Let's have it out right here, guys:

Global Warming is not a myth. The accusation that humans are mainly responsible for it, however, is.

Let's have it out right here, guys:

Global Warming is not a myth. The accusation that humans are mainly responsible for it, however, is.


We are the only species that effects this planet in a major way. Unless the ant's are entering an industrial age I'm not sure who/what else could be mainly responsible.

Who's to say that enviromental change is the result of any one species directly affecting it, and not just a natural cyclical process.

Cycle Smoothed
21......Blue
22......Black
23......Red


Cycle 21 started in June 1976 and lasted 10 years and 3 months.
Cycle 22 started in September 1986 and lasted 9 years and 8 months.
Cycle 23 started in May 1996.

Who's to say that enviromental change is the result of any one species directly affecting it, and not just a natural cyclical process.

I would have to agree with the natural cycle theory, but all the crap we pump into the air and water is only helping to make it worse. Can anyone tell me how many Hurricanes we had this year? Mother nature will only stand for so much before she takes the necessary steps to rid itself of the problem (us) and restore the balance to herself.

I would have to agree with the natural cycle theory, but all the crap we pump into the air and water is only helping to make it worse. Can anyone tell me how many Hurricanes we had this year? Mother nature will only stand for so much before she takes the necessary steps to rid itself of the problem (us) and restore the balance to herself.

It was certainly an active hurricane season, and it'd be wise to expect about a decade more of the active seasons.

With that said, it's cyclical.

The current increase in hurricane activity is the result of a natural cycle called the Atlantic multi-decadal mode. Every 20 to 40 years the conditions in the Atlantic Ocean and atmospheric conditions produce just the ideal conditions needed to cause increased storm and hurricane activity.

The Atlantic Ocean is currently going through an active period of hurricane activity that began in 1995 and that has continued to the present. Scientists consider the period from 71-94 to have been a period of low hurricane activity.

These cycles have been occurring for centuries if not more than a thousand years.

If you're linking the severity of some of the storms to global warming, keep in mind there were two hurricanes in 1893 that killed over 2,000 people each. In 1900 a hurricane killed 6,000 of 37,000 residents of Galveston, Texas. In 1928 a hurricane hit West Palm Beach and killed somewhere between 1,800 and 3,500 people.

So destructive storms aren't new. And, even in the most pesimistic models, global warming could only be capable for intesifying a storm by up to 5%.

(plaguerized in part from: http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/050831_hurricane_freq.html)

And the strongest hurricane to make land fall in the United States, in recorded history, was the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, which took out the overseas railroad in the Florida Keys. Years before any alleged global warming.

We can't be helping much but we are but a speck on this great earth. I read Michael Crichton's book and finished it thinking we were finished.

It was on this site, with Bryan's tutilage, that I began to see how the facts and timelines were manipulated to make Crichton's story more plausable.

I can also understand the rights displeasure with MSM as they seem to suffer a similar propensity to make stories, not present facts. The problem that I have is there seems to be no fact-based reporting on this issue. Everone seems to take sides. There seems to be no middle ground.

Mother nature will only stand for so much before she takes the necessary steps to rid itself of the problem (us) and restore the balance to herself.

how do you know that, do you know her persionally?

Its ludacris to think that we can pinpoint what causes anything in nature. Especially global warming. We dont even know all the species on This planet, how can you expect that we can understand all the effects that other planets (sun, moon, w/e) has on ours. And why must we rule out, thats just how it is...we cant, we havent been mesuring this "global warming" since the beg. of time, just since we started mesuring...thats all. thats not enough of a timeframe to come to a conclusion on anything about mother nature, concidering that she has been here for whats it like...3.x billion years? has anyone forgotten about the ice age? were glacures(sp) to blame for that one?

And the strongest hurricane to make land fall in the United States, in recorded history, was the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, which took out the overseas railroad in the Florida Keys. Years before any alleged global warming.

and that was just since we started mesuring hurricanes...who knows how bad they were before then...who knows, humans' interaction with mother nature could be taming it, mabey back 6-700 years ago we would have been well past the greek alphabet?

So pollution and green house gases have nothing to do with it? That's a big relief, we all can relax now.

So pollution and green house gases have nothing to do with it? That's a big relief, we all can relax now.

Your sarcasm accomplishes nothing but making you look like a naysayer with nothing substantive to add.

The fact is that we can't even get our own temperature gauges right. For 50 years we reported wind chill factor incorrectly. If we can't even measure the temperature right, how can scientists say with any certainty that the Earth is warming?

And then how can they prove that greenhouse gases cause this? In fact, pollution that you claim keeps the heat inside the atmosphere would also tend to reflect the sun's output away from our atmosphere.

By the way, the hottest average temp of the Earth in the last 20 years? 1998! Hmmm.

Sun to Blame for Global Warming



by John Carlisle



Those looking for the culprit responsible for global warming have missed the obvious choice - the sun. While it may come as a newsflash to some, scientific evidence conclusively shows that the sun plays a far more important role in causing global warming and global cooling than any other factor, natural or man-made. In fact, what may very well be the ultimate ironic twist in the global warming controversy is that the same solar forces that caused 150 years of warming are on the verge of producing a prolonged period of cooling.

The evidence for future cooling is supported by considerable scientific research that has only recently begun to come to light. It wasn't until 1980, with the aid of NASA satellites, that scientists definitively proved that the sun's brightness - or radiance - varies in intensity, and that these variations occur in predictable cyclical patterns. This was a crucial discovery because the climate models used by greenhouse theory proponents always assumed that the sun's radiance was constant. With that assumption in hand, they could ignore solar influences and focus on other influences, including human.

That turned out to be a reckless assumption. Further investigation revealed that there is a strong correlation between the variations in solar irradiance and fluctuations in the Earth's temperature. When the sun gets dimmer, the Earth gets cooler; when the sun gets brighter, the Earth gets hotter. So important is the sun in climate change that half of the 1.5° F temperature increase since 1850 is directly attributable to changes in the sun. According to NASA scientists David Lind and Judith Lean, only one-quarter of a degree can be ascribed to other causes, such as greenhouse gases, through which human activities can theoretically exert some influence.

The correlation between major changes in the Earth's temperature and changes in solar radiance is quite compelling. A perfect example is the Little Ice Age that lasted from 1650 to 1850. Temperatures in this era fell to as much as 2° F below today's temperature, causing the glaciers to advance, the canals in Venice to freeze and major crop failures. Interestingly, this dramatic cooling happened in a period when the sun's radiance had fallen to exceptionally low levels. Between 1645 and 1715, the sun was in a stage that scientists refer to as the Maunder Minimum. In this minimum, the sun has few sunspots and low magnetism which automatically indicates a lower radiance level. When the sun began to emerge from the minimum, radiance increased and by 1850 the temperature had warmed up enough for the Little Ice Age to end.

The Maunder Minimum is not an isolated event: it is a cyclical phenomenon that typically appears for 70 years following 200-300 years of warming. With only a few exceptions, whenever there is a solar minimum, the Earth gets colder. For example, Europe in the 13th and 15th Centuries experienced significantly lower temperatures and in both cases the cold spells coincided with a minimum. Similar correlations were found in the 9th Century and again in the 7th Century. Since 8700 B.C., there have been at least ten major cold periods similar to the Little Ice Age. Nine of those ten cold spells coincided with Maunder Minima.

There is no reason to believe that this 10,000-year-old cycle of solar-induced warming and cooling will change. Dr. Sallie Baliunas, an astrophysicist with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and one of the nation's leading experts on global climate change, believes that we may be nearing the end of a solar warming cycle. Since the last minimum ended in 1715, Baliunas says there is a strong possibility that the Earth will start cooling off in the early part of the 21st Century.

Indeed, it could already be happening. Of the 1.5° F in warming the planet experienced over the last 150 years, two-thirds of that increase, or one degree, occurred between 1850 and 1940. In the last 50 years, the planetary temperature increased at a significantly slower rate of 0.5° F - precisely when dramatically increasing amounts of man-made carbon dioxide emissions should have been accelerating warming. Further buttressing the arguments for future cooling is the evidence from NASA satellites that the global temperature has actually fallen 0.04° F since 1979.

Of course, it is impossible to precisely predict when solar radiance will drop and global temperatures will begin falling. But one thing is certain: There is little evidence that mankind is responsible for global warming. There is considerable evidence that the sun causes warming and will most likely stimulate cooling in the not so distant future.

http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA203.html

I concur

Sometimes one just has to gaze up at the sky for the answer.

Sometimes one just has to gaze up at the sky for the answer.


dont gaze too long, youll burn your retnas

Failing ocean current raises fears of mini ice age

-30 Nov 05 -

The ocean current that gives western Europe its relatively
balmy climate is stuttering, raising fears that it might fail entirely and plunge
the continent into a mini ice age.

The dramatic finding comes from a study of ocean circulation in the North
Atlantic , which found a 30% reduction in the warm currents that carry water
north from the Gulf Stream .

The slow-down, which has long been predicted as a possible consequence
of global warming, will give renewed urgency to intergovernmental talks in
Montreal , Canada , this week on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
(Isn’t this great? We’re heading into a mini ice age … and they call it
global warming.)

Harry Bryden at the Southampton Oceanography Centre in the UK , whose
group carried out the analysis, told New Scientist. "We are nervous about
our findings. They have come as quite a surprise."

The North Atlantic is dominated by the Gulf Stream – currents that bring warm
water north from the tropics. At around 40° north – the latitude of Portugal and New York – the current divides. Some water heads southwards in a surface current known as the subtropical gyre, while the rest continues north, leading to warming winds that raise European temperatures by 5°C to 10°C.

But when Bryden’s team measured north-south heat flow last year, using a set of instruments strung across the Atlantic from the Canary Islands to the Bahamas, they found that the division of the waters appeared to have changed since previous surveys in 1957, 1981 and 1992. From the amount of water in the subtropical gyre and the flow southwards at depth, they calculate that the quantity of warm water flowing north had fallen by around 30%....most of the slow-down happened between 1992 and 1998.

Nobody is clear on what has gone wrong. Suggestions for blame include the
melting of sea ice or increased flow from Siberian rivers into the Arctic . Both
would load fresh water into the surface ocean, making it less dense and so
preventing it from sinking, which in turn would slow the flow of tropical water from the south. And either could be triggered by man-made climate change. Some climate models predict that global warming could lead to such a shutdown later this century.

The last shutdown, which prompted a temperature drop of 5°C to 10°C in
western Europe, was probably at the end of the last ice age, 12,000 years ago.

There may also have been a slowing of Atlantic circulation during the Little Ice
Age, which lasted sporadically from 1300 to about 1850 and created
temperatures low enough to freeze the River Thames in London . (Do you suppose man-made climate changes prompted the shutdown of 12,000 years ago?)

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8398

There may also have been a slowing of Atlantic circulation during the Little Ice
Age, which lasted sporadically from 1300 to about 1850 and created
temperatures low enough to freeze the River Thames in London . (Do you suppose man-made climate changes prompted the shutdown of 12,000 years ago?)

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8398

Of course! It was caused by................Halliburton! ;)

How did they go from global freezing to global warming in just a few years?

Newsweek
April 28, 1975

The Cooling World

There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production– with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”

A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.

To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras – and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age” conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 – years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.

Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. “Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,” concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. “Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.”

Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases – all of which have a direct impact on food supplies.

“The world’s food-producing system,” warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA’s Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, “is much more sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago.” Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.

Reprinted from Financial Post - Canada, Jun 21, 2000


So these scientists originally thought we were going to have an ice age, but they switched to warming instead. Hey, make up your mind! Can you say LACK OF CREDIBILITY???

Controversial forest study creates heat
Canada's trees not so cool: scientist

Fri Jan 6 2006

By Tom Spears



CANADA'S forests may actually worsen global warming rather than cool the planet, says a controversial study by a Stanford University physicist and environmental scientist.
This doesn't mean we should bulldoze forests to fight global warming, says Ken Caldeira. Forests are still valuable ecological features in many ways.

But he says it's "premature at least," and maybe even dead wrong, to plant new forests and maintain existing ones in the belief that this will cool the Earth. If we want to stop global warming, he says, we'd better begin by burning less fossil fuel.

This is, he admits, an unpopular view with many.

Since he presented his paper at the conference of the American Geophysical Union last month, he's been getting an earful. "Somebody from the California Forest Service contacted me and said: 'What are you doing? We're trying to plant forests, and are you some kind of evil guy?' "

The finding also challenges Canada's official stance -- that we should get credit for maintaining huge forests when countries decide how much to should reduce their burning of coal, oil and gasoline under the Kyoto Protocol.

Here's how the Caldeira theory works:

First, it's true that growing trees soak up carbon dioxide from the air. This removes the main gas causing global warming, and locks it up in wood.

But he says tropical rainforests are the only ones that actually cool the Earth. They not only soak up carbon dioxide, but also give off great amounts of moisture, producing clouds which reflect sunlight back into space.

Meanwhile the temperate forests (those in most of the U.S. and southern Canada) and boreal ones (farther north) are problems, he claims.

Trees are designed to soak up massive amounts of energy from the sun. Much of this, he argues, is gradually released in the form of heat, especially in dark evergreen forests in the north, but also in temperate forests of maple, poplar and beech. Unlike tropical forests, Canadian forests don't release much cooling moisture.

His computer model indicates that this warming influence is more powerful than the cooling job that forests do when they soak up carbon dioxide -- especially since mature forests don't soak up all that much because they don't grow bigger forever.

In one simulation, the team covered much of the northern hemisphere with forests and saw a jump in surface air temperature of nearly three Celsius degrees. That said, Caldeira still wants forests protected for other reasons.

"I like forests. They provide good habitats for plants and animals," he said.

His five-member team published their results in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

But a senior Canadian ecologist warns that forests and climate and terribly complex, and no computer model is likely to tell the full story.

David Schindler of the University of Alberta recalls years studying lakes in northwestern Ontario, including areas where forests had burned away.

"Once the forests were gone, we had much, much hotter conditions just from the black rock underneath, and so on, absorbing sunlight instead of the trees," he said. "If the trees do transpire (give off moisture) it cools things down."

-- CanWest News Service

Thomas Sowell

Green lies
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com

Not often do Rush Limbaugh and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman agree on anything but recently both of them pointed out the same pattern in the prices of housing – and both were correct.


The pattern is this: Despite hysteria over high home prices, in most parts of the United States housing is quite affordable. But in some places housing prices are astronomical – three times the national average in much of California, for example.


Despite the old rule of thumb that housing should cost no more than one fourth of your income, there are parts of California where tenants and new home buyers pay at least half their incomes for housing.


This can be a serious problem in such places because it means that only the other half of people's income is available to pay for such frills as food and clothing.


These dire situations are more likely to be featured in the media, partly because bad news sells newspapers and gets higher television ratings. Moreover, media elites are more likely to be living in the places where housing prices are out of sight – places like Manhattan, coastal California, and the posh suburbs around Washington or various other cities.


It is a very different story in most of the rest of the country. A scholarly study published in the October 2005 issue of the Journal of Law and Economics concluded: "In the sprawling cities of the American heartland, land remains cheap, real construction costs are falling, and expanding supply keeps housing costs low."


In some cities, housing prices have actually declined as the housing supply has expanded. None of this is rocket science. It is supply and demand.


Why then are there particular places where housing costs have skyrocketed?


In those places, much of the land is prevented by law from being used to build housing. These land use restrictions are seldom called land use restrictions.


They are called by much prettier names, like "open space" laws, laws to "preserve farmland" or prevent "sprawl," "greenbelt" laws – or whatever else will sell politically.


People who already own their own homes don't worry about whether such laws will drive housing prices sky high. Somebody else will have to pay those prices while existing homeowners see the value of their property rise by leaps and bounds.


Meanwhile, land that might otherwise provide homes for others becomes in effect free park land for themselves, while such upscale communities use "open space" laws to keep out the masses. The crowning touch is that such self-interest is depicted as idealism.


A famous economist named Joseph Schumpeter once said that the first thing someone will do for his ideals is lie. Some people distinguish little white lies from black lies but the biggest lies of all are green lies.


To hear environmental zealots tell it, they are just trying to save the last few patches of greenery from being paved over. But in fact the land area of the United States covered by forests is more than three times as large as the land area covered by all the cities and towns across the nation.


Only about 5 percent of the land is urban. In other words, you could double the size of every city and town in America and still nine-tenths of the land would be undeveloped.


Some of the biggest hysteria about "saving" land is found in places where most of the land is already off-limits to building. Some of the biggest crocodile tears about a need to "preserve farmland" come from people who are not farmers, and who know little and care less about farming.


Chronic agricultural surpluses that cost the taxpayers billions show that there is too much farmland producing more than the market can absorb, while the growing of these surplus crops puts all sorts of chemicals into the ground, water, and air. But the green liars don't mention that.


Their real agenda is keeping out other people. Home builders who would enable other people to move into their community are called selfish and greedy. Green liars consider themselves morally far superior to "developers."

I don't want to read anymore of Fossten's post except for his first post as this is maybe one of the few times I may agree with him. Ahhhhh!!!!

Are we going through a state of global warming yes. But this is a cycle that the earth goes through.

The ice caps have not always been there, unless you believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old. Then they were.

During the mid Mesozoic Era the C02 content of the atmosphere was much higher than today allowing for the earth to be much warmer. Pangaea was more centrally located near the equator and the earth was home to the largest amount of plant life.

As Pangaea broke up and continents moved north plant life begins to lesson as the earth becomes more dry. Plants life consumes more C02 animal life consume more plant life. Plant life decreases building the large supply of coal and oil that we use today.

65 million year ago the earth goes through a traumatic change cause (Pat Roberts might say that God punished the Dinosaurs - sorry had to) astronomic impact or great volcanic activity, maybe both. But this traumatic change causes the end of the dinosaurs and a start of the first of 3 major ice ages last one ended 10,000 years ago or are we still in that ice age?

Temps are on the rise, earth is going through some changes, this is typical for the earth. Is man having an effect on the changes, probably as much as the dinosaurs had on the earth many (sorry creationist) millions of years ago.

Man is adding to the green house gases. If we use less fossil fuels we will slow the process, but the warming of the earth will continue, and then we will reach a point an the earth will once again cool.

Simple explanation!

Should we drill more oil. Depends, my opinion we should start finding or developing other sources. Maybe it's time to give up our cars (toys) and get into something else. Those of you who can afford the new items have fun with them. It will leave more oil for those of us who have to wait a few more year until the price comes down. Buy that time we will not need or depend on oil anymore.

About time the US does what it use to do, lead the world on research and the development of new technology.

Right now I feel we have too many people in industry raping the middle class keeping us Dependant on oil and bringing the US to it's knees as a back wards country.

Again this is simple! and that's the way I will keep it. I don't have an ego that I have to feed to make me feel important. This is a automobile forum.

... But this is a cycle that the earth goes through....


Though to argue with earth's cycles...

I'll hold my breath until Rich decides to give up his car. :D

I'll hold my breath until Rich decides to give up his car. :D

Don't hold your breath...you might turn Green. :eek:

Again this is simple! and that's the way I will keep it. I don't have an ego that I have to feed to make me feel important. This is a automobile forum.Last I checked this was the political forum on an automotive website. I did a search of the site and there seems to be discussions about absolutely nothing, and in addition to naked girls, there seems to be talk about cars. Eh, no one forces anybody to lurk here. Nobody forces anybody to post here. Nobody needs to come here if they don't want to. Ego or no ego, some of us get our kicks yacking about this stuff. Doesn't make it right or wrong. Simply just another outlet on the site for members to enjoy. But like I said, nobody is forced to come here so if it doesn't suit your fancy...

Last I checked this was the political forum on an automotive website. I did a search of the site and there seems to be discussions about absolutely nothing, and in addition to naked girls, there seems to be talk about cars. Eh, no one forces anybody to lurk here. Nobody forces anybody to post here. Nobody needs to come here if they don't want to. Ego or no ego, some of us get our kicks yacking about this stuff. Doesn't make it right or wrong. Simply just another outlet on the site for members to enjoy. But like I said, nobody is forced to come here so if it doesn't suit your fancy...

Now why did you go and do that! I even said I agreed with Fossten a difficult thing to do! There should have been a celebration! This thread could actually work on uniting 2 sides with respect, other than the disrespectful division that stands. Something our political geniuses in Washington can't seem to do.

I even said I agreed with Fossten a difficult thing to do!Actually, agreeing with Fossten is easy to do as he is almost always right.

Actually, agreeing with Fossten is easy to do as he is almost always right.

Right yes correct No!

I would agree with that.

Barry,

Thank you for noncontributing to this thread.

You're welcome. Do you actually believe that you are almost always right?

Let me get this straight. You're trying to start an argument with ME about something BRYAN said? Go back and re-read this thread. I haven't even commented on your silly premise.

What's your problem? Why do you and Rich have to make this Global Warming thread about me? Is it because you have nothing solid to contribute toward the topic?

Seems like despite your private overtures of peace to me in PMs, you are still outwardly a hater.

Just asked a simple question. Don't get your panties in a bunch.

Just asked a simple question. Don't get your panties in a bunch.

No, you asked a silly, baiting, irrelevant question.

Can we get back to topic now?

Ex-EPA Chiefs Blame Bush in Global Warming

By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer

Thursday, January 19, 2006
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2006/01/18/national/w144850S66.DTL
(01-19) 16:20 PST WASHINGTON (AP) --

The U.S. is failing to take the lead in confronting global warming, a "dishonest" and "self-destructive" approach that only worsens the problem, say former federal environmental chiefs.

"We need leadership, and I don't think we're getting it," Russell Train said Wednesday at an Environmental Protection Agency symposium commemorating the agency's 35th anniversary.

Added Bill Ruckelshaus: "I don't think there's a commitment in this administration."

They were among six former EPA heads — five Republicans and one Democrat — who accused the Bush administrations of neglecting global warming and other environmental problems.

Train said slowing the growth of "greenhouse" gases isn't enough.

"To sit back and just push it away and say we'll deal with it sometime down the road is dishonest to the people and self-destructive" said Train, who succeeded Ruckelshaus in the Nixon and Ford administrations. Ruckelshaus was the first EPA chief.

All of the former administrators and the current one, Stephen Johnson, raised their hands when the event moderator asked whether they believe global warming is a real problem and again when he asked if humans bear significant blame.

Johnson said the Bush administration has spent $20 billion on research and technology to combat climate change after President Bush rejected mandatory controls on carbon dioxide. That's the chief gas blamed for trapping heat in the atmosphere like a greenhouse.

Bush has kept the United States out of the Kyoto international treaty to reduce greenhouse gases, saying the pact would harm the U.S. economy. Many of the accord's terms were negotiated by the Clinton administration but it was never ratified by the Senate.

"I know from the president on down, he is committed," Johnson said. "And certainly his charge to me was, and certainly our team has heard it: 'I want you to accelerate the pace of environmental protection. I want you to maintain our economic competitiveness.' And I think that's really what it's all about."

But Lee Thomas, Ruckelshaus' successor in the Reagan administration, said "if the United States doesn't deal with those kinds of issues in a leadership role, they're not going to get dealt with. So I'm very concerned about this country and this agency."

Bill Reilly, the EPA administrator under the first President Bush, said, "The time will come when we will address seriously the problem of climate change, and this is the agency that's best equipped to anticipate it."

Christie Whitman, the first of three EPA administrators in the current Bush administration, said people obviously are having "an enormous impact" on the earth's warming.

"You'd need to be in a hole somewhere to think that the amount of change that we have imposed on land, and the way we've handled deforestation, farming practices, development, and what we're putting into the air, isn't exacerbating what is probably a natural trend," she said. "But this is worse, and it's getting worse."

Carol Browner, who was President Clinton's EPA administrator, said the White House and the Congress should push legislation to establish a carbon trading program based on a 1990 pollution trading program that helped reduce acid rain.

"If we wait for every single scientist who has a thought on the issue of climate change to agree, we will never do anything," she said.

Three former administrators did not attend Wednesday's ceremony: Mike Leavitt, the current health and human services secretary; Doug Costle, who was in the Carter administration; and Anne Burford, a Reagan appointee who died last year.

Your article is untimely, Phil, considering that global warming is now being questioned by prominent scientists as being incorrect.

Nobody cares what former EPA wackos think. Kyoto is a scam and everybody knows it except you fiberals.

Good thing for us we have a Prez that shows leadership in not kowtowing to the Europeans' fearmongering.

I might concede your point that global warming may not be all man's fault but how do you explain 56° in Michigan on January 19th? Global warming is real no matter where you might like to shift the reasons.

Global Warming is not all Man's fault. Pollution and the quality of our environment is man’s fault. EPA – Bush look at the environmental quality of Texas.

What I still see is funny is that if group or anyone finds fault in Bush, it’s wrong and they are Wacko. Only Pro-Bu$hit ideology is correct. Well the only thing it is right. Right winged that is.

I might concede your point that global warming may not be all man's fault but how do you explain 56° in Michigan on January 19th? Global warming is real no matter where you might like to shift the reasons.

Your question is rhetorical. I don't dispute global warming, only that we are causing it or that we could stop it.

However -

There is evidence that we are on the verge of a global cooling period.

Either way, Phil's article is pure bunk and irrelevant to the arguments of this thread.

Your article is untimely, Phil, considering that global warming is now being questioned by prominent scientists as being incorrect.

The majority of the scientists I've seen questioning the validity of global warming work for foundations funded by the Oil, Coal and Automotive industries, think that might have something to do with their positions?

Nobody cares what former EPA wackos think. Kyoto is a scam and everybody knows it except you fiberals.
These were all respected members of the community, now EPA wackos because they disagree with Shrub?

Good thing for us we have a Prez that shows leadership in not kowtowing to the Europeans' fearmongering.
Shrub and cronies have altered scientific reports to cast doubt on the validity of the findings of the reports concerning global warming. Keep your head buried in the sand, your kids will pay the price!!

The majority of the scientists I've seen questioning the validity of global warming work for foundations funded by the Oil, Coal and Automotive industries, think that might have something to do with their positions?


These were all respected members of the community, now EPA wackos because they disagree with Shrub?


Shrub and cronies have altered scientific reports to cast doubt on the validity of the findings of the reports concerning global warming. Keep your head buried in the sand, your kids will pay the price!!

Once again, Phil, you pose EMPTY assertions backed up by NO FACTUAL evidence whatsoever.

You own the empty, kool-aid rhetoric, but you are *owned* by the truth.

I might concede your point that global warming may not be all man's fault but how do you explain 56° in Michigan on January 19th? Global warming is real no matter where you might like to shift the reasons.
better check the farmers almanac, there have been lots of warm winters on record. didn't we just have one of the coldest winters on record a few years ago?

Have you seen the pictures of the polar ice caps and glaciers? I'm not just talking about mild winters.

Scientists question trees' role in global warming

Under the United Nations' Kyoto Protocol on global warming, the forest is a saint, as trees suck in carbon dioxide (CO2) as part of the natural process of respiration.

By such thinking, if Kyoto signatories plant lots of forests, they create wonderful sponges that absorb the dangerous climate-altering gas.

But what if trees, in addition to taking in CO2, also emit a greenhouse gas of their own?

That scenario is sketched in a new study by European scientists, which if confirmed, would be one of the biggest upheavals in climate science for years.

It would also inflict a serious blow to Kyoto, one of whose key pillars is the faith in "sinks", as forests are called in the treaty's jargon.

Until now, the mainstream belief is that atmospheric methane chiefly comes from bugs: from bacteria working in wet, oxygen-less conditions, such as swamps and rice paddies.

But in a study published in the journal Nature, a team led by Frank Keppler of the Max Planck Institute in Germany has found living plants, dried leaves and grass emit methane in the presence of air.

Nor is this gas just a piffling amount.

The researchers roughly estimate the world's living vegetation emits between 62 and 236 million tonnes of methane per year, and plant litter adds one to seven million tonnes.

This would be equivalent to between 10 and 30 per cent of all annual global emissions of methane.
Experiments

The evidence comes from a series of carefully controlled experiments in the lab and in the field, in which gas chromatography and sensors to monitor carbon-13 isotopes detected and measured methane flows from the vegetation.

The ambient atmosphere was first stripped of background methane before being pumped into enclosed tanks surrounding the plants and leaves in order to get a better chance of spotting the vegetal gas emissions.

Levels of methane were "very temperature sensitive," with concentrations approximately doubling with every 10 degrees Celsius rise in temperature in a range between 30 degrees and 70 degrees, a phenomenon that suggests that breakdown by enzymes is not the cause.

In a review of the study, New Zealand atmospheric scientist David Lowe said the findings were a surprise but in fact could explain a nagging puzzle.

Between 1990 and 2000, satellite monitors had detected a slowing of methane flows to the atmosphere by around 20 million tonnes a year.

The cause for this may have been the dramatic rate of deforestation during the same period, Dr Lowe suggested.

From 1990-2000, more than 12 per cent of the world's tropical forests were hacked down.

Added to this is the anecdotal data from satellite sensors, which have occasionally spotted inexplicably large plumes of methane over old tropical forests, he said.

[snip]

better check the farmers almanac, there have been lots of warm winters on record. didn't we just have one of the coldest winters on record a few years ago?


And while it was 56 in Michigan, it was 35 below zero in Moscow and people were freezing to death in the streets.

Once again, Phil, you pose EMPTY assertions backed up by NO FACTUAL evidence whatsoever.

Did you have to have the doorways enlarged in your house? Cause you certainly are full of yourself, your head is extremely large, too bad it's empty.

Here is a link to Henry Waxmans site with articles concerning the politicization of science, how Shrub has altered reports, etc.
http://www.democrats.reform.house.gov/investigations.asp?Issue=Politics+and+Science
Before you pooh-pooh because it's Waxmans site why don't you read some of the posted articles. There is plenty of info on other sites that back this up. It's a been a RW tactic dating back to the beginning of the EPA, just that Shrubby has taken it to new highs.

More info here:http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/interference/

Scientists question trees' role in global warming

Under the United Nations' Kyoto Protocol on global warming, the forest is a saint, as trees suck in carbon dioxide (CO2) as part of the natural process of respiration.

By such thinking, if Kyoto signatories plant lots of forests, they create wonderful sponges that absorb the dangerous climate-altering gas.

But what if trees, in addition to taking in CO2, also emit a greenhouse gas of their own?

That scenario is sketched in a new study by European scientists, which if confirmed, would be one of the biggest upheavals in climate science for years.

It would also inflict a serious blow to Kyoto, one of whose key pillars is the faith in "sinks", as forests are called in the treaty's jargon.

Until now, the mainstream belief is that atmospheric methane chiefly comes from bugs: from bacteria working in wet, oxygen-less conditions, such as swamps and rice paddies.

But in a study published in the journal Nature, a team led by Frank Keppler of the Max Planck Institute in Germany has found living plants, dried leaves and grass emit methane in the presence of air.

Nor is this gas just a piffling amount.

The researchers roughly estimate the world's living vegetation emits between 62 and 236 million tonnes of methane per year, and plant litter adds one to seven million tonnes.

This would be equivalent to between 10 and 30 per cent of all annual global emissions of methane.
Experiments

The evidence comes from a series of carefully controlled experiments in the lab and in the field, in which gas chromatography and sensors to monitor carbon-13 isotopes detected and measured methane flows from the vegetation.

The ambient atmosphere was first stripped of background methane before being pumped into enclosed tanks surrounding the plants and leaves in order to get a better chance of spotting the vegetal gas emissions.

Levels of methane were "very temperature sensitive," with concentrations approximately doubling with every 10 degrees Celsius rise in temperature in a range between 30 degrees and 70 degrees, a phenomenon that suggests that breakdown by enzymes is not the cause.

In a review of the study, New Zealand atmospheric scientist David Lowe said the findings were a surprise but in fact could explain a nagging puzzle.

Between 1990 and 2000, satellite monitors had detected a slowing of methane flows to the atmosphere by around 20 million tonnes a year.

The cause for this may have been the dramatic rate of deforestation during the same period, Dr Lowe suggested.

From 1990-2000, more than 12 per cent of the world's tropical forests were hacked down.

Added to this is the anecdotal data from satellite sensors, which have occasionally spotted inexplicably large plumes of methane over old tropical forests, he said.

[snip]
What is the source of this article? you used to bitch at me that I didn't post a link to the original, I now do so, why don't you?

The world is just too greedy to stop poluting. Break out the sunscreen and crank up the A/C, it's gonna be a long nother 60 years for me.

Once again, Phil, you pose EMPTY assertions backed up by NO FACTUAL evidence whatsoever.

Here's another article "alledging" Shrub administration interference.

Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/science/earth/29climate.html?hp&ex=1138510800&en=0a858f5230677507&ei=5094&partner=homepage
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: January 29, 2006

The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

The scientist, James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.

Dr. Hansen said he would ignore the restrictions. "They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public," he said.

Dean Acosta, deputy assistant administrator for public affairs at the space agency, said there was no effort to silence Dr. Hansen. "That's not the way we operate here at NASA," he said. "We promote openness and we speak with the facts."

Mr. Acosta said the restrictions on Dr. Hansen applied to all National Aeronautics and Space Administration personnel whom the public could perceive as speaking for the agency. He added that government scientists were free to discuss scientific findings, but that policy statements should be left to policy makers and appointed spokesmen.

Dr. Hansen, 63, a physicist who joined the space agency in 1967, is a leading authority on the earth's climate system. He directs efforts to simulate the global climate on computers at the Goddard Institute on Morningside Heights in Manhattan.

Since 1988, he has been issuing public warnings about the long-term threat from heat-trapping emissions, dominated by carbon dioxide, that are an unavoidable byproduct of burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels. He has had run-ins with politicians or their appointees in various administrations, including budget watchers in the first Bush administration and Vice President Al Gore.

In 2001, Dr. Hansen was invited twice to brief Vice President Dick Cheney and other cabinet members on climate change. White House officials were interested in his findings showing that cleaning up soot, which also warms the atmosphere, was an effective and far easier first step than curbing carbon dioxide.

He fell out of favor with the White House in 2004 after giving a speech at the University of Iowa before the presidential election, in which he complained that government climate scientists were being muzzled, and said he planned to vote for Senator John Kerry.

But Dr. Hansen said that nothing in 30 years equaled the push made since early December to keep him from publicly discussing what he says are clear-cut dangers from further delay in curbing carbon dioxide.

In several interviews with The New York Times in recent days, Dr. Hansen said it would be irresponsible not to speak out, particularly because NASA's mission statement includes the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet."

He said he was particularly incensed that the directives affecting his statements had come through informal telephone conversations and not through formal channels, leaving no significant trails of documents.

Dr. Hansen's supervisor, Franco Einaudi, said there had been no official "order or pressure to say shut Jim up." But Dr. Einaudi added, "That doesn't mean I like this kind of pressure being applied."

The fresh efforts to quiet him, Dr. Hansen said, began in a series of calls after a lecture he gave on Dec. 6 at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. In the talk, he said that significant emission cuts could be achieved with existing technologies, particularly in the case of motor vehicles, and that without leadership by the United States, climate change would eventually leave the earth "a different planet." The administration's policy is to use voluntary measures to slow, but not reverse, the growth of emissions.

After that speech and the release of data by Dr. Hansen on Dec. 15 showing that 2005 was probably the warmest year in at least a century, officials at the headquarters of the space agency repeatedly phoned public affairs officers, who relayed the warning to Dr. Hansen that there would be "dire consequences" if such statements continued, those officers and Dr. Hansen said in interviews.

Among the restrictions, according to Dr. Hansen and an internal draft memorandum he provided to The Times, was that his supervisors could stand in for him in any news media interviews.

In one call, George Deutsch, a recently appointed public affairs officer at NASA headquarters, rejected a request from a producer at National Public Radio to interview Dr. Hansen, said Leslie McCarthy, a public affairs officer responsible for the Goddard Institute.

Citing handwritten notes taken during the conversation, Ms. McCarthy said Mr. Deutsch called N.P.R. "the most liberal" media outlet in the country. She said that in that call and others Mr. Deutsch said his job was "to make the president look good" and that as a White House appointee that might be Mr. Deutsch's priority.

But she added: "I'm a career civil servant and Jim Hansen is a scientist. That's not our job. That's not our mission. The inference was that Hansen was disloyal." Normally, Ms. McCarthy would not be free to describe such conversations to the news media, but she agreed to an interview after Mr. Acosta, in NASA headquarters, told The Times that she would not face any retribution for doing so.

Mr. Acosta, Mr. Deutsch's supervisor, said that when Mr. Deutsch was asked about the conversations he flatly denied saying anything of the sort. Mr. Deutsch referred all interview requests to Mr. Acosta.

Ms. McCarthy, when told of the response, said: "Why am I going to go out of my way to make this up and back up Jim Hansen? I don't have a dog in this race. And what does Hansen have to gain?"

Mr. Acosta said that for the moment he had no way of judging who was telling the truth. Several colleagues of both Ms. McCarthy and Dr. Hansen said Ms. McCarthy's statements were consistent with what she told them when the conversations occurred.

"He's not trying to create a war over this," said Larry D. Travis, an astronomer who is Dr. Hansen's deputy at Goddard, "but really feels very strongly that this is an obligation we have as federal scientists, to inform the public, and this kind of attempted muzzling of the science community is really rather dangerous. If we just accept it, then we're contributing to the problem."

Dr. Travis said he walked into Ms. McCarthy's office in mid-December at the end of one of the calls from Mr. Deutsch demanding that Dr. Hansen be better controlled.

In an interview on Friday, Ralph J. Cicerone, an atmospheric chemist and the president of the National Academy of Sciences, the nation's leading independent scientific body, praised Dr. Hansen's scientific contributions and said he had always seemed to describe his public statements clearly as his personal views.

"He really is one of the most productive and creative scientists in the world," Dr. Cicerone said. "I've heard Hansen speak many times and I've read many of his papers, starting in the late 70's. Every single time, in writing or when I've heard him speak, he's always clear that he's speaking for himself, not for NASA or the administration, whichever administration it's been."

The fight between Dr. Hansen and administration officials echoes other recent disputes. At climate laboratories of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, many scientists who routinely took calls from reporters five years ago can now do so only if the interview is approved by administration officials in Washington, and then only if a public affairs officer is present or on the phone.

Where scientists' points of view on climate policy align with those of the administration, however, there are few signs of restrictions on extracurricular lectures or writing.

One example is Indur M. Goklany, assistant director of science and technology policy in the policy office of the Interior Department. For years, Dr. Goklany, an electrical engineer by training, has written in papers and books that it may be better not to force cuts in greenhouse gases because the added prosperity from unfettered economic activity would allow countries to exploit benefits of warming and adapt to problems.

In an e-mail exchange on Friday, Dr. Goklany said that in the Clinton administration he was shifted to nonclimate-related work, but added that he had never had to stop his outside writing, as long as he identifies the views as his own.

"One reason why I still continue to do the extracurricular stuff is because one doesn't have to get clearance for what I plan on saying or writing," he wrote.

Many people who work with Dr. Hansen said that politics was not a factor in his dispute with the Bush administration.

"The thing that has always struck me about him is I don't think he's political at all," said Mark R. Hess, director of public affairs for the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., a position that also covers the Goddard Institute in New York.

"He really is not about concerning himself with whose administration is in charge, whether it's Republicans, Democrats or whatever," Mr. Hess said. "He's a pretty down-the-road conservative independent-minded person.

"What he cares deeply about is being a scientist, his research, and I think he feels a true obligation to be able to talk about that in whatever fora are offered to him."

Just another Left Wing nut job.

You guys don't know jack.

Some alien species somewhere wants planet earth out of the way for a new interstellar "highway" they want to built in a couple million years, so they just sprinkled some humans on planet Earth, knowing full well that we'll eventually blow ourselves up along with the planet.

Ok, couldn't help it. I thought it was funny.

You guys don't know jack.

Some alien species somewhere wants planet earth out of the way for a new interstellar "highway" they want to built in a couple million years, so they just sprinkled some humans on planet Earth, knowing full well that we'll eventually blow ourselves up along with the planet.

Ok, couldn't help it. I thought it was funny.

Frogman, is your...real...name...Douglas...Adams...? :eek:

Seeing how he's pushing up daisies, I'd have to say.. no.

Air trends 'amplifying' warming
By Richard Black
Environment Correspondent, BBC News website, in Vienna

Only when solar dimming disappeared could we really see what is going on in terms of the greenhouse effect.
Reduced air pollution and increased water evaporation appear to be adding to man-made global warming.
Research presented at a major European science meeting adds to other evidence that cleaner air is letting more solar energy through to the Earth's surface.

Other studies show that increased water vapour in the atmosphere is reinforcing the impact of man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

Scientists suggest both trends may push temperatures higher than believed.

But they say there is an urgent need for further research, particularly at sea.

Between the 1950s and 1980s, the amount of solar energy penetrating through the atmosphere to the Earth's surface appeared to be declining, by about 2% per decade.

This trend received some publicity under the term "global dimming".
But in the 1980s, it appears to have reversed, according to two papers published last year in the journal Science.
The decline in Soviet industry and clean air laws in western countries apparently reduced concentrations of aerosols, tiny particles, in the atmosphere.

These aerosols may block solar radiation directly, or help clouds to form which in turn constitute a barrier; or both effects may occur.

The lead researcher on one of those Science papers was Martin Wild from the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science (IACETH) in Zurich, and this week he has been discussing the implications of those findings at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) annual meeting in Vienna.
The reversal of "global dimming" has been proposed in some circles as an alternative explanation for climatic change, removing the need to invoke human emissions of greenhouse gases.

Dr Wild dismissed this picture. His analysis suggests that "global dimming" and the man-made greenhouse effect may have cancelled each other out until the early 1980s, but now "global brightening" is adding to the impact of human greenhouse emissions.

"There is always this argument that maybe the whole temperature rise wasn't due to greenhouse warming but due to solar variations," he told the BBC News website.


"During the solar dimming we had really no temperature rise. And only when the solar dimming disappeared could we really see what is going on in terms of the greenhouse effect, and that is only starting in the 1980s."
Analyses of global temperature indicate that a sharp upward trend commenced in the early 1980s.

But, said Dr Wild, there are strong regional variations in the "solar brightening" trend.

"In Eastern Europe, we see a very strong recovery [in solar radiation] - almost back to what it was before dimming began," he said.

"But India continues with the dimming - that's very much thought to be due to increasing air pollution.

"The general position is that air pollution is still increasing in the tropics, but decreasing outside the tropics; so probably that will amplify warming a little bit outside the tropics but not inside."

There are, Dr Wild admitted, holes in the picture of change.

"The term 'global dimming' is a bit dangerous," he said. "I usually call it 'solar dimming' not 'global dimming' because we really only know about this where we have measurements; and we don't have measurements at many places, for example over the oceans, or land in the tropics."

More research facilities are needed, he said, in tropical regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, and especially the oceans.

As well as extending measurements of solar energy reaching the Earth's surface, he urged more research on aerosol concentrations in the atmosphere and on trends in cloud cover.

Rolf Philipona from the World Radiation Center in Davos, Switzerland, is attempting to improve aerosol measurements in northern Europe.
"We're trying to put a paper together which shows the aerosol depth and the amount of aerosol in the air column from about six to eight stations in Europe," he told the BBC News website.

"In Germany and Switzerland we would have stations very high up, extending all the way to the North Sea."

Last year Dr Philipona released research indicating that European warming is largely driven by increases in humidity.

The mechanism is that rising levels of what are conventionally called "greenhouse gases", such as carbon dioxide and methane, cause more evaporation of water, which in the atmosphere is itself a greenhouse gas.

He believes this is having more impact than changes to the transmission of solar energy through the atmosphere.

"From my results I believe it's the greenhouse warming and in particular the water vapour feedback," he said.

"Studies and papers are also coming now which are looking more closely at what water vapour is doing in other regions; and there are several pieces of work showing water vapour is increasing over land areas like the United States."

A further implication of "global brightening" is that the temperature difference between night and day may reduce.
The "blanket" of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has a net heating effect during day and night, whereas changes in solar energy reaching the surface are felt only in daytime.

Disproportionately higher night-time temperatures have already been noted in many parts of the world, and research in the Philippines has linked this trend to a reduction in rice yield.

The conclusions presented here present two major challenges to the research community.

One is to find ways of extending experimental investigations into the oceans and the developing world.

The second is to integrate them into computer models of climate, something which is only just beginning to happen.



So much for cleaner air. Looks like the dirtier our air, the better off global warming.