Skeptics Guide

Barney Stone

Barney Stone

New Member
I tried to upload this PDF but it wont let me because of size. As a "hack" meteorologist I have known for a long time the media is pumping the Global Warming event and ignoring its repeating place in global history. I believe Global Warming is a cyclical event having more room to go. During the Medieval period England was a prime area for growing grapes and fruit. Im thinking of sending Reach 1000 avocado trees for his kids and grand kids to grow as England has potential to have avg temps up to 10 degrees F higher than today.
http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=266711
 
Lemonheads

I have a lemon tree in my breakfast room. It has 1 lemon on it. Thing is, I shot the lemon :eek:! I was messing around with my Walther P99 soft-air pistol (it was a prop for a James Bond theme party OK!) and I didn't think the little plastic pellets would be able to penetrate the lemon's skin. I was wrong. Lucky I didn't try it on the cat.

The part of England I live in has one of the mildest climates in the country and believe it or not palm trees are not uncommon around here. There is a special breed called the Torbay Palm which is bred specifically for our distinctly non-tropical conditions.

I have a very successful grapevine in my garden that produces wine-quality grapes in large numbers every summer. I tend to just shoot them.

Anyway, whilst I am not entirely convinced that the global warming we are undoubtedly witnessing is entirely man-made, I do think that we should do everything we can to minimise our component of it.

And besides, global warming will actually result in the cooling of the UK. The gulf stream is weakening and in fact it stopped for 10 days a few years back. That apparently is unprecedented in recent times.

So don't send me any avocados. Send me a big ice drill for getting to the fish.

Cheers

Reachy
 

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There was a tv show

on one of the cable channels - about the "little ice age" that Europe and North America suffered during the 1400s-1850s - it snowed in July in New England - people killed their children - because there wasn't enough food to feed all of them - all kinds of gross stuff - a complete disaster - they also talked about how beautiful it was in Europe before then - when the temperature was a few degrees higher than it is today! - and how the whole world thrived with the higher temperatures!!!! - maybe a little global warming would be ok -
 
You partially right

Climate changes are all part of natural cycles on the planet. The Earth will naturally solve drastic climate changes with increases and decreases in coral, etc, blah, blah, blah. The problem is not the climate changes as they naturally occur, it's the speed with which current changes are happening.

Will the Earth right itself over time? Sure. The point is how f'd up things will be until it does.

*yes, I forgot the word 'are' in the title*
 
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Actually

from the documentary on tv - part of the impact of the 'little ice age' was exactly the speed it occurred - a big shift in climate from one year to the next - then rapid fluctuations within the period - so natural changes can be rapid too -

thing is the earth is subject to climatic variations - and major variations can and have occurred very rapidly in the past - in ther last century and 1/2 - we have actually been in an unusually warm period - the average temperature - going back very far - is typically quite a bit colder - more like the 'little ice age' - I think - don't nail me on this - it is to the best of my memory from reading and such - correct me if mistaken -

so a little man made warming - if it is happening - which certainly isn't proven yet - may help moderate the next swing to cold -
 
Eat a burger - Save the World

Tackling UK's gassy cows problem
By Angus Crawford
BBC News


Number 128 is a jersey cow, she has beautiful brown eyes and cannot resist having a nibble of my microphone.

As she stares at me she is constantly chewing... and burping.
She could be producing as much as 500 litres of methane per day.

There are more than two million more like her across the UK.

They are the UK's biggest single source of methane - a gas 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide when it comes to global warming.

In fact cattle are responsible for about 3% of all Britain's greenhouse gases. Reduce that and experts say you not only make farming greener and more efficient, it could help Britain achieve its commitments under the Kyoto agreement.

Inefficient food

Scientists across the UK are working on ways to tackle the problem.

"Cows don't ruminate anymore," concludes Professor David Beever, an expert on nutrition with feed producer Richard Keenan and Co.

He believes that their food is not chewy enough, so they do not break it down in their mouths before it gets to their rumen. It is inefficient and produces more methane.

Part of his solution is to cut their silage feed to make it longer or chewier - "it's like adjusting the carburettor".

"Instead of perhaps 35 litres of methane per litre of milk, it could be as low as 25 or 20."


Elsewhere in labs and farm yards scientists are trying out inoculations, microbes or even extracts of garlic.

"Methane's a short-lived gas in the atmosphere," says Dr Christian Jardine, a senior researcher at the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University.

"So if we can reduce our methane emissions now, that will allow us to buy time for technologies to come in place to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions."

But what of the government's response - is it targeting a gas that could make big differences, quickly?

Dr Jardine says: "The government doesn't really have any direct policies targeting methane emissions."

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) disagrees.

"Agriculture has a key role to play in addressing climate change. The government's climate change programme, published in March this year, sets out a range of measures to help agriculture to both adapt to and reduce its impact on the climate," a spokesman said.


Agriculture has a key role to play in addressing climate change
Defra spokesman

"Continuing to improve production efficiency and reduce emissions is a key part of our vision for One Planet Farming."

But others think there should be an even wider, holistic approach.

Agriculturalist Professor Chris Pollock believes farmers, scientists and politicians need to look at agriculture's entire environmental footprint.

"You need to have a common currency that allows scientists to look at benefits in one area and disbenefits in another."

A feed additive which reduces methane, he explains, would be of no use if it has to be transported half way around the world, burning up fossil fuels.

As he puts it: "How much milk yield is a red squirrel worth?"
 
Ues it

fgk42 said:
"So if we can reduce our methane emissions now, that will allow us to buy time for technologies to come in place to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions."
Click to expand...
I wish the US pollution problem were this simple to solve. Just perform surgery on every cow. Insert a metal tube that would exit the belly to drain off the methane. Then attach a tank to the tube to hold the extracted methane. Change the tank daily. The filled tank's contents would then be compressed and stored in a larger tank. Hall the large tank to the industrial areas to be used for fuel. Wallah, cheap non polluting fuel. Sometime the brightest scientific minds overlook the simplest solutions. They are too smart for their own good.

Food for thought.
 
GM Cows

I'm sure I read somewhere that there is research being done into genetically modifying cows so that they produce little or no methane. Hold on, I'll google it.....




.......26 seconds
www.foodnavigator.com said:
Researchers believe that they can alter cattle digestion, either by removing the micro-organisms that produce methane from their stomachs or by creating micro-organisms that can produce metabolic products other than methane. The end result: green cows.
Click to expand...

Actually, if you read the whole article it's a bit scary. In a non-scary way that is.

http://www.foodnavigator.com/news/ng.asp?id=45565-green-cows-pull

Cheers

Reachy
 
Look the English have an answer 4 everything!

By Richard Black said:
BBC science correspondent


Scientists in Australia are investigating whether kangaroos could help combat global warming.
Australia's sheep and cattle produce huge amounts of methane, an important greenhouse gas - but kangaroos do not.

Researchers believe it might be possible to use bacteria found in the stomachs of kangaroos to reduce methane output from cows and sheep.

Methane emissions from farm animals account for about 15% of Australia's greenhouse gas production.

Yet kangaroos, feeding on the same sorts of grass, produce no methane at all.

Mystery bacteria

It is all down to the bacteria in their stomachs which help process the food they eat.


Farm animals make 15% of Australia's greenhouse gases

The stomach is basically a big fermentation tank, with lots of hydrogen in the frothy mix; sheep and cattle bacteria turn that hydrogen into methane, whereas kangaroo bacteria do something else with it.

Precisely what that something else is is still something of a mystery, but researchers in Queensland have isolated about 40 types of bacteria from kangaroo stomachs and are finding out how they work.

Then they can try putting them inside cattle and sheep, to replace the methane-producing bacteria.

As well as being more climate-friendly, the kangaroo bacteria could be good news for farmers too by raising yields of wool, milk and meat.

Kangaroo bacteria have evolved over millions of years to process Australian grasses, and so should be more efficient at it than sheep and cattle bacteria, which arrived from Europe during the last two centuries.
Click to expand...

Just think, Roo burgers

or throw a couple or Joey's on the barbie mate!
 
Beware the tought police!

American weather forecasters do battle over mankind's role in global warming
By David Usborne in New York
Published: 19 January 2007
A leading climatologist on the Weather Channel in the United States has caused a squall in the industry by arguing that any weather forecaster who dares publicly to question the notion that global warming is a manmade phenomenon should be stripped of their professional certification.

The call was made by Heidi Cullen, host of a weekly global warming programme on the cable network called The Climate Code, and coincides with a stretch of severely off-kilter weather across the US this winter and moves by Democrats to draft strict new legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Specifically, Ms Cullen is suggesting that the American Meteorological Society (AMS) revokes the "seal of approval" that it normally extends to broadcast forecasters in the US in cases where they have expressed scepticism about man's role in pushing up planetary temperatures.

"It's like allowing a meteorologist to go on-air and say that hurricanes rotate clockwise and tsunamis are caused by the weather," she wrote in her internet blog. "It's not a political statement... it's just an incorrect statement."

Ms Cullen is not alone in trying to marginalise doubters, who mostly argue that recent rises in temperatures are caused by normal cyclical weather patterns. They were described as "global warming deniers" by former vice-president Al Gore in his recent film An Inconvenient Truth.

Most Americans need neither Mr Gore nor Ms Cullen to know that something is up with the weather, however. This year's "wacky winter", as headline writers now describe it, continues to serve up unsettling surprises, the most recent of which was snow falling on the beach in Malibu, California, on Wednesday. The freeze in western states is expected to have eased by the weekend, but already it may have devastated California's citrus harvest with as much as 75 per cent destroyed by ice and frost. Freezing rain and snow paid a rare visit this week meanwhile to Texas and Oklahoma.

However, it is the eastern states that have experienced the strangest conditions - a six-week period of temperatures far above their normal range for the time of year. The unusual warmth has been a disaster for ski resorts in the area, some struggling even to produce man-made snow that will stick for a second, as well as for retailers trying to sell everything from winter jackets to snow shovels and duvets.

Cherry trees are blossoming in Washington DC and in some parks in New York, where the temperature reached a bewildering 22C (72F) 10 days ago, the daffodils are in full flower. When a few flakes finally fell in Central Park a week ago - so few they could not be measured by instruments - it was the latest recorded snow fall since records began in 1878.

All of this will be political grist to Democrats on Capitol Hill, who are gearing up to take advantage of their new position as the majority party to make climate change a legislative priority.

Nancy Pelosi, the new Speaker of the House, is expected to call for a new select committee purely to devise new laws on combating global warming, probably to be headed by Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts. "It's an issue that the Speaker thinks is critical to address," her spokeswoman said.

Any new legislation is likely to include mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions by American industries, a path that the White House has vigorously refused to follow. Democrats will also explore creating a market in emission caps, similar to the one that already exists in Europe. Under such a system, individual industries would be able to buy exemptions to exceed certain emission limits or acquire them and sell them to other industries

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2165452.ece
 
The Weather Channel Mess

January 18, 2007 | James Spann | Op/Ed

Well, well. Some “climate expert” on “The Weather Channel” wants to take away AMS certification from those of us who believe the recent “global warming” is a natural process. So much for “tolerance”, huh?

I have been in operational meteorology since 1978, and I know dozens and dozens of broadcast meteorologists all over the country. Our big job: look at a large volume of raw data and come up with a public weather forecast for the next seven days. I do not know of a single TV meteorologist who buys into the man-made global warming hype. I know there must be a few out there, but I can’t find them. Here are the basic facts you need to know:

*Billions of dollars of grant money is flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon. No man-made global warming, the money dries up. This is big money, make no mistake about it. Always follow the money trail and it tells a story. Even the lady at “The Weather Channel” probably gets paid good money for a prime time show on climate change. No man-made global warming, no show, and no salary. Nothing wrong with making money at all, but when money becomes the motivation for a scientific conclusion, then we have a problem. For many, global warming is a big cash grab.

*The climate of this planet has been changing since God put the planet here. It will always change, and the warming in the last 10 years is not much difference than the warming we saw in the 1930s and other decades. And, lets not forget we are at the end of the ice age in which ice covered most of North America and Northern Europe.

If you don’t like to listen to me, find another meteorologist with no tie to grant money for research on the subject. I would not listen to anyone that

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index....ecord_id=3a9bc8a4-802a-23ad-4065-7dc37ec39adf
 
Man-made Global Warming

Maybe Global Warming is man-made!
 

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