For those head-in-the sand conservatives who continue to deny the consensus of the liberal political-media complex and the taxpayer-funded scientific community, global warming has now been conclusively demonstrated.
The globe I am talking about is Mars.
Yep. The planet Mars. Warming. Ice-caps melting.
(Source: Astronomy, January 2006 issue, etc. -- via www.SteynOnline.com)
In response, proponents of man-made global warming now argue that this proves that Mars is inhabited by human-like abusers of the environment, probably driving big SUV-type vehicles and burning carbon-based fuels.
(And they probably vote Republican, too.)
"It's the best evidence for extraterrestrial intelligent life yet discovered", a female spokespersonwoman for the Equivocation Foundation reportedly said.
Apparently Prime Minister Stephen Harper has offered to send former Prime Minister Paul Martin along with NDP leader Jack Layton on a fact-finding mission to study a remote region of Mars known as the Keeohtoe Protocol.
14 comments:
It looks like climate change is a problem everywhere.
Major Storm Developing on Jupiter
Those SUVs must get around.
More news about climate change on Jupiter.
SUVs reach Jupiter???
Thanks, frappeur.
It's earthist to focus on Earth's global warming to the exclusion of other planets. Who will join with me to eliminate the scourge of earthism?
I agree it appears that there are lots of politcs envolving this climate change called global warming. I am a college student much younger then you old politicians that are obiously thick headed individuals. But in this talk of climate change it is very obvious that there needs to be a change for the sake of other species to survive and for the sake of your great grand children to be able to have a family of there own just like you do. It just wouldn't be fair if thick headed individuals like most of you were to be the only ones that survive on this planet now would it? So stop with your mumbo jumbo talk and get with the future program, start contributing like the rest of us, just start by seeing it for your selfs, And if you are still not convinced you all need to be schooled and go back to school and learn about this climate change called global warming!
mars -- As a college student, you should be developing critical-thinking skills. Consider the following:
1. Man's contribution to climate change is likely miniscule.
2. It is unproven, unlikely, and in fact most likely pure hubris to believe that man can, by his actions, eliminate or even substantially reduce climate change -- which has always occurred.
3. Taking the actions recommended by enviromentalists like Al Gore would do far more to damage future generations through economic devastation than continuing with our present course of economic development and expansion
So, for me, I'm going to keep driving my car and buying stuff from WalMart, while respecting, but not worshipping, the environment.
Best wishes with your studies -- what country do you live in?
You seem pretty confident about what you know about the global warming, so I´d like to offer you some additional data:
There´s a research consortium of over 50 American universities (that includes Berkeley, Stanford and Harvard, only to mention a few famous ones), called UCAR. I´d think those institutions are in the position of scientifically checking false end-of-the-world claims. At least more than you or me.
If you have questions about IF the global warming is happening, please have a look at this:
http://www.ucar.edu/research/climate/past.shtml
If you have questions about wether it´s man-made, please have look at this:
http://www.ucar.edu/research/climate/warming.shtml
And if it´s caused by things we do, changing it is also within our reach.
I´ll assume you are an independent and critical thinker, and as such you´re open to analyze new data, even if it contradicts your present beliefs.
If the data above is true (and it looks like it is) we´re in an important historical moment, where a major changing of human behavior and responsible global leadership is needed like never before.
Please check the websites I suggest here I draw your own conclusions.
Alexandre: No question in my mind that global warming is occurring. Problem is, it's occurring on Earth and on Mars. So, for starters, you would have to discount the global warming on Earth by the factor that it is already occurring on Mars, assuming that the same solar/cosmic effect is working on both Earth and Mars.
Thank you, Alexandre, for taking the time to post the information you did.
Have you taken into account the fact that the UN has concluded that cows and cattle are the biggest contributor to greenhouse gases on the planet?
Have you had a chance to read Michael Crichton's State of Fear?
Hi RK,
It was a nice surprise to see a quick response. This blog had no posts for some time so I reckoned you would not give it much attention anymore.
The second link I posted is exactly about the behavior of temperature on Earth with and without human action. I don´t know about the Mars warming, all I know is that it´s normal that our planet goes slowly up and down in temperature. We have been having a very slow warming since the last Ice Age. But there´s a distinct rise in the last two centuries (coinciding with our fossil fuel use) and half of this recent rise happened since 1965. So it´s going faster and faster, according to the UCAR reports (and I´m sure we´d find corroborating data from other sources).
No, I have not read State of Fear. Maybe I will, Crichton is a fair writer. I liked The Rising Sun. But drawing conclusions from a fiction book is like judging Christianity from The Da Vinci Code. Great thriller as it is, it is still fiction and is not a reliable source to be the base of one´s position.
I insist on those links I posted before. If you´re really interested in knowing wether this is a coming catastrophe, some mild change or just some secret plot of lies, please have a look at real data. If you´re not interested in finding that out, chances are you´re just dedicating your time to making cruel jokes.
Oh, and about the cattle:
I did know they were an important source of methane, and this gas plays an important role on the issue. And if you say it is THE biggest cause, I believe you.
I´ll compare it with another story. If you have one small tribe lay its dejects on a river, it´s ok. Nature will absorb it. It´s the Cycle of Life, to be Lion King-ish. But if you have a 5-million people metropolis laying its dejects on the same river, the river´s dead.
More than the cattle itself, overpopulation is a problem. We´re so many, and we need so much farmland instead of forests, so much cattle to feed us, that even its fart (if you´ll excuse the crude form of speech) becomes an issue. If the world´s population were in the 18th century level, we could pollute maybe as much as we do now. We could have our cattle without it being significant to the overall atmosphere composition.
Instead of refuting the global warming issue, I think the fact you mentioned reinforces it.
Again, only global consciousness and responsible leadership seem to be ways of changing this path humankind is going. It´s important people realize what´s going on (be it a ctastrophe or a lie) to make decisions based on truth. So, please: have a look at the data. Post refuting data, if you have it. This is too important to be dismissed just with clever jokes.
Alexandre:
1. Here's a link that gives visual evidence of Mars' melting ice-caps.
http://www.officiallyscrewed.com/blog/?p=665
An article on global-warming on Jupiter:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060504_red_jr.html
An article on global warming on Pluto:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/05/global-warming-on-jupiter.html
The question we need to ask ourselves is, "why aren't the climate-change advocates informing the public of these facts with equal vigor?"
2. In the book State of Fear, the author makes it clear that the book is fiction, but the footnotes are fact. The facts are compelling.
You owe it to yourself to read it.
3. For a serious article on the pseudo-science associated with global warming, and the so-called "greenhouse gases", the site to go to is
www.junkscience. com
4. And, of course, you know that in the 1970s alarmist scientists were warming of "global cooling" -- there's a famous Newsweek article that is available on the 'net.
I believe that man's contribution to climate change is very small; that larger forces beyond man's control are at work; that climate change is not necessarily a uniformly bad thing, and that while responsible behaviour towards the environment is always appropriate, drastic solutions that ruin our way of life, and the aspiring lives of third-world citizens, is completely uncalled for.
"The truth will set you free"
Have a great day!
alexandre -- where are you, man?
Hi RK,
I examined your posts. If you don´t mind me saying, that´s a deference you don´t seem to have given to mine.
I understand the point you´re trying to make is that the whole solar system is warming, so the cause would be out of our reach. Maybe the sun itself (as a common factor to all these planets and moons) would be the cause. Some comments on your posted links:
Officially screwed – polar cape is becoming smaller over the last few years. Good subject for research, although it´s a local and short-term effect – not global.
Reference frame – the “reactionary physicist´s” one. Please notice the inconsistency of this sentence: “At least close to the new spot and to the equator, nothing less than global warming is expected”. Global is supposed to be global. A warming close to the new spot is not what´s defined as global.
He also mentions other selected moons and planets. On some, he says it himself that the sun´s variation cannot be pointed out as cause. On others, again the local warming is stretched to a global one.
The websites above look too biased to me. The latter is even openly so. What credit would you have given me if I posted something like “Global warming as seen from the eco-freak point of view”?
Space.com – Looks like a nice website, but you seem to have drawn the wrong conclusion from its contents. It does not say anything about Jupiter´s global warming: temperature patterns are just changing. If you read the article carefully, they say Jupiter´s equatorial region seems to be warming up, while the poles seem to be cooling down.
Junkscience: There is some interesting stuff here. The text on the link below is something a scientist could have some fun on (unlike myself).
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/What_Watt.html
The article has some different ideas about how much warming the extra CO2 would mean. I´ll try to post it on the RealClimate.com forum, if nobody has done it yet. (If you don´t know it yet, that´s another one I recommend. RealClimate is a forum dedicated to climate scientists.)
Ok, but that´s just a mathematic model. No matter how neat it is, the observed mean temperature has a recent distinct rise, according to respected sources. Please refute that, if you have available information. Be so kind and have a look at my posts. Well, do that only IF you have the critical thinking you demanded from the mars guy up there. Only if the attitude is “let´s find out what reality is” rather than “this is what I believe and I´ll pick whatever information that corroborates it”. Of course you have the right of whatever attitude you please, but if that´s the case this is not the kind of debate I intend to be in.
You believe human´s contribution to global warming is tiny. What I want to know is: based on what do you believe that? Crichton´s book? You said the footnotes are facts, so what facts did convince you? You say global warming is not uniformly a bad thing. Again, what makes you believe that? Of course, Canada and Siberia seem to have nice prospects, but that´s not where most of the world´s population is. Sub-saharian Africa and Southern Asia, two densly populated regions, are already hot regions. That´s definetly not the kind of life they aspire, as you suggested.
Post your arguments. If the media is not giving what you think to be the due attention to the anti-global warming reasoning, at least expose it properly here.
Look, although I don´t believe so, I concede you may be right. But please remember the same thing goes the other way around, and the alarmists may be the ones who are right. What if you´re just scared of giving up your way of life, and is desperately turning a blind eye to the evidence that the world IS warming up, and perhaps in a new, man-induced and dangerous way? And in doing so, you may be doing your part to destroy the very way of life you´re trying to stick to. I suggest you expose yourself to the arguments, even if they are opposite to your beliefs (I am honestly trying to do the same). You may even find out that your life style wouldn´t change that much.
And have in mind that the fact that most of the scientific community agrees on something is not exactly proof that it´s wrong.
Alexandre, I have in fact been working my way through your sites. The first one I checked relied on projections, along the line of "this is what things woulda/coulda been like...".
The problem is, as I think you realize, that projections are just that -- mathematical projections.
The footnotes in State of Fear are too comprehensive to explain here. You owe it to yourself to read the book -- it's a very enjoyable read, although I must apologize in advance for the foul language used in the book; seems to come with the territory today.
There are all kinds of unscientific undercurrents associated with science today, such as:
-- the desire for funding
-- the desire to impose a guilt-laden anti-west, anti-man, anti-capitalism agenda on the developed world
-- the assumption that man is the centre of things, the cause of all problems on earth, and that he can by his own efforts correct and perfect things - I view this as sheer hubris
As for the benefits of global warming --
-- longer growing seasons in places like Canada, resulting in more food production to feed the world
-- less reliance on fossil fuels to heat buildings as winters become more temperate
And, the fact that the globe heats up in one place does not necessarily mean it heats up uniformly everywhere. I've been to Singapore about 30 times, and, although it's within 100 miles of the equator, it's hot, but it's not THAT hot. It's no hotter, in fact less hot, than, say, Tulsa Oklahoma, and it's way far north of the equator.
Finally, there is scientific evidence on the horizon that we are on the cusp of a period of global cooling.
See the blog, "Enjoy it while you can...", plus I'm going to post something more on this.
This, of course, is the beauty of changing the threat from "global warming" to, simply, "climate change" -- no matter which way the weather goes, any deviations from norm will be chalked up to man-made causes.
The benefits you mentioned apply to Canada and Russia, mainly.
RK, I´ve been reading your other forums, and I´m convinced you´re a good and God-fearing man. But to the casual observer, wouldn´t that sound remarkably like a constructor saying that the earthquake is not entirely a bad thing?
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