Death Toll from Earthquake at 79,000

[Brwn_eyes0511]

Originally Posted by amber

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.

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.

[amber]

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

[Brwn_eyes0511]

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.

[Brwn_eyes0511]

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

[Brwn_eyes0511]

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.

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

[irishgrl]

Brwn_eyes, your article is a joke. sorry.

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.

for the most part, yeah.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

President Bush is siding with Oil interests. Period.

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

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

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.

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.

[irishgrl]

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.

[Brwn_eyes0511]

Originally Posted by irishgrl

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.

[Brwn_eyes0511]

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.

[Brwn_eyes0511]

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.

[Brwn_eyes0511]

....I have no problem with conservation and using resources in an efficient fashion, but it seems to me that the environmental movement is no realistic and not focused in its goals. As someone pointed out recently in an article I was reading, they resist nuclear power at almost all costs but offer no realistic alternatives. They attack the United States and demand massive concessions on what is "generally" one of the cleanest and most productive economies in the world, but allow nations like Russia, India and China exemptions from protocols that work to reduce CO2 emissions and other pollutants.

The environment movement would do better to be more balanced and more realistic and help all of us put forward a sensible plan to become good stewards of what God has given us.

[irishgrl]

Originally Posted by Brwn_eyes0511

....I have no problem with conservation and using resources in an efficient fashion, but it seems to me that the environmental movement is no realistic and not focused in its goals. As someone pointed out recently in an article I was reading, they resist nuclear power at almost all costs but offer no realistic alternatives. They attack the United States and demand massive concessions on what is "generally" one of the cleanest and most productive economies in the world, but allow nations like Russia, India and China exemptions from protocols that work to reduce CO2 emissions and other pollutants.

The environment movement would do better to be more balanced and more realistic and help all of us put forward a sensible plan to become good stewards of what God has given us.

What about solar power? or wind power? or water power? What about mass transit instead of individual cars? Nuclear power is clean but the materials used to make it are toxic and there is no safe place to store the waste.
Bush has consistently eroded the environmental protections and safeguards, and allows older factories to continue spewing crap into the air/water and not force them to upgrade to acceptable levels of filtering. WTF?

And whether you agree or not, it is a FACT that Americans are primarily responsible for the sorry state of the global condition by our rampant consumption and vehicle use. I will say that China looks to surpass us in a very short while, but WE are responsible for the depletion of resources because we are a greedy nation of "right now" consumers, we do everything on a large scale, and the entire world pays the price. I personally think we do need to own up to our global responsibility and make a nation-wide change. We could start with our factories, and our car manufacturers and all plant a tree

[irishgrl]

Originally Posted by Brwn_eyes0511

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.

btw: Jason's article totally TRASHES Mayfield's position, go back and read it.

[Brwn_eyes0511]

Originally Posted by irishgrl

What about solar power? or wind power? or water power? What about mass transit instead of individual cars? Nuclear power is clean but the materials used to make it are toxic and there is no safe place to store the waste.
Bush has consistently eroded the environmental protections and safeguards, and allows older factories to continue spewing crap into the air/water and not force them to upgrade to acceptable levels of filtering. WTF?

And whether you agree or not, it is a FACT that Americans are primarily responsible for the sorry state of the global condition by our rampant consumption and vehicle use. I will say that China looks to surpass us in a very short while, but WE are responsible for the depletion of resources because we are a greedy nation of "right now" consumers, we do everything on a large scale, and the entire world pays the price. I personally think we do need to own up to our global responsibility and make a nation-wide change. We could start with our factories, and our car manufacturers and all plant a tree

Good points.

And this point may sound trivial, but it did pop up in my mind just now...

It is obvious that the Earth has had massive global warming ( and cooling ) before right?

About 1 000 000 years ago the Earth had a massive Ice Age that caused much of North America and Europe to be under hundreds to thousands of feet of glacial ice. Eventually the glaciers receded.


Was that due to SUV's as well ?

I don't know? Just a little thought. "Global Warming" issues are not my "Affirmative Action".

[Brwn_eyes0511]

Fact #1- Scientists can't agree on the current mean temperature of the planet with any more accuracy than +/- 0.7 deg. C (1.26 deg. F)

Fact #2- Scientists from both sides of the issue agree that FULL implementation of Kyoto would avoid warming of 0.07 deg. C (0.126 deg. F) by 2050.

So in 45 years, we maybe stop warming by a tenth of a degree F... but we'd probably never know it since the accuracy of our current measurements are only within +/- 1 degree F.

http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Kyoto_Count_Up.htm
http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Warming_Glance.htm