Take Me Back Tuesday: GLOBAL WARMING CORRAL

[Hammer]

I truly hope you guys are right about GW but my focus remains on CO2 and there is no debate that CO2 levels have almost doubled in the last 250 years and that the increase is 100% attributable to human activities...GW is thought to be a symptom of this but make no mistake that increased CO2 levels are the cause...Even if GW is a hoax, the change in the chemical composition of our air (and thus our oceans) is not theoretical- it is reality and it will cause, big, big problems whether the Earth's temperature is getting hotter, colder or not changing...I have made this point repeatedly and there has not been a single post of merit against it and since making the point, the Supreme Court (the same court that just upheld a broad interpretation of the 2nd Amendment) ruled that CO2 is a pollutant.

As for more mallards coming our way, I hope that happens but even if it does, that will not change the long term situation which is that North American waterfowl are on a long term decline that nobody seems to know how to stop...CRP in the PPR saved us for the last 10-15 years but it is about to go away...The question then becomes, are duck hunters farsighted enough and do they have a strong enough conservation ethic to make the sacrifices necessary to save the sport?

Which brings us back to the beginning of this epic, 53 page thread...Where are the ducks? Plenty of explanations of which one possibility is global warming/climate change is leading to milder winters and a northward movement of the southern end of the flyway. I aint a scientist...I havent made a penny from global warming/carbon credits etc but I have been hunting ducks in the same area of the South Delta since 1971 and I can tell you its not even close to what it used to be. You say its not because of global warming...I say prove it.

[hotty toddy]

PROVE IT IS

[Po Monkey Lounger]

Is Earth's future a frozen one?

[Ronald Parker]
8/27/2008

Dark spots, some as large as 50,000 miles in diameter, typically move across the surface of the sun, contracting and expanding as they go. These strange and powerful phenomena are known as sunspots, but now they are all gone. Not even solar physicists know why it’s happening and what this odd solar silence might be indicating for our future.

Although periods of inactivity are normal for the sun, this current period has gone on much longer than usual and scientists are starting to worry—at least a little bit. Recently 100 scientists from Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa and North America gathered to discuss the issue at an international solar conference at Montana State University. Today's sun is as inactive as it was two years ago, and solar physicists don’t have a clue as to why.

"It continues to be dead," said Saku Tsuneta with the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, program manager for the Hinode solar mission, noting that it is at least a little bit worrisome for scientists.

Dana Longcope, a solar physicist at MSU, said the sun usually operates on an 11-year cycle with maximum activity occurring in the middle of the cycle. The last cycle reached its peak in 2001 and is believed to be just ending now, Longcope said. The next cycle is just beginning and is expected to reach its peak sometime around 2012. But so far nothing is happening.

"It's a dead face," Tsuneta said of the sun's appearance.

Tsuneta said solar physicists aren't weather forecasters and they can't predict the future. They do have the ability to observe, however, and they have observed a longer-than-normal period of solar inactivity. In the past, they observed that the sun once went 50 years without producing sunspots. That period coincided with a little ice age on Earth that lasted from 1650 to 1700. Coincidence? Some scientists say it was, but many worry that it wasn’t.

Geophysicist Phil Chapman, the first Australian to become an astronaut with NASA, said pictures from the US Solar and Heliospheric Observatory also show that there are currently no spots on the sun. He also noted that the world cooled quickly between January last year and January this year, by about 0.7C.

"This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record, and it puts us back to where we were in 1930," Dr Chapman noted in The Australian recently.

If the world does face another mini Ice Age, it could come without warning. Evidence for abrupt climate change is readily found in ice cores taken from Greenland and Antarctica. One of the best known examples of such an event is the Younger Dryas cooling, which occurred about 12,000 years ago, named after the arctic wildflower found in northern European sediments. This event began and ended rather abruptly, and for its entire 1000 year duration the North Atlantic region was about 5°C colder. Could something like this happen again? There’s no way to tell, and because the changes can happen all within one decade—we might not even see it coming.

The Younger Dryas occurred at a time when orbital forcing should have continued to drive climate to the present warm state. The unexplained phenomenon has been the topic of much intense scientific debate, as well as other millennial scale events.

Now this 11-year low in Sunspot activity has raised fears among a small but growing number of scientists that rather than getting warmer, the Earth could possibly be about to return to another cooling period. The idea is especially intriguing considering that most of the world is in preparation for global warming.

Canadian scientist Kenneth Tapping of the National Research Council has also noted that solar activity has entered into an unusually inactive phase, but what that means—if anything—is still anyone’s guess. Another solar scientist, Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, however, is certain that it’s an indication of a coming cooling period.

Sorokhtin believes that a lack of sunspots does indicate a coming cooling period based on certain past trends and early records. In fact, he calls manmade climate change "a drop in the bucket" compared to the fierce and abrupt cold that can potentially be brought on by inactive solar phases.

Sorokhtin’s advice: "Stock up on fur coats"…just in case.

[Po Monkey Lounger]

LOL. The shift in position is already occuring. Now, Hammer says that the CO2 levels are not necessarily tied to temperature increases and GW. Shazaaam!!! The hell you say. I thought that was the entire premise of the GW alarmists?

Folks, I told you its coming. Get ready for some serious restatements of the GW/CO2 theory and revisionist history re the same. If it does start getting significantly cooler ---see my above post re the global cooling article --- these GW alarmists will now claim that higher CO2 levels caused by man are causing the cooling as well. The earth's average temp has failed to increase over the last 7-8 years, and this past year took a nosedive in the cooler direction. This is going to be a hoot to watch unfold.

There is no scientific proof of any type that increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere are a bad thing or will cause any type of world climate change. CO2 is such a small percentage of our atmosphere that it is highly speculative that these relatively small increases will have any appreciable negative effect on anything. Some scientists have opined that the increased CO2 levels will help plant life, which in turn produces oxygen, and absorbs even more carbon.

[rjohnson]

Well I'll be d@mn he's backpedaling and changing his argument now! This is just too funny. And I seem to recall back earlier in the discussion that someone, yep me, mentioned something about that big ball of energy known as the sun being the possible primary factor in climate change and more or less getting told I was an idiot. This is just hilarious to me now. Can they revoke a Nobel Peace Prize because I think a certain Internet inventor needs his taken away?!

[hotty toddy]

Rjohnson, I find it hilarious that the GW wacko's change there stances like we change cloths. They argue what is convenient at the time and when a new article comes out authored by some "expert", all the sudden things change.

One way I have always looked at things is this: When there is an argument the ones who stick with what they know and not change with every new so called expert from timbuktu U's latest blog on the possible reason something is happening are usually the right ones.

Have you been outside the last few days, 60's for lows and 80's for highs. I hate it is getting back to normal summer but I for one have loved the global warming the last few days.

[Double R 2]

Another 54 pages and we'll be in teh New Ice Age. Or Hades.

[Bankermane]

$hit, I'm cold. BBBBBRRRR

[rjohnson]

I was kind of in awe today while waiting OUTSIDE at Jose's Tamales in Pearl for a table that I was sweating my booty. After about 5 minutes I realized that it was actually "comfortable" in the summer time. Guess I better sell my carbon credits before they bottom out. I just hope all that methane I'm putting out after that Mexican lunch doesn't reverse this little cool trend.

[Hammer]

Go to the top of this thread and read every post I have made and you will SEE that my position has not changed...Yall have said you dont accept that GW is human induced....I have said that assuming you are right, can you explain that CO2 levels have doubled in the last 250 years to their highest levels in the last 650,000- 5 MM years? Not a single post from the GW naysayers has addressed this issue....

My eye has been on the CO2 ball from the beginning and I have encouraged yall to keep your eye on that ball as well...I cant speak for the media, for the GW alarmists, the enviros or anybody but myself and I have repeatedly and consistently stated on this thread that the issue is CO2 pollution....C02 levels are at their highest in 650,000 - 5 MM years...That is the issue regardless of how many symptoms can be proven have resulted from it...

Of course, if the sun cools and the Earth enters a mini ice age, ducks ought to migrate into the MS Delta in massive numbers...When that doesn't happen, yall will have to come up with another way to justify 60/6, spinners, 3 woodies and all the other "hunter opportunity" rationalizations you come up with to keep waterfowl numbers shot down to pathetically low numbers.

[cwink]

....I have said that assuming you are right, can you explain that CO2 levels have doubled in the last 250 years to their highest levels in the last 650,000- 5 MM years?

Thats because not a single person on earth has been around for 250 year or for 650,000 years or 5 millon years to justify this claim. There is now way to prove CO2 is at its highest level in 5 million years, not even 250 years.

[Hammer]

Using your logic Duck South Addict, then all science, all history, all understanding of anything that has not been seen by somebody that is alive today is to be considered bogus?

For your information (not that you care about reality), ice core samples, tree ring analysis and all sorts of other scientific techniques have proven the truth of my statement beyond any shadow of a doubt. There is way more CO2 in our atmosphere that at anytime since dinosaurs roamed the planet. That wsa fine for animals with brains the size of tennis balls but it dont work so well for a species with a brain like ours. We need oxygen and the more of it, the better.

Your statement verifies what I ahve been saying. Most of hte users of MS DUCKS could care less about science, yall prefer superstitution and conspiracy theories.

[Po Monkey Lounger]

"We need oxygen and the more of it, the better. "

Now that is a first. Until now, I have not heard one person suggest that there is a shortage of oxygen on earth.

I will admit that there is apparently a shortage of functioning brain activity. Exhibit 1 ? Al Gore.

[mottlet]

Actually, we know exactly how much carbon was in the atmosphere going back at least 250,000 years. It's a lot less than there is now. If you don't want to believe that, then there's nothing I or anybody else can do about it, and everyone is certainly entitled to their opinion. But it's an easily verifiable scientific fact.

Did anybody even look at the link I posted however many damn posts back it was? http://www.seasonsend.org. There, take a look. There are an awful lot of heavy hitters in the hook and bullet world concerned about this. Not the kind of folks that contributed to Mr. Gore's campaign. Why are they concerned? Why are state wildlife agencies about to start re-writing their wildlife action plans to account for a warming climate?

We can probably all agree (Lord, I hope so) that supplies of fossil fuels are finite. We can also agree that four dollar gas sucks. We can all agree that at some point in the not so distant future, we're going to have to figure out an alternative source of energy (or several) that doesn't include the burning of fossil fuels. We probably can't agree, but I'm telling you anyway that we can't drill our way to energy independence. If we took everything that's in ANWR, the continental shelf and the Rockies (the big three that the administration wants to open up), we'd see gas prices lowered by about three cents a gallon. In ten to twenty years. And we'd lose some of the best wildlife habitat left in the WORLD, a bunch of which is sitting on public land right here in the good ol' U.S. of A. where you could go next year and pop an elk if you were so inclined and drew the right tags. So if we KNOW that at some point, we're going to HAVE to invest in some sort of clean energy future, if for no other reason than because we're literally out of oil or the Iranians won't sell it to us, why not invest in that future? Solar, wind, geothermal, carbon capture and sequestration...it's all on the table and the question is simple. When the world is buying this technology, will it have a Made in the USA label on it? Not if we stay on the path that we're on.

See that? Nowhere in that paragraph did I mention global warming. But...global warming is only part of our energy future. Do I believe that it constitutes a huge threat to all of the conservation achievements of the last hundred years? Absolutely. But it's not the only reason that we need to act now to protect the future of our children.

And here's something else. A law, passed by Congress and signed by the President, that addresses the GHG emissions of the United States is coming. Definitely not this year, maybe next year, maybe the year after that. But it's coming. Whoever is at the global warming/clean energy future table when that bill is written will decide how money raised by the selling and/or taxing of carbon emissions is spent. How much of that will go to wildlife? It's up to you. Could be BILLIONS. But if you want waterfowl breeding habitat to see one thin dime, you need to make sure that your elected officials know that RIGHT NOW. The time for arguing with Hammer on msducks has passed. I cannot stress enough that once the bill is written, we're too late. Everything the conservation community has with regard to efforts and manpower will be devoted to protecting whatever funding is written in for wildlife from every type of interest you've ever dreamed of and a lot you never thought existed. There won't be time to add to the kitty.

I'm not here to nominate Gore or the IPCC for sainthood. I'm not here to tell you that you're wrong. I'm here to implore you not to just sit and watch this train go sailing by. You think global warming isn't real? Fine. I disagree, but fine. But that money'll be real. Running out of oil is real. We can be the next Saudia Arabia if everybody has to get their energy technology from us. But we gotta get on the train. Every damn day I wake up and I commute into work in this ghastly city of "Northern charm and Southern efficiency." Not because I thought the duck hunting on the Potomac was any better than it is in the Delta. Not because I like the idea that if I fired my deer rifle into the air, the bullet would pass over a million people before it came down. I could hardly be considered some alarmist liberal with a taste for big city living. Just ask any of the questionable characters on this site that would fit under known associates.

Wildlife has a whole lotta damn talented people advocating on its behalf in DC. And it's my pleasure to work with them every day. But it's not like any of us are gonna be rich because we're lobbying for a firm with deep pockets. Ducks, elk, trout, and yeah, polar bears, ain't got any money. What they do have is a grassroots network of hunters and anglers that have always gone to bat for wildlife. There's a reason that the Congressional Sportsmen's Caucus is the biggest caucus on Capitol Hill. Everybody wants to sit at the cool kids' table. But politicians are a fickle bunch and if they don't hear from you, they'll find another table so fast it'll make your head spin.

If you want to know why I know about nerdy schit like carbon in the atmosphere going back a quarter million years, how Washington was able to get a Farm Bill so devastatingly wrong or some other bit of actual discussion concerning wildlife/hunting and fishing, feel free to send me a PM. In the meantime, as always, carry on.

[cwink]

Actually, we know exactly how much carbon was in the atmosphere going back at least 250,000 years. It's a lot less than there is now. If you don't want to believe that, then there's nothing I or anybody else can do about it, and everyone is certainly entitled to their opinion. But it's an easily verifiable scientific fact.

How is that a verifiable fact?