit by the initial quake. Debris covered the road to nearby Mansehra, but it was quickly cleared, said Pakistani Army Lt. Col. Saeed Iqbal, who is in charge of relief efforts in the area.

A landslide also blocked a road out of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, but it was expected to be cleared quickly.

Iqbal said the aftershock was "very heavy" and that he saw dust rising from the Kaghan Valley north of Balakot, possibly indicating an additional landslide.

In Indian-held Kashmir, the new tremors startled thousands of people in relief camps, including those in the worst-hit Uri and Tangdar districts close to the boundary with Pakistan-held territory. Police said there were no reports of landslides or damage to buildings.

Hundreds of aftershocks have struck the region since the Oct. 8 quake.

"They're not over," said Waverly Person, a seismologist at the U.S. quake center. "For a shallow-depth earthquake like this they go on, sometimes for a year."

In Balakot, villagers scavenged for food, clothes or building material.

"We need help," said resident Basim Qassir. "There's been deliveries, but it's just not enough."

Nearly two weeks after the quake, NATO has yet to deploy significant forces in the disaster area, and its commanders acknowledged difficulties Wednesday in mustering the high-altitude helicopters needed to get aid into the mountainous regions.

"Helicopters, as you know, have been a real problem for all of us to generate," U.S. Gen. James L. Jones, NATO's supreme commander in Europe, told reporters at his southern Belgian headquarters.

U.S. Vice Adm. John Stufflebeem said through a video link from his base in Lisbon, Portugal, that Pakistan currently has a greater need for light helicopters "and at the moment, we have very few of those." Alliance officials declined to say how many helicopters they were seeking.

On a tour of Balakot, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said he expected reconstruction of the area to take years, and that the government would try to get prefabricated homes for victims.

In Beijing, the U.N.'s top relief coordinator on Wednesday said the international community was not doing enough to help and should step up relief efforts.

Jan Egeland, U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, urged China to help because it borders the hard-hit area of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and has a stockpile of winterized tents.

Egeland asked China for 20,000 tents, 10 helicopters and as much cash as possible — hinting at $20 million. Beijing, a close ally of Pakistan, has already pledged $6.2 million directly to Islamabad and sent tents, blankets, water purifying tablets, rescue equipment and a search team.

India was mulling Pakistan's proposal to help quake victims in Kashmir by allowing residents to cross the frontier that divides the disputed territory between them, the latest sign of cooperation between the nuclear-armed rivals since this month's disaster.

India, which has sent quake relief supplies to Pakistan, hailed the plan but said it was awaiting details.

Also Wednesday, residents of Indian-controlled Kashmir made the first phone calls to the Pakistani side of the Himalayan territory in 15 years, trying to learn the fate of loved ones since the quake hit, police said.

New Delhi cut communications between its Jammu-Kashmir state and all of Pakistan in 1990 to try to stymie an Islamic insurgency there that it charged was being run from Pakistan, an allegation Islamabad denies. Pakistanis can, however, still make direct calls to Indian Kashmir.

At least 54,000 people died in the disaster, most of them in the Pakistani-held part of divided Kashmir. The toll includes 1,361 deaths reported by India on its side of the militarized boundary separating the Himalayan region.

(I didnt think I'd ever see a death toll that would top the tsunami) :distress:

The Deadliest Earthquake

On December 26, 2004, a 9.0 earthquake hit Sumatra and estimates say that over 110,000 people have been killed. Though the earthquake was powerful (it's tied for fourth largest since 1900) and the devastation is immense, it is not the deadliest earthquake. In 1976, a 7.8 earthquake hit the city of Tangshan in China and killed approximately 240,000 people.

http://history1900s.about.com/b/a/135403.htm

you know how you have awful thoughts and you immediately think 'oh my god how could I have thought that'? or am I the only one?

anyway, I have thought before that with all of these natural disasters that kill so many innocent people if it is nature's way of controlling the population or for some other reason. now isn't that a horrible thing to think and not very logical.

I feel so bad for those people who have no warning and such destruction. My heart goes out to them. How do you cope with the loss of 111,000 people...I mean, wow...sad sad.

The death tallies for Sumatra 2004 vary pretty widely. They range from 225,000 (National Geophysical Data Center) to upwards of 283,106 (USGS Earthquake Hazards Program page). That's not counting the "missing," many of whose bodies probably washed out to sea & never washed back in again. Tragic as the Pakistan quake toll is, it seems to be significantly less than Indonesia. It's virtually impossible to get minutely accurate data from events of such huge proportions in the Third World, whose inhabitants don't all walk around with various types of government ID cards.

Seeing those people digging through rubble with their bare hands to remove the corpses of their little children was sobering and quite devastating. There's really nothing anyone can say about this that wouldn't come across as cliched or silly at this point.

I can't even comprehend how awful it must be for them to go through that. :distress: That number is also incomprehensible.

Interesting, I hadnt heard those numbers.
And, the death toll in Pakistan isnt done yet. there are still very large aftershocks, and I suspect, many more bodies to count. Apparently I may be wrong about this event being more devastating than Sumatra, but I'll wait and see what the end totals are...

in any event, its amazingly deadly considering the fact that those areas are mountainous and I didnt realize there were that many people in the region.

What with Wilma coming up hard after Katrina and Rita, how the Ovoid Office can say there's no global warming is beyond me....There's plenty of evidence in our times that we need to make some drastic changes (off topic I know, sorry)

My Mom said she heard Bush said he believed global warming is happening but that scientists do not agree on its causes. In other words he can't do anything about it because he doesn't know what causes it which is BS.

While global warming certainly is happening, the trend of hurricanes since they have been recorded is not fully supportive of this frequency of the storms this season being caused by this warming.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

Also http://zfacts.com/p/49.html

Note - I am not saying GW is not effecting it. I am just saying the trends are not dispositive of it being the sole cause or really a significant cause.

Jason, actually the link from your own article DOES say that global warming is causing the hurricanes! take a look at this:
http://zfacts.com/p/113.html

and this is particularly telling:
and again:
EDIT: From where I sit, it looks like the only thing that COULD be causing it, even if you take into account the natural fluctuation of the Ocean temps, apparently the Ocean is warming up to a larger/faster extent (anyone remember the huge glaciers that broke off Antarctica that floated toward New Zealand?)which would account for the more frequent, stronger storms.....

It concludes (emphaisis supplied) :

In spite of the natural ocean cycle and global warming, the dramatic increases in U.S. hurricane damage is mainly due to the increases in coastal populations since the 1940's. Because hurricanes are so unpredictable, no specific cost can be attributed to global warming. :shrug:

I think global warming is having a detrimental effect, but the natural cycle of hurricanes is occuring on top of that.

But you left out the very next sentence:

The Best Current Estimate: Damage from Atlantic hurricanes, conservatively estimated, is up more than 45% due to global warming. Based on improvements to MIT data first published in July. See new estimate of destructive power-vs.-warming curve.
http://zfacts.com/metaPage/lib/Stoft...al_warming.gif\

THIS is from yet another link in your original page:
If global warming has warmed the Atlantic just 0.5° C, there is a 95% chance that it has increased average annual hurricane destructiveness by more than 45% (Half a degree C is less than 1 degree Farenheit.)


http://zfacts.com/metaPage/lib/zFact...Hurricanes.gif

Global Situation: The percentage of category 4 and 5 hurricanes is up in all six hurricane basins of which the North Atlantic has only a 15% share. Graph of data from September Science article. [The flatter red line is Atlantic hurricanes.] Only zFacts runs the stats for you on this "coincidence."
Here is the link to the other graph:
http://zfacts.com/p/125.html

and the link within your own page says that the debunkers are wrong:shrug:

I think the scientists have the data but no one has the cojones to stand up and say GOOD GAWD PEOPLE THIS IS ALL BECAUSE OF GLOBAL WARMING!
So stop driving your SUV's and for CRIPES SAKE do the world a FAVOR and get that MONKEY BOY OUT OF OFFICE!!! Make sure your NEXT President is environmentally SAVVY hmmmmm?????????????????



by the way, I want to point out that you are comparing apples to oranges with this:
That statement doesnt address the CAUSE of hurricanes, it just talks about the EFFECT. I am talking about the CAUSE.

^^^^

without global warming Katrina would not have happened. That is assinine and completely ignores the facts and history as Cat. 5 storms have happened before Katrina :laugh:

But anbd to the point, you need to quote the whole paragraph, which fails to support that global warming was the sole cause of a cat. 5 storm:

In spite of the natural ocean cycle and global warming, the dramatic increases in U.S. hurricane damage is mainly due to the increases in coastal populations since the 1940's. Because hurricanes are so unpredictable, no specific cost can be attributed to global warming. This means it is just as wrong to say there has been no cost as to say it was 20% or 40% of hurricane damage in recent years. Without global warming, Katrina almost certainly would not have happened, but something else would have, and it might have been worse, ... or better. We just don't know.

Without global warming I would have nothing to pick on the "tree huggers" about.

May I also point out that Clinton was not much better on the environment and Kerry would have been essentially the same as W. For example, while Clinton did relatively tiny things here and there, I did not see Clinton mandating cars run on anything other than oil, etc. So, do not lay all that on W's feet when it rightly belongs on the feet of almost every politician in Wash. and at the state and local levels, all of which refuse to make any significant strides away from fossil fuels, which is what it will take.

Yes but not with the same frequency.

Again, that doesnt address the cause, it addresses the EFFECT. VERY DIFFERENT TOPICS.


By the way Brwn_eyes, the fact that you pick on tree huggers makes you just as much of an eejit as Monkey Boy. Trees are incredibly important to the health of this world, and the rape of the Rain Forests of South America is also contributing to the degradation of the checks and balances of the Natural World. :rolleyes:

They are talking about the cause in that section :shrug:

you obviously didnt fully read all your material! look at the links embedded in your page, and please pay attention to the graphs! :nod:

they say the cause is global warming they say the effect is costly because of increased population. go back and look :shrug: I even highlighted it for you!

It does not say that global warming is the sole cause of this season's storms. I think you think I am saying that global warming had no effect whatsoever, which is not what I am saying. I am merely saying it it not the sole culprit, which is what the conclusion of this article says.

I knew that would grab your attention! LOL. I was just inciting a little morning humor. I do NOT want to involve myself in a "global warming" debate...it is one of my least favorite subjects in terms of politics...in terms of anything really!

Well....(and I mean this in a NICE way) you, my friend, are a BUTTHEAD :nod:
:lol:

Denial is not merely a rapidly depleting and heinously polluted river in Egypt.



*it's morning?

:lol:


:xoxo:

It's not so much denial as it is "being to smart" to by into that crap.

I think they are hedging a bit, because if you go into all your links and graphs and data, the science is there, but no one really wants to point a finger....

I personally feel it is the sole culprit and I think our collective consumption (world wide, not just in America, although we are the worst) is affecting this planet in a detrimental manner. It may be too late to reverse it, even if we all quit driving gas hogs today..........but we should all plant a tree and do what we can to try and help Mother Nature heal this planet :nod:

Here is another cool article - this one is from Time:

Monday, Aug. 29, 2005

Is Global Warming Fueling Katrina?

Warm ocean temperatures are a key ingredient for monster hurricanes, prompting some scientists to believe that global warming is exacerbating our storm troubles

By JEFFREY KLUGER

The people of New Orleans are surely not thinking about wind vortices, the coriolis effect or the dampness of the troposphere as they hunker down during hurricane Katrina this morning. They’re mostly thinking about the savage rains and 140 mph winds that have driven them from their homes. But it’s that meteorological arcana that’s made such a mess of the bayou, and to hear a lot of people tell it, we have only ourselves—and our global-warming ways—to blame.

One thing’s for sure: hurricanes were around a long, long time before human beings began chopping down rainforests and fouling the atmosphere. To get such a tempest going, you don’t need much more than ocean temperatures above 80 degrees Fahrenheit; a cool, wet atmosphere above and a warm, wet one near the surface; and a preexisting weather disturbance with a bit of spin to it far enough from the equator (at least 300 miles) so that the rotation of the Earth amplifies the rotation of the storm. The more intense the storm becomes, the more the temperature of its core climbs, accelerating the spin, exacerbating the storm, and leading to the meteorological violence we call a hurricane. And violent it can be: The heat released in an average hurricane can equal the electricity produced by the U.S. in a single year.

So is global warming making the problem worse? Superficially, the numbers say yes—or at least they seem to if you live in the U.S. From 1995 to 1999, a record 33 hurricanes struck the Atlantic basin, and that doesn’t include 1992’s horrific Hurricane Andrew, which clawed its way across south Florida in 1992, causing $27 billion dollars worth of damage. More-frequent hurricanes are part of most global warming models, and as mean temperatures rise worldwide, it’s hard not to make a connection between the two. But hurricane-scale storms occur all over the world, and in some places—including the North Indian ocean and the region near Australia—the number has actually fallen. Even in the U.S., the period from 1991 to 1994 was a time of record hurricane quietude, with the dramatic exception of Andrew.

Just why some areas of the world get hit harder than others at different times is impossible to say. Everything from random atmospheric fluctuations to the periodic warming of the Pacific Ocean known as El Nino can be responsible. But even if all these variables have combined to keep the number of hurricanes worldwide about the same, the storms do appear to be more intense. One especially sobering study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that hurricane wind speeds have increased about 50% in the past 50 years. And since warm oceans are such a critical ingredient in hurricane formation, anything that gets the water warming more could get the storms growing worse. Global warming, in theory at least, would be more than sufficient to do that. While the people of New Orleans may not see another hurricane for years, the next one they do see could make even Katrina look mild.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/arti...099102,00.html

well, more of the same. My money's on Global Warming. WE HAVE SINNED AGAINST OUR MOTHER.

Myeah. Good luck with that.
Also, too, as in "to smart" as you say it, has two ohs.
So really, you are "too smart" to buy into it, not so much "to smart".
To smart is more like a verb thing. Like, "I'm going to smart! And When I am done smarting, I will go to closet practice!"
Like that.

It certainly has not helped the situation - that is for sure.

True...thanks for the correction.

And I said I wasn't going to do it...but damn it!...

Facts disprove warnings about global warming


by William Robert Johnston
in The Brownsville Herald, April 4, 2001, p. A10

A long time ago kings and rulers might be advised by magicians, astrologers, and other charlatans. These mystics would prey on leaders--and through them, on entire societies--by using the false superstitious beliefs of all involved. These people mostly went away with the advent of science.

But they're back--this time using the name of science. A vocal minority of the scientific community, with the help of unqualified outsiders, has persuaded many politicians to pursue plans that would be economically devastating. The story this time is global warming.

The "global warmers" produced the Kyoto treaty of 1997. However, the facts completely disprove what these people are saying about climate change.

We've all heard the stories, reported as indisputable fact: The last century or decade is just about the hottest the world has ever been. Carbon dioxide from burning gasoline and coal is blamed. Unless their solution is enacted right now, temperatures will rise terribly in the next century. Icecaps will start to melt, coasts will flood, storms will get worse, diseases will spread, animals will die, and more. And it's all because of us Americans.

The best lies contain a measure of truth. Yes, carbon dioxide in the air has increased in the last century due to the use of fossil fuels. Yes, global average temperature has increased 0.8 degrees F in the same century. Unfortunately, the temperature increase came first: most of the temperature increase was before 1940, and most of the new carbon dioxide was added after 1960. Would you trust a "scientist" who said the result came before the cause?

There are other problems, as well. Solar activity may be the cause of the world temperature changes. The global warmers can't explain why satellites show no temperature change in the past 20 years. The computer models that predict disaster in a century have been completely wrong for the past 20 years. And no one can agree on the side effects.

Scientific facts actually helped unravel the treaty last year. Carbon dioxide is removed from the air by various natural and manmade processes, and world leaders couldn't agree on how to credit for this. No one wanted the U.S. to get credit for removals of carbon dioxide, so negotiations faltered.

Most scientists use facts and logic to reach conclusions. It's no surprise that over 17,000 scientists and engineers have signed a petition calling for rejection of the Kyoto treaty. This overshadows any collection of scientists that have endorsed the treaty.

The global warmers have failed to prove that man has caused a problem. This hasn't stopped them from demanding we act, and act now.

The Kyoto Protocol called for the U.S. and other western nations to shoulder most of the limits on fossil fuel energy use. Developing countries suffer little or no restrictions.

Those countries are obviously enthusiastic. The economic powerhouses would have their hands tied, while would-be competitors like mainland China would not.

President Bush has sided with the scientific facts in recently declining to implement the Kyoto limits. After all, the treaty is so bad the Senate opposed it 95 to zero.

Bush and Congress must go further. They should refuse any regulation of carbon dioxide emissions whatsoever.

Consider the impact of the restrictions still promoted by some. The U.S. would have to put a 50 to 100 % tax on gasoline, heating fuels, and most electricity. Local farmers and landowners will face bureaucratic restrictions hindering the use of land. In south Texas, the result would just be massive inflation and unemployment. In the developing world, suffering economies would cause starvation and death. And for all this, the restrictions can't be shown to make any difference to world climate.

The primary advocates of global warming remain the environmentalists. They propose a drastic solution to a non-existent problem--a solution which is, amazingly, the same political policy they have unsuccessfully sought to impose for decades. Many of their leaders oppose free markets and seek to limit human development, and global warming is currently the best means to these ends. If people are hurt in the process, so be it.

The current power supply problems in California are a perfect example. They are not a consequence of true deregulation, but of environmental and anti-free market restrictions on power production. This is the same thing proposed in Kyoto, and the same thing still promoted by some Washington leaders.

As you watch your gas and electricity bills go up, recognize this as only a taste of what could have been under Kyoto--and what could still be, if environmental politics and big government win out over free markets and scientific facts.

Myeah. Those are great plans and theories. They totally make logical sense.

Settling Global Warming Science

By Patrick J. Michaels, S. Fred Singer and David H. Douglass Published 08/12/2004

How many times have we heard from Al Gore and assorted European politicians that "the science is settled" on global warming? In other words, it's "time for action." Climate change is, as recently stated by Hans Blix, former U.N. Chief for weapons detection in Iraq, the most important issue of our time, far more dangerous than people flying fuel-laden aircraft into skyscrapers or threatening to detonate backpack nukes in Baltimore Harbor.



Well, the science may now be settled, but not in the way Gore and Blix would have us believe. Three bombshell papers have just hit the refereed literature that knock the stuffing out of Blix's position and that of the United Nations and its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).



The IPCC states repeatedly that 1) we have reliable temperature records showing how much the planet has warmed in the last century; and 2) computer projections of future climate, while not perfect, simulate the observed behavior of the past so well that they serve as a reliable guide for the future. Therefore, they say, we need to limit carbon dioxide emissions (i.e., energy use) right now, despite the expense and despite the fact that the cost of these restrictions will fall almost all on the United States, gravely harming the world's economic engine while exerting no detectable change on climate in the foreseeable future.



The IPCC claims to have carefully corrected the temperature records for the well-known problem of local ("urban," as opposed to global) warming. But this has always troubled serious scientists, because the way the U.N. checks for artificial warming makes it virtually impossible to detect in recent decades -- the same period in which our cities have undergone the most growth and sprawl.



The surface temperature record shows a warming rate of about 0.17˚C (0.31˚F) per decade since 1979. However, there are two other records, one from satellites, and one from weather balloons that tell a different story. Neither annual satellite nor balloon trends differ significantly from zero since the start of the satellite record in 1979. These records reflect temperatures in what is called the lower atmosphere, or the region between roughly 5,000 and 30,000 feet.



Four years ago, a distinguished panel of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences concluded that a real disparity exists between the reported surface warming and the temperature trends measured in the atmosphere above. Since then, many investigators have tried to explain the cause of the disparity while others have denied its existence.



So, which record is right, the U.N. surface record showing the larger warming or the other two? There's another record, from seven feet above the ground, derived from balloon data that has recently been released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In two research papers in the July 9 issue of Geophysical Research Letters, two of us (Douglass and Singer) compared it for correspondence with the surface record and the lower atmosphere histories. The odd-record-out turns out to be the U.N.'s hot surface history.



This is a double kill, both on the U.N.'s temperature records and its vaunted climate models. That's because the models generally predict an increased warming rate with height (outside of local polar regions). Neither the satellite nor the balloon records can find it. When this was noted in the first satellite paper published in 1990, some scientists objected that the record, which began in 1979, was too short. Now we have a quarter-century of concurrent balloon and satellite data, both screaming that the UN's climate models have failed, as well as indicating that its surface record is simply too hot.



If the models are wrong as one goes up in the atmosphere, then any correspondence between them and surface temperatures is either pretty lucky or the product of some unspecified "adjustment." Getting the vertical distribution of temperature wrong means that everything dependent upon that -- precipitation and cloudiness, as examples -- must be wrong. Obviously, the amount of cloud in the air determines the day's high temperature as well as whether or not it rains.



As bad as things have gone for the IPCC and its ideologues, it gets worse, much, much worse.



After four years of one of the most rigorous peer reviews ever, Canadian Ross McKitrick and another of us (Michaels) published a paper searching for "economic" signals in the temperature record. McKitrick, an economist, was initially piqued by what several climatologists had noted as a curiosity in both the U.N. and satellite records: statistically speaking, the greater the GDP of a nation, the more it warms. The research showed that somewhere around one-half of the warming in the U.N. surface record was explained by economic factors, which can be changes in land use, quality of instrumentation, or upkeep of records. This worldwide study added fuel to a fire started a year earlier by the University of Maryland's Eugenia Kalnay, who calculated a similar 50 percent bias due to economic factors in the U.S. records.



So, to all who worry about global warming, to all who think that people threatening to blow up millions to get their political way is no big deal by comparison, chill out. The science is settled. The "skeptics" -- the strange name applied to those whose work shows the planet isn't coming to an end -- have won.



Patrick Michaels, senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of the forthcoming book, "Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media." Fred Singer is emeritus professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia. David Douglass is professor of physics at the University of Rochester.

The Truth Behind "Global Warming" Hysteria
By Bill Steigerwald
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 27, 2005

Global warming is always a hot topic in liberal media circles, where the political and scientific consensus is that global climate change is occurring, it is a danger, it is caused by mankind and we need to start doing something serious about reversing it.

For a little balance, we called up Fred Singer, aka "the godfather of global warming denial." An expert on global climate change and a pioneer in the development of rocket and satellite technology, he holds a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton and happens to be the guy who devised the basic instrument for measuring stratospheric ozone. Now president of the Science & Environmental Policy Project research group (sepp.org), his dozen books include "Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming's Unfinished Debate." I talked to him by telephone from his offices in Arlington, Va.:

Q: Here’s a line from a recent Mother Jones article: "There is overwhelming scientific consensus that greenhouse gases emitted by human activity are causing global average temperatures to rise." Is that true?
A: It’s completely unsupported by any observation, but it’s supported by computer climate models. In other words, the computer models would indicate this. The observations do not.

Q: What’s the best argument or proof that global warming is not happening?
A: The best proof are data taken of atmospheric temperature by two completely different methods. One is from instruments carried in satellites that look down on the atmosphere. The other is from instruments carried in balloons that ascend through the atmosphere and take readings as they go up. These measurements show that the atmospheric warming, such as it is, is extremely slight -- a great deal less than any of the models predicts, and in conflict also with observations of the surface.

Q: An epic New Yorker series said unequivocally that the permafrost, the Arctic sea ice and the Greenland glaciers are all melting. Is that true and is it because of global warming?
A: The Arctic temperatures have been now measured for a long time. They vary cyclically. The warmest years in the Arctic were around 1940. Then it cooled. And it’s warming again, but it hasn’t reached the levels of 1940. It will continue to oscillate. That’s the best prediction.

Q: What is the most dangerous untrue "fact" about global warming that’s out there in the media-sphere?
A: The rise in sea level. Again, the observations show that sea level has risen in the last 18,000 years by about 400 feet and is continuing to rise at a uniform rate, and is not accelerating, irrespective of warming or cooling. In fact, sea level will continue to rise at a slow rate of 8 inches per century, as it has been for the last few thousand years.

Q: If you had a 12-year-old grandkid who was worried about global warming, what would you tell him?
A: I would tell them that there are many more important problems in the world to worry about, such as diseases, pandemics, nuclear war and terrorism. The least important of these is global warming produced by humans, because it will be insignificant compared to natural fluctuations of climate.

Q: How did you become "the godfather of global warming denial"?
A: That’s easy. Age. I organized my first conference on global warming in 1968. At that time I had no position. It was a conference called "The global effects of environmental pollution." At that time I remember some of the experts we had speaking thought the climate was going to warm and some thought it was going to cool. That was the situation.

Q: Climate is extremely complicated -- is that a true statement?
A: Immensely complicated. Which is a reason why the models will never be able to adequately simulate the atmosphere. It’s just too complicated.

Q: Give me a sample of how complicated just one little thing can be.
A: The most complicated thing about the atmosphere that the models cannot capture is clouds. First of all, clouds are small. The resolution of the computer models is about 200 miles; clouds are much smaller than that. Secondly, they don’t know when clouds form. They have to guess what humidity is necessary for a cloud to form. And of course, humidity is not the only factor. You have to have nuclei -- little particles -- on which the water vapor can condense to form droplets. They don’t know that either. And they don’t know at what point the cloud begins to rain out. And they don’t know at what point -- it goes on like this.

Q: Is this debate a scientific fight or a political fight?
A: Both. I much support a scientific fight, because I’m pretty sure we’ll win that -- because the data support us; they don’t support the climate models. Basically it’s a fight of people who believe in data, or who believe in the atmosphere, versus people who believe in models.

Q: Is it not true that CO2 levels have gone up by about a third in the last 100 years?
A: A little more than a third, yes. I accept that.

Q: Do you say that’s irrelevant?
A: It’s relevant, but the effects cannot be clearly seen. The models predict huge effects from this, but we don’t see them.

Q: Why is it important that global warming be studied in a balanced, scientific, depoliticized way?
A: It’s a scientific problem. The climate is something we live with, and we need to know what effect human activities are having on climate. I don’t deny that there’s some effect of human activities on climate. We need to learn how important they are.

Q: Why is it important that global warming be studied in a balanced, scientific, depoliticized way?
A: It’s a scientific problem. The climate is something we live with and we need to know what effect human activities are having on climate. I don’t deny that there’s some affect of human activities on climate. Cities are warmer now than they used to be. We have changed forests into agricultural fields. That has some affect on climate. We irrigate much of the Earth. That affects climate. And so on. We are having some influence on climate, at least on a small scale. So we need to know these things. We need to how important they are.

Q: And global warming is something we should study but not get panicky about?
A: The thing to keep in mind always is that the natural fluctuations of climate are very much larger than anything we can ascribe – so far – to any human activity. Much larger. We lived through a Little Ice Age just a few hundred years ago. During the Middle Ages the climate was much warmer than it is today. So the climate does change all the time. We need to understand the scientific reasons for natural climate change. Most of us now think it’s the sun that is the real driver of climate. It has something to do with sun spots, but the mechanism is not quite clear. That’s what’s being studied now.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles...e.asp?ID=18881

I will agree to some forms of global warming, it happens in the brains of radical idealogues and the bellies of dynamite laden suicide bombers. I would tell them to chill, but what's the use. :shrug: :lol:

I'm somehow in a happy mood this morning...could it be that I actually get to meet Ms. Sara Groves tonight?!!? :woohoo:

Brwn_eyes, your article is a joke. sorry.

for the most part, yeah.

This is bunkum. Satellites cannot measure OCEAN temperatures (which is the cause of hurricanes.) They also cannot explain why whole glaciers are being calved off of the arctic and antarctic ice caps. Give me a break.

More bunkum. the only natural "filter" that can remove carbon dioxide is plant life, which is being destroyed at unprecedented levels each year by greedy governments that care more about profit than this planet. And those much vaunted "man-made" filters are decreasing or decaying, thanks to Monkey Boy's pandering to Corporations (by not enforcing stricter environmental controls.) Your Author is a quack.

Failure to do so will be increasingly detrimental. All you have to do is wait and see. Us "global warmers" will be right, but we will ALL be in trouble, the "nay sayers" will only have themselves to blame.

President Bush is siding with Oil interests. Period.

Is this guy for real? He must be a paid hack.

The power crisis in CA was MANUFACTURED by OIL INTERESTS.
FACT. If I had a rotten tomato, I'd hurl it at this guy so fast it'd leave a DENT.

Brwn_eyes, the difference between your articles and the articles Jason posted is that Jason's articles use HARD DATA to chart the trends. Your articles are opinion pieces with NO factual support. If you seriously subscribe to the notion that global warming isnt happening, then all I can say to you is: by the time you realize us "environmentalists" were right, it will have been too late for far too long to do anything about it.

I firmly pray that whoever we get into office is more enlightened than the mental midget that is running this country now.

Well of course they are opinion articles, they show ANOTHER view of global warming. And I do remember looking at facts in those articles.

anyways...as "global warming" applies to katrina...


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9417904/

My favorite quote: "Under questioning by members of the Senate Commerce subcommittee on disaster prevention and prediction, he shrugged off the notion that global warming played a role, saying instead it was a natural cycle in the Atlantic Ocean that fluctuates every 25 to 40 years."


Hurricane expert predicts years of more storms
Forecaster: Atlantic in cycle of increased activity that may last 10-20 years
The Associated Press
Updated: 9:12 p.m. ET Sept. 20, 2005

WASHINGTON - Expect more hurricanes large and small in the next 10 to 20 years, the director of the federal National Hurricane Center said Tuesday.

Max Mayfield told a congressional panel that he believes the Atlantic Ocean is in a cycle of increased hurricane activity that parallels an increase that started in the 1940s and ended in the 1960s.

The ensuing lull lasted until 1995, then “it’s like somebody threw a switch,” Mayfield said. The number and power of hurricanes increased dramatically.

Under questioning by members of the Senate Commerce subcommittee on disaster prevention and prediction, he shrugged off the notion that global warming played a role, saying instead it was a natural cycle in the Atlantic Ocean that fluctuates every 25 to 40 years.

More named storms expected this year
Mayfield predicted several more named tropical storms this year. The latest, Hurricane Rita, is the 17th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which ends Nov. 1. Since record-keeping started in 1851, the record is 21 tropical storms, in 1933.

Mayfield also listed a number of cities and regions in addition to New Orleans he believes are “especially vulnerable” to damage from a major hurricane: Houston and Galveston, Texas; Tampa; southern Florida and the Florida Keys; New York City and Long Island; and New England.

“Katrina will not be the last major hurricane to hit a vulnerable area,” he said.

The center’s predictions on Katrina’s movements were more accurate than usual, but the storm grew more intense more quickly than expected as it moved through the Gulf of Mexico, he said. Three days before it made landfall on Aug. 29, computer models predicted it would hit near New Orleans.

Forecasts better at where, but not at how strong
Asked to assess the nation’s ability to track hurricanes, one expert before the panel said forecasters have grown better at predicting the path of a storm over a few days but lag in their ability to gauge its intensity, rainfall distribution and surge in water levels.

Better sensors, computers and computer models of hurricane behavior can lead to improved forecasts, said Keith Blackwell of the Coast Weather Research Center at the University of South Alabama.

Senators praised the National Hurricane Center’s accurate prediction of Katrina’s track, calling it one of the few things the government has done correctly in regards to the storm.


“The people that did get out from the storm owe their lives to you and your people,” said Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska.

Fact is, if global warming is occurring, it could be a good thing. Another fact is, if global warming is occurring, it doesn't mean we are seeing any greenhouse affect or that we will experience runaway greenhouse heating. Personally, I think it is prudent to conserve resources and minimize fouling our atmosphere, but I don't want to sacrifice human progress on the alter of junk science or unverifiable theories that aren't backed up by data.